Bitches Brew, a double album recorded over a span of three days in August of 1969, is often heralded as the first shot fired in the fusion movement — even though it is cut from much of the same cloth as In a Silent Way (which Davis made six months earlier) and despite the fact that jazz and rock had already been mingling for a couple of years. I think that writer Paul Tingen (Miles Beyond: Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991) was accurate in his observation that the album represented a "paradigm shift." It was the first electric album from a jazz artist to be massively influential and it was the fulcrum for much of fusion's experimental wing.Bitches Brew could be generally described as a darker, funkier, fiercer version of In a Silent Way; certainly, that's the case with the tracks on Disc One. It's also bigger, as Davis used thirteen musicians instead of eight. Six of the eight musicians from In a Silent Way returned for Bitches Brew (Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock did not participate), and all four of Davis' sidemen in his then-current working band (Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette) played on it, giving the project some continuity with Davis' most recent work. The new additions (musicians who did not play on In a Silent Way and who were not part of Davis' live band at the time) were: Bennie Maupin (bass clarinet), Larry Young (electric piano), Harvey Brooks (electric bass), Lenny White (drums), Don Alias (drums), Airto Moreira (percussion) and Jim Riley (percussion). Not all tracks feature all of the musicians but each piece is performed by a large ensemble and the result is often a roiling sea of sound.
Despite a similar method of construction, the music differs from In a Silent Way in several important ways. First, there is the bass clarinet. It's a simple addition but it casts the music in an entirely different light. Maupin plays the bass clarinet purely for its tone color — he doesn't solo or really even contribute any riffs; the instrument is used almost like a didgeridoo and this adds a decidedly non-western atmosphere to the music. Second, there's the playing of Miles Davis himself. If In a Silent Way marked the return of Miles Davis the trumpet player (the later albums cut by Davis' '60s quintet did not prominently feature the leader's horn), Bitches Brew takes this resurgence to an entirely different level. Producer Teo Macero recognized the renewed spirit in Miles' playing and he astutely boosted the sound of Davis' horn into the front of the mix so as to maximize the effect. Third, there is the rhythm section. Whereas Davis kept the rhythms simple and spare on In a Silent Way, he wanted the drumming to be energetic and funky on Bitches Brew. He also wanted to experiment with polyrhythms and he deployed multiple percussionists on a few of the tracks. As on In a Silent Way, the percussion and the bass are the least improvised elements of the music; unlike In a Silent Way, their function here was to be noticed for what they were doing as opposed to what they were not doing.
Bitches Brew was an album shrouded in mystery for some time, although information has surfaced over the years that clarifies the picture somewhat and dispels a few of the myths. One myth that Miles himself perpetuated was that the music was almost wholly the product of spontaneous creativity — that the band didn't know anything about the music until sketches were shown to them on the day of recording. In fact "Spanish Key," "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" and, of course, Wayne Shorter's "Sanctuary" had been in the live band's repertoire prior to recording Bitches Brew, and I've read that fragments of "Bitches Brew" had been played live as well. Furthermore, Joe Zawinul and Lenny White have both stated that they participated in rehearsals at Davis' house the day before the recording sessions. Due to the complexity of the material and the unwieldy size of the ensemble, it was probably a very good idea that at least some of the newcomers had a few dry runs before the tapes started rolling, anyway. Miles Davis was almost psychic in his superlative abilities to create an atmosphere that got the most out of his band on virtually every occasion and if he felt that brief rehearsals were necessary, then the music is likely all the better for it.
Another controversy is amount of the postproduction editing by Teo Macero and his autonomy in so doing. I think it is hardly a coincidence that the repertoire pieces recorded for Bitches Brew appear on the album without any edits at all, yet the new tracks are heavily edited. In fact, one would not be out of line to say that "Pharaoh's Dance" and "Bitches Brew" are basically the products of Macero's cutting and pasting. To illustrate, when Joe Zawinul first heard Bitches Brew (months later, during a visit to CBS's offices), he had to ask someone who the band on the stereo was. Zawinul has stated that he was unimpressed with the Bitches Brew sessions at the time, but that he loved the resulting record. Miles Davis was reluctant to publicly give Teo Macero much credit for Bitches Brew, but the great extent to which Macero is responsible for "Pharaoh's Dance" and "Bitches Brew" — the whole first disc of the two-disc set was edited by Macero — is impossible to ignore: for half of the album, Macero was at least as important as anyone else in the band.
And what of the music? Bitches Brew is probably one of the five most important and influential albums reviewed on this site. It was the line drawn in the sand that, for a long time, estranged Miles Davis from the jazz community. This would have been a big risk for any respected jazz artist, but for a living legend with a storied 25-year legacy under his belt, it was a monumental change of allegiances. Like In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew is a fantastic experiment. Most of the musicians who played on it went on to become giants of either the 1970s fusion movement or of experimental jazz. Rock artists as disparate as Carlos Santana, Joni Mitchell and Radiohead cite it as an influence (though I don't see the connection myself, Radiohead's Thom Yorke once stated in a Q magazine interview that Bitches Brew "was what we were trying to do with OK Computer.").
All those accolades and importance and yet... I've always found it to be a bit less fun to put on than the Miles Davis enthusiast in me might like to admit. There's no doubting the power of the second disc and I think it's no accident that the Bitches Brew music that comes off as the most focused and purposeful is the material that the live band had been playing in front of audiences. But even these pieces, excellent though they are, were often outdone, in my opinion, by Davis' 1970 touring band. Part of this has to do with the weak sound quality that marred the digital transfers of Bitches Brew until the album was re-remastered in 1999 (and even this latest remastering isn't much more than a step in the right direction), but there is also something to be said for a great band having a chance to let great material evolve night after night. Disc One is still an experiment that I admire more than I love. "Pharaoh's Dance" is my pick of the two pieces (that one yielded enough quality moments that Teo Macero edited out a guitar-heavy 4+ minute chunk, titled it "John McLaughlin" and sequenced it in the middle of Disc Two), and it's a pity that it was never performed live. Its best quality is its atmosphere, though, and because of that I think of it as a slightly lesser version of what Miles Davis had already accomplished to perfection with In a Silent Way. "Bitches Brew" has its moments, but at 27 minutes it goes on for much too long. There's a version of "Bitches Brew" on Davis' Fillmore West album that is less than half as long but which I think is much better.
Love it, hate it, debate it — Bitches Brew is an album that simply must be heard. If nothing else, it will probably create a powerful feeling in you regardless of where you stand on it. Heck, you can hear an out-of-touch Stanley Crouch still crowing about it as angrily as he did back in 1970, should you happen to watch the inexcusably bad final episode of Ken Burns' Jazz documentary.
review by Matt P. — 1-12-06 —
