Favorite Miles Davis Album

:sunglasse The great thing about Miles is with the length of his career there are always discoveries of rarities or unreleased Live recordings surfacing.
For someone who died so long ago he still has an amazingly high profile.
The cool lives on.

 

tie between Bitches Brew and Kind of Blue

 

Stuck in between In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew...
Miles Davis never liked to call his music jazz, because he never really liked the term.

 

Bitches brew ;]

 

i'd like to take this opportunity and revive this thread. not a single person on here mentioned the album(2-disc) agharta!!!?!?!??!! perhaps nobody has been exposed to it? either way, i believe it blows bitches brew away, no doubt. and the full bitches brew sessions are pretty dope by the way, give them a listen as well.
down in fraggle rock,
steve

 

I really like Miles Smiles.

 

Miles in the Sky

 

Bitches Brew by far

 

Birth of the Cool.

 

Easlily Kind of Blue, made in heaven as they say. I can't really get into sketches of spain, I only got it the other day though, Silent way is very experimental, a good album but not one i enjoy as much as others, miles smiles is al right

 

wayne shorter,chick corea,dave holland,john mc laughlin,... it is bitches brew

 

I can't do this so I'll just go..

Prestige Era - Relaxin'
First Great Quintet - Kind of Blue
Second Great Quintet - Miles Smiles
Early Fusion - In A Silent Way
Later Fusion - On The Corner (I love this especially because Dave Liebman is on it, he's a nice guy, lives in my area and gives me the occasional lesson)
80s/90s - Almost unlistenable..

 

My favorite is a live DVD called:

"Miles in Paris"

Its great 80s cheesyness with all your MIDI ecoutrement

 

Miles Smiles


then...
Kind of Blue
ESP
Bitches Brew
In a Silent Way

then the other mid 60s-1970 stuff...
Nefertiti
Live Evil (Cellar Door Sessions)
Fillmore concerts (especially It's About That Time)
Tribute to Jack Johnson
Filles de Kilimanjaro
Sorceror
Plugged Nickel
The Complete Concert 1964 (My Funny Valentine)
Miles in the Sky
Big Fun

then...
Birth of the Cool

then the other mid 50s-early 60s stuff...
his orchestral stuff with Gil Evans (especially Porgy & Bess and Sketches of Spain)
'Round About Midnight
Milestones
'58 Sessions
the "all stars" and first classic quintet Prestige stuff (like Relaxin' and Bags' Groove)
that soundtrack to that French noir film (Lift to the Scaffold is the English title)
Someday My Prince Will Come

then the other 70s stuff...
On the Corner
Get Up with It
Agharta (and Pangaea)
Dark Magus

R.i.p, Miles. You're the greatest.

 

This was posted a long time ago, I see. But there are huge stylistic differences between "fusion" (jazz with some of the structual aspects and instrumentation of rock and pop) and "free jazz" (jazz without conventional or formal structure), it just happens that Bitches Brew in certain ways straddles the two styles. Really, I think, BB is beyond categorization, but it does have some of the rock backbeat and electric instruments associated with fusion but some of the free-form qualities of the avant garde. It's sorta both and neither. It helped kick-start fusion in the first place, so that is generally how it is classified.

And I doubt that Miles was a racist. He worked with and hired white musicians all the time (John Scofield, Dave Holland, Dave Liebman, Gil Evans, two different guys named Bill Evans) and actually took some heat for it from some of his black contemporaries.

 

Pangaea

 

Bitches Brew

 

for me it has always been "kind of blue", but i just discovered "in a silent way" a week ago, and it is quickly becoming one of my all time favorites

 

Does anybody know where I can find a recording of Miles Davis' set from the '70 Isle Of Wight Festival? I saw the video, and it's fucking awesome! But I'd love to have it on audio.

 

I think there's a bootleg of that same show on cd, but you can find essentially the same material on the Fillmore cds (also recorded in 1970)...

Black Beauty: Live at Fillmore West, It's About That Time: Live at Fillmore East (the best imo), and At Fillmore. (I think Miles was opening for the Dead and the Allman Brothers at these shows. Can't imagine what the crowd must have been thinking when they heard this stuff.)

The line-up is a little different though. Black Beauty features Wayne Shorter on sax instead of Gary Bartz (who played Isle of Wight), while the other two Fillmores feature Steve Grossman. Bartz's playing, I think, is more "soulful" while Shorter and Grossman play really fiery, intense Coltrane-inspired stuff.

And then there's A Tribute to Jack Johnson and the Live Evil/Cellar Door material (also recorded in 1970), but the sound of that music is a lot more funk- and rock-oriented than the intense electric free fusion Miles' band did at the Fillmores and Isle of Wight.