Any attempt to sketch the history of jazz in 50 videos is probably doomed to failure. Nevertheless, I've set out to try, so I'm looking for any opportunity to cheat. With a mere 25 million views, this choice picks itself while illustrating two giants of the pantheon in their prime at once, thus leaving me room for A.N. Other further on up the road. In terms of his influence on the evolution of the music, Miles Davis must be up there with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, while John Coltrane is bubbling just under that kind of level.
Coltrane, as most jazz fans know, was an integral part of Miles Davis' first great quintet during the second half of the Fifties, first with the Prestige label and then with the higher profile Columbia label. Their time together there culminated in Kind Of Blue, the apotheosis of jazz's annus mirabilis of 1959. And, as anyone with a passing interest in jazz appreciates, Kind Of Blue is generally quoted as the greatest jazz album ever made; the Citizen Kane of recorded music. It certainly leapt into my top 3 on hearing the five mellow moody melodies for the first time. And there it has stayed ever since, along with Sergeant Pepper and What's Going On, never to be displaced. I can't remember where or when I first heard it, unlike the other two, but I brought back my copy from New York on one of the first Virgin Atlantic flights, along with the later In A Silent Way, both with the American red label rather than the equivalent British orange CBS label. So I was a happy bunny. Surprisingly, I didn't sign and date the inner sleeve, which suggests that I must have grown up a little by then. Probably the early Eighties, when I discovered that there was much, much more to Miles Davis than his contemporary electrified racket (as I considered it then).
Since I have just finished reading an excellent analysis of the biggest selling jazz record of all time by Ashley Kahn (subtitled Miles Davis and the Making of a Masterpiece), what could be more suitable at this juncture than this interpretation of the luminous opening track, named for one of the famously surly trumpeter's throwaway put-downs of choice? (I had a surly friend at school who used to like subverting anything you might deem witty or urgent with his own brand of bathos, and those two little words certainly hurt. Instant deflation.)
This version of 'So What' was recorded during the hiatus between the album's two studio sessions for a TV programme entitled The Sound of Miles Davis. It's a fascinating if slightly erroneous glimpse into the methodology of those two single-day recording sessions. Erroneous because of the absence of Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley (with a migraine), whose alto sax had latterly turned the quintet into a sextet, and pianist Bill Evans, whose place was taken here by Wynton Kelly, who appeared only on the album's second track, 'Freddie Freeloader'. The stray trombonists, who wander about like lost souls with horns until they are called upon to add a little grist to the mill, belonged to the Gil Evans orchestra, which was waiting in the wings to perform extracts from the first Evans/Davis collaboration, Miles Ahead, during the second part of the programme. Otherwise, the line-up is as per the LP: Coltrane and Davis backed by the redoubtable Paul Chambers, Coltrane's 'Mr. P.C.', destined to die in his mid 30s, and drummer Jimmy Cobb, who made it to 91, the last surviving member of the sextet. I saw the distinguished Mr. J.C. at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1985 as part of a New York All Stars pick-up group and was almost overcome in the presence of such a giant.
Sharp-suited as he always was in those days, Miles leads
things off after the initial statement of the two-note theme and sets the tone
and pace (slightly faster than the languid recorded version) for the solos to follow. Handing the baton on to John Coltrane, he then wanders off to
the wings for a crafty fag – a tendency of his that created its fair share of
critical furore, inspiring in the process Eddie Jefferson, a pioneer of 'vocalese'
(putting words to famous solos), to sing in his tribute: 'Miles Davis left the
stage... So what!?' Coltrane then
builds on the leader's outline in his habitual questing and rather-more-verbose
fashion that sometimes infuriated his more elliptical leader. It's actually a
remarkably restrained performance from the man they still call JC, and it's
interesting to compare it to a version of his staple, 'Impressions',
a few years later with his legendary quartet of the first half of the Sixties.
You can hear the influence of 'So What' underlying the whole piece, so much so
that Coltrane gave it this title until he hit upon something more permanent.
This, I suppose, was both the beauty and the limitations of the modal or scalar approach to jazz improvisation, which made Kind of Blue so groundbreaking at the time. The idea of improvising within a single scale (or two) rather than around a multitude of chord changes hardly seems a big deal now in the light of what was to follow, but the much simpler, even simplistic, modal idea pioneered by composer, band leader and theorist, George Russell, seemed radical in 1959. Herbie Hancock talked of never having conceived another way of playing jazz till Kind of Blue appeared. It was why Davis wanted the ex-Russell sideman, Bill Evans, to replace Wynton Kelly on this album, as together (although he subsequently short-changed the great romanticist by denying him at least two co-composition credits) they could orchestrate a sound that offered more freedom and space and melodic possibility. The proof of the pudding is in the end product's sense of space and beauty and the hypnotic hold it achieves, which no doubt explains its timelessness.
Meanwhile, back in the video, Wynton Kelly plays a somewhat more blues-based solo than Evans' light, impressionistic solo on the record, with Miles and Coltrane prodding him with the two-note refrain. Miles then takes a second solo as stand-in for the man with the migraine, this time helped along by the gang of three trombonists, before they all leave Paul Chambers to re-state the initial riff in the company of Jimmy Cobb's masterful cymbal work.
Kind of Blue has cast its spell on me for decades, but in all that time I never quite understood how modal improvisation differed from one based around chord changes. I guess you have to be a musician. However, Ashley Kahn quotes a friend in his book who likens the latter, and bebop in particular, to a house-party where you visit all the rooms in a fairly frenetic fashion and have fun chatting to everyone in them; whereas in a modal party you can have an equally good time just chilling in the living room with the occasional drink from the kitchen. At my stage of life I know which one appeals to me more.
And finally... lest anyone should question this video's quota of cool, let me draw your attention to Bailey Main's comment on YouTube: 'I don't own a refrigerator, I just play this song to my food.'
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