Miles Davis

Miles Davis

A singular act of erotic liberation and psychedelic transformation, Bitches Brew crowns Miles Davis' electric era. Radical and prophetic, the 1970 masterpiece created its own Creole language, a divine concoction of ultra jazz-funk, defiantly black R&B, and revolutionary rock & roll, masterfully assembled by producer Teo Macero. The sessions featured a village of vanguard fusionists – saxophonist Wayne Shorter (Weather Report), pianist Chick Corea (Return to Forever), and guitarist John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra) for starters – what Greg Tate in his extensive liner terms as a "jazz hybrid of Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project and the Cuban Revolution – a band part thermonuclear think tank, part guerrilla brigade." As such, the work has been reissued in every conceivable fashion, most notably 1998's 4-CD The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, which in turn was recently bundled into The Genius of Miles Davis. Complementing the recent Kind of Blue deluxe box set, this lavishly packaged 40th-anniversary legacy edition comes in a slipcase, detailed by the warped, surrealistic iconography of the late Mati Klarwein, and boasts the original double LP on vinyl and a pair of CDs, with a few alternate takes as well as single edits of "Great Expectations" and "Little Blue Frog" from a second session with Herbie Hancock. A previously unreleased DVD of Davis' Second Great Quintet – Shorter, Corea, bassist Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette behind the kit – in Copenhagen, November 1969, captures the bandleader halfway through his Betty Davis-led wardrobe/tonal makeover. Corea's mad science, especially on bookends "Directions" and "It's About That Time/The Theme," spikes this serene and otherwise acoustic 70-minute flight of fancy. Nine months later, the Prince of Darkness ruled a different realm – rock venues, in this case, famed Berkshires concert venue Tanglewood. Bolstered by Keith Jarrett and percussionist Airto Moreira and with Gary Bartz replacing Shorter, the septet barrels through 45 minutes of a funk supreme – high-voltage fusion that teeters on the brink of free-jazz. Here, Davis swirls just above the chaos, bobbing and weaving between the hard grooves like prizefighter Jack Johnson.