An Album/Song A Week: Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

 Bitches Brew is not my favorite Miles Davis album.  I'd rank it behind Kind of Blue and In A Silent Way, but just ahead of Jack Johnson. Hell, it's not even my all-time fave Jazz album.  That would be Giant Steps by John Coltrane. But it is the album that turned me on to Jazz.  It's not that I didn't know the big names or even the big Jazz albums.  In my teens Jazz was the smooth Jazz I heard on Top 40 radio: Chuck Mangione, George Benson.  It was not Miles, Coltrane, Ornette, Sonny Rollins.  The Jazz vocalists were in a different listening category for me.  I seemed to have heard more Ella, Billie Holiday, etc., than I did instrumentalists.  

  There's no denying that Bitches Brew was a game-changer.  Miles going even more electric than he did on In A Silent Way.  Jazz-Fusion was now in his wheelhouse.  Critics be damned.  And some purists weren't happy. But thanks to an all-star cast, Miles pulls it off. Improvised sounds collide, but they never go fully off the rails.  Credit the electric guitar of John McLaughlin for most of this.  McLaughlin had been doing fusion before joining Miles's band and after he left formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra which released their own acclaimed fusion albums. 

  It took me many years, mostly as I got older to catch up to all the Jazz that was missing in my life.  And I still don't feel like I've totally caught up to all of it.  It will never be my specialty, but I'm more comfortable talking about it now than ever before.  So, start with Bitches Brew.  Then work your way back or forward.