Posted on by James Koblin

Yo Miles! Miles Davis at 100

(Miles at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island on 5 July 1969, photo credit Cynthia Connolly)

This Tuesday, May 26, 2026, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Miles Davis. The magnitude of the occasion deserves deep insights into the genius of a musician who has changed music again and again. That illumination far beyond what I can do here, but I certainly wanted to join what I hope will be a chorus of fans and music people marking the occasion. 

Here are some of the enlightened takes that have caught my attention and that I want to share with you, and if you keep on reading, I have a few thoughts about my current obsession – Miles’ last electric band, which toured relentlessly from 1973-1975, but recorded very little in the studio.

First check these articles out:

Trombonist Jacob Garchick has been doing a series of posts on Miles. While there’s technical discussion about chords and time from the perspective of a musician, anybody can read and learn something valuable. So check his posts out:

Nate Chinen published a series of insightful pieces on Miles:

Also check out Syd Swartz discusses celebrating the Miles centennial, and how the second great quintet reinvented music by getting rid of the harmonic roadmap.

You can’t consider Miles with his inimitable style, and The New York Times just did a “visual dictionary”of Miles 

There are quite a few places to listen to Miles for the centennial so tune in:

    • At WKCR, the OG home of marathon jazz celebrations, you can hear Miles for a 72-hour (three-day!) celebration from noon Tuesday, 5/26, through midnight Thursday, 5/28. 
    • WRTI has Miles playing all day Tuesday. Check out the annotations of selected tracks and the station provides a handy schedule for the marathon.
    • Also on WKCR, this Monday from 6-9 P.M., don’t miss Mitch Goldman’s Deep Focus, where he discusses the post-Bitches Brew “lost quintet” with Michael Veal, author of Living Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Free Jazz. The Deep Focus show, which periodically airs at WKCR on Mondays, has been an important source of inspiration and knowledge for me, and if you look at the archived podcasts, you’ll find lots of Miles Davis shows.

I you enjoy those links! For my own celebration of the genius of Miles, I’ve been listening to my current favorite Miles band, the electric septet documented in performances from June 29th, 1973, to July 1st, 1975. An important part of Miles’ genius is the way he created his bands, each with an utterly distinct identity where each member contributes to the sound in unique ways. The two-year gestation of his last electric band is no exception, something worth contemplating as we consider Miles’ genius.

The roots of this group, like with prior Miles groups, are in its rhythm section. Rhythm is always at the core of Miles’ music, but by the early 1970s, rhythm was the defining aesthetic. The revolution started with bassist Michael Henderson replacing Dave Holland in 1970, bringing a new, lean urgency to the constantly touring working band. James Mtume Forman (son of Miles’ friend Jimmy Heath) joined on hand percussion in 1971. In videos of the 1973-1975 band, Mtume is playing his congas right next to Miles; listen carefully, and you hear him trading creative ideas (rather than simple patterns) with the trumpet player, while everybody else is pursuing the groove. Mtume’s importance here can’t be overstated: Miles told him, “You’re my new Tony Williams.” (1) For the drum chair once occupied by Williams, its role was recreated with a sizzling groove in the hands of Al Foster, filling the shoes of the departing Jack DeJohnette in 1972. You could mistakenly think Foster came out of rock the way he lays down drum fills and keeps an intense beat, but Foster is a jazz cat in wolf’s clothing, bringing finesse along with tireless energy. (2) Ironically like Count Basie’s band, guitar was the fourth rhythm member, and Reggie Lucas augmented the beat along with Foster, Henderson, and Mtume. But Lucas is no Freddy Green, and his playing is so intensely percussive that in the liner notes to Pangaea, Kevin Whitehead (quoting Eugene Chadbourne) likens his wah-wah lines to a “log drum.”  The alchemy of these players produced rhythmic lines that are direct but always exciting and on the move.

On top of that foundation, Miles used three lead voices. Dave Leibman joined in early 1973 after leaving Elvin Jones, bringing his excellent tenor and flute playing and especially his searing soprano, that never fails to put the music in overdrive. In 1974, Leibman left Miles, and Sonny Fortune stepped in and brought the same intensity, which you’ll hear on this group’s last recordings. The last step in forming this band, and for many its ultimate X-factor, was the addition in June 1973 of guitarist Pete Cosey. There’s no other musician I’m aware of that played with Muddy Waters and is also an original member of the AACM. Set in dramatic relief by Miles’ cues to stop the band, Cosey’s solos leap wildly into an unpredictable mix of overdriven Hendrix, proto-metal, blues, and what critic Greg Tate calls “harmonic distortion.” In a band that ripped up the rule book, Cozey is an iconoclastic maverick.

Then obviously there’s the leader, and for all the debate about Miles’ chops, I find his trumpet playing through most of the electric period (from In A Silent Way in 1969 onward) to be as commanding as any time in his career, with clearly executed and immensely creative lines. But I also hear the must-discussed decline after a horrific car crash in October 1972, where Miles broke both of his legs and allegedly got addicted to pain killers.  In its wake, Miles clearly leans into his (alas, immensely creative) use of the wah-wah to sculpt and amplify his trumpet, and he often plays in a more textural or rhythmic way. There’s really no diminution of the music though, in part because Miles filled the gap with another unique feature of this band: his organ playing. The shimmering electric keyboards of Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett are the essence of the 1969 and 1970 electric bands, but with this band, Miles assumed the keyboard duties himself, and the sound changed dramatically. With the organ, Miles aggressively interjects blasts of twisted, dark chords to create an unsettling menace. Ironically, Miles approach is the opposite of his minimalist approach to the trumpet. With this new instrumental voice Miles plays dense and harmonically rich slabs of sound that shift the quiet passages of music into the otherworldly. When Miles practiced on Sly Stone’s organ one night, the Sly told Miles “stop playing that voodoo shit.”

So that’s the band I’m currently obsessed with, what Greg Tate called “the world’s first fully improvisational acid-funk band.”  This band has mostly been known from two albums, both recorded from the same concert in Osaka, Japan, on February 1, 1975 – Agharta and Pangaea. I’ve always found it incredible that the only official documentation has been these two records along with another live album (Dark Magus), and some scattered studio tracks. The need to hear more of this band sent me down a rabbit hole, and luckily I found The Heat Warps, a fantastic blog devoted to the appreciation of every live recording of Davis from 1969 to 1975. Each gig has its own webpage with a summary of the music, period photos and paraphernalia, and easily downloadable recordings of all the documented music. I’ve already spent hours having my mind expanded by the curated Miles history and incredible gig tapes. So I recommend you take this dive, there’s so much to listen to and learn! 

So much to check out! I’ll share one discovery that was especially mind-blowing: I don’t know what was in the air on November 1, 1973, but you should absolutely listen to the incendiary recording of this date (and fear not, the audio quality is quite good, I suspect the date was recorded by the band itself with an onstage machine – all the instruments are clearly captured, especially the fierce rhythm  section).

So here’s what you’ll hear – after an introduction by English impresario Ronnie Scott, the band launches into set opener “Turnaroundphrase,” with blazing intensity, which gives way to a “Tune In 5” that flails away on the ‘1’s’ like a cross between the JB’s and The Damned. The rhythm section is the star of this tape – Henderson’s constantly shifting baseline is captured close to the recorder, and you can hear the gravitational drift of the pulse as the sounds of Henderson, Lucas, Foster, and Mtume pull apart and then suddenly coalesce. Meanwhile, Cosey’s unorthodox guitar surprises with subterranean shards of noise, before exploding into melting solos. Leibman delivers some of the hottest soprano I’ve heard on the opening track, while the band wails so furiously that the music threatens to unravel. But it doesn’t, and Davis sounds positively energized, soloing often and with poise. I usually try and avoid adjectives, but the music is so great I really can’t help myself! A great set by the legendary band, showing both its startling intensity and deep creativity.

So I hope you’ll use this week to listen to some Miles. If you don’t care for the electric period, well, So What? Miles, the chameleon and the sorcerer, is one of the musicians who showed us that the journey is more important than the destination, which is part of the reason there are so many sides to Miles Davis. You can choose the one(s) for you, and they’re all great. Whichever Miles is on your speakers or in your headphones, happy listening!

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1  – Watch Adam Rudolph’s talk with Mtume and their discussion about Miles here.

Footnote 2  – Drummer Vinnie Sperrazza recently wrote about Al Foster’s special role supporting Miles. Miles family took a heart from music for 5 year starting in 1975. When he came back, Foster was the only member of the 1975 band who was in the new group, playing new (and very different) music.

Footnote 3 – For a passionate take, check out Phil Freeman’s appreciation of those classics at 50. I remember digging Pangaea long before I was a jazz fan (picking it up at a New Jersey mall Sam Goody in the mid 80’s, likely after reading about Miles in Rolling Stone).

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