There’s no point in debating the point that Miles Davis is the most important figure in jazz. No one else is as widely recognized outside of jazz circles nor as influential within them. Throughout the trumpeter’s five-decade career, he pioneered a number of movements, ushering in fundamental shifts in what jazz was. After cementing his status as a bebop great, he went on to pioneer cool jazz, then changed the face of jazz by embracing rock music, psychedelia, electronic instruments, and experimental recording techniques.
That experimental streak was perhaps never as fierce or fearless as on On the Corner, which saw him taking the heroin-hot mania of Bitches Brew and the extended-form ambience of In a Silent Way and distilling them into a dystopian block party.
