at a glance...

Hometown: St. Louis, MO
First Recordings: 1945

Personnel:
Miles Davis -trumpet
Wayne Shorter,Steve Grossman -soprano saxophone
Bennie Maupin -bass clarinet
John McLaughlin -electric guitar
Dave Holland, Harvey Brooks, Ron Carter -basses
Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Larry Young -electric piano
Larry Young -organ and celeste
Jack DeJohnette, Don Alias, Lenny White, Billy Cobham -drums
Jumma Santos, Jim Riley, Don Alias, Airto Moreira -percussion
Bihari Sharma -tambura, tablas
Khalil Balakrishna -sitar

Related Artists:
Weather Report, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Notes:
From his first recordings with Charlie Parker until his death in 1991, Miles Davis was a hugely influential and often controversial figure in jazz. He was present at the birth of bebop, cool, modal, and fusion jazz, and with the latter three he was also one of the parents.

In a career full of archetypal recordings, Bitches Brew still stands out. With the release of the original double LP, Miles Davis drew a line in the sand that some jazz fans have never crossed, or even forgiven Davis for drawing. The album was both a coalescence of ideas that had been brewing for several years and a sharp break with Davis's past. He had already experimented with electric keyboards, rock guitars and beats, and the use of studio post-production as a compositional tool.

On Bitches Brew he foregrounded all those elements by assembling the album from several days of rhythmic studio improvisations by a large, electrified band. Instead of the concern with sophisticated harmonic and structural experimentation that had preoccupied his classic mid-60s quintet, he focused on simpler melodies suspended over dense electric textures and churning grooves. Davis's baleful trumpet playing, often treated with studio effects, towered over the music's roiling surface like a beacon.

The album won him a new audience of adventurous rock fans, but alienated long-time enthusiasts who had no time for the contemporary pop vocabulary and considered Davis a traitor to jazz for incorporating it. Twenty years on, the album stands outside of any genre but endures as commanding, absorbing music.