A lot happened in the year between John McLaughlin’s first album as band leader and his second. Extrapolation was recorded in the UK right before moving to the States to join Tony Williams’ Lifetime. By the time Devotion was recorded, he had also recorded three groundbreaking records with Miles Davis, served as a sideman for Larry Coryell, and had a single all-night jam session with Jimi Hendrix.
That’s a lot to fit in a calendar year, and this disc carries the full weight of it.
Jazz is a difficult realm for completionists—especially when you’re dealing with cats like Miles Davis. Jazz players were notorious for recording everything, and almost all of those records have something notable to justify collecting it. But there’s so much to sort through.
While my own jazz collecting has mostly focused on Davis’ electric period and the work his band members (e.g., Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea…) were doing, there’s one important piece that had escaped my collecting until recently.
That is Jack Johnson, a celebration of Black Excellence originally commissioned as a soundtrack for a documentary about the titular champion boxer, who famously shrugged off threats from the KKK to lay down to white opponents.
But perhaps my own interest in it is that this is the only time that Davis collaborated with Sonny Sharrock, my favorite jazz guitarist—even of Sonny was uncredited.
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.
Miles Davis’ monstrous 1971 double album purports to be two things: Live, and Evil.
Live? It’s unlike any other live record ever. A fiery 1970 performance at the Cellar Door was stitched together and interjected with studio tracks.
Evil? This record is positively wicked. Continue reading
If you mention Miles Davis among older individuals, you might get an almost dismissive, “Oh, he’s too weird for me.” Almost invariably, they’re talking about Bitches Brew, his 1970 jazz fusion opus.
And brother, it’s as weird as advertised.
Throughout his five-decade career, Miles Davis record over fifty records as a bandleader (and dozens more as a sideman). But none of those records are as singularly important than 1969’s In A Silent Way.
And no, that’s not an exaggeration.
Throughout jazz history, there is perhaps no greater convergence of fiery experimentation and boundless talent than the players that made up Miles Davis’ band during his electric period.
The interesting thing about jazz is that the albums are just as much about the side players as the bandleaders. And if you listen to enough jazz, you start to notice who the major players are.
And while you might not readily recognize Larry Coryell’s name, you might recognize some of the people playing with him on Spaces.
In the early 1970s, Miles Davis waged war against jazz traditionalism. His electric period, featuring the spaced out In a Silent Way and the manic Bitches Brew set a new course for the direction of jazz.
And through those years of fearless exploration and fierce iconoclasm, Herbie Hancock was right by his side.
In the liner notes of this album, Chick says that Return to Forever (which was the group that performed this album, despite it being credit to Chick alone) was born out of a desire to reconnect his jazz explorations with the heart of emotional songwriting. He had gotten a bit lost in his own head, and wanted to put his soul back into music.
And for the most part, this hits that mark. Chick plays a Fender Rhodes throughout the session, without much effects trickery. There’s no shortage of experimental jazz weirdness, but there’s also a fair amount of Latin flair. Oh, and a pop song.
The opener, “Return to Forever” is an incredible, moody twelve-minute piece of space jazz with wordless vocals and a deep samba groove. “Crystal Silence” is an In a Silent Way-esque piece of ambience that finds Chick’s Rhodes accompanied only by Joe Ferrell’s woodwinds. “What Game Shall we Play Today?” is a delightful pop tune that sounds like could be on Sesame Street (note: that is not an insult!).
The closer, “Some Time Ago/La Fiesta” takes up the entirety of side B and manages to revisit every track before it. It opens with an obtuse, ambient section where bassist Stanley Clarke finally gets his day in the sun. It then transitions into a Latin-tinged pop song featuring Flora Purim’s enchanting vocals. After her verses, it becomes a much more aggressive flamenco inspired jam, that ends up nowhere near the place it began.
At times, it runs the risk of sounding dated, or even a little cheesy.
But it somehow transcends the signifiers of its era and manages to become truly timeless. While his contemporaries were getting lost in space or hitching their wagon’s to funk’s swagger, Corea took the road less traveled and made an album that is truly special.