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styles coming together into one,” he says. “The
album mixed the avant-garde with contemporary
rhythms, along with electronic instruments.
And the concepts of more than one
player on an instrument paved the way for jazz
and other bands to use multiple keyboards, guitars
and percussion.”
“Bitches Brew had a huge impact on me,”
recalls trumpeter Graham Haynes. “The
music, the title, the artwork. What also helped
was that I saw the band live earlier before the
release, when Miles was still in the experimental
period. They played one long set. No
breaks, no stopping and applause. It was like
a suite. Inside of that set he played some of the
material that was to become Bitches Brew.
“Around 1968,” Haynes adds, “my dad
[Roy Haynes] took me to see the film Monterey
Pop. And my dad had a residency at the club
called The Scene, and I’d go there. [Jimi]
Hendrix, [John] McLaughlin, Tony Williams,
Jack Bruce, a lot of the British rock guys hung
there. Tony Williams was starting his Lifetime
band. Cannonball [Adderley] was stretching
out into some funky electronic things with
[Joe] Zawinul. So Miles going in this direction
wasn’t entirely new. What was new and
unique was his conception of how he did it; and
I believe the seeds of this concept can be found
as far back as Kind Of Blue.
“Miles was a musical alchemist,” Haynes
continues. “It wasn’t just about the ‘tunes’ or
the electric instruments. It was about an overall
revolutionary concept that had been brewing in
him for some time. Jimi, McLaughlin, Tony,
Jack DeJohnette, Airto, Wayne, Herbie. Those
cats were the mortar. Miles was the architect.”
Someone who would end up playing with
Davis during the mid-’80s and whose own
career has been influenced by Bitches Brew
is percussionist Marilyn Mazur. “When I was
14,” Mazur recalls, “a Danish piano player/
friend left me in his parents’ living room with
headphones on, turned off the light and played
me the entire Bitches Brew. I fell into a kind
of trance and had vivid dreams with strong
symbolic images. Afterward, he showed me
the cover and I was shocked to see the same
symbolic images painted there! I’ve loved this
mysterious soundscape ever since. It is my very
favorite Miles recording.”
Yet another musician who’s been shaped by
Davis and Bitches Brew is trumpeter and film
composer Mark Isham. “It changed my whole
perception and idea of what jazz could be,”
Isham states, “starting with In A Silent Way,
but Bitches Brew drove it home! It focused
my attention on wanting to make records that
contained a lot of the qualities and ideas that
I heard. Many years later I recorded a Miles
tribute album that contained a lot of the same
material [1999’s Miles Remembered: The
Silent Way Project]. The ‘orchestration’ of the
album also had a large impact on me, as did the
production style. I was, and still am, a big fan
of the non-traditional ideas that Teo Macero
brought to the table. My biggest attraction to
Miles’ playing has always been the sense of
melody and his use of space and time. He was
at his best in those regards on this release!”
Speaking for many artists who have been
deeply affected by the music that became
Bitches Brew, percussionist Adam Rudolph
fondly recalls, “I bought Bitches Brew as soon
as it was released. I had only recently started
playing music seriously, and this was the single
most inspiring record in my collection. I both
practiced to it and studied it. The music was liberating
to the mind and spirit because it opened
doors to possibilities of what music could be.
With that record, Miles showed us how important
it is as an artist to cultivate imagination,
develop craft, and then have the courage to
project our expression into the world.
“Every few years when I come back and
again listen deeply to Bitches Brew,” Rudolph
notes, “I find that, as I evolve as a composer
and percussionist, I can discover and hear new
things Miles did with the color palate, the form,
orchestration and the rhythm concepts. I am
as inspired today by the feeling and sound of
Bitches Brew as I was 40 years ago.” DB
DECEMBER 2011 DOWNBEAT 53