Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (33 1/3)

Well done. The unresolvable problem for Miles' writers is that even academic presses require a certain degree of accessibility for readers who are not professional musicians--that's reasonable, but it also requires writers to "paint a picture" of what's going on in the music rather than actually describing and analyzing it.

I agree with all the reviews so far. I found the specific analysis/description of all the tracks in the chapter starting on page 64 to be very well done. I would like to add some details that Grella neglects. In "Pharoah's Dance" at 15:00 you can hear someone laughing right after the splice. It sounds to me like the laughter of great satisfaction with what is happening, as if saying, "Yeah, this is so cool." Then in "Bitches Brew" there is and interesting portion of Miles' solo that has been intricately cut and spliced by Teo Macero (presumably). Starting at 10:32, portions of the next 10 seconds of the solo are repeated three times. After the first 5 seconds (10:32 to 10:37) it is repeated but this time going 1 second longer to 10:43; then it is repeated a second time but now for 10 seconds, at which point all but one note (!) of that 10-second portion of the solo gets repeated yet again. Finally, on page 84 in the section on "Spanish Key" Grella says, "Shorter sounds alternately purposeful and aimless." OK, but I would describe Shorter's solo from 8:04 to 8:21 as brilliant--a series of upward phrases each syncopated differently and each starting upward from a lower note. Obviously for me this is an album that has stood up to careful listening for decades. Congratulations to Grella for writing an entire book that gives Bitches Brew the attention it deserves.

Another angle on the career of Miles David

There are plenty of details to accompany the analysis of this iconic recording, and G. Grella is an attentive listener who will guide you through them with rigor and precision. But this is mainly a book about the art of jazz in America and its power of transformation written in splendid prose by someone that has the ability and the knowledge to look at, and express, the many facets of this cultural phenomenon.

Terrific blow by blow, second by second precise of this seminal work by Miles Davis. Essential to helping us understand the vast importance of this work.

It's a good analysis of the album. Wish there'd been some more info about the actual recording sessions (my constant complaint with this series), but I'd still recommend it.

Thoroughly researched, meticulously detailed this is must read for fans of Miles Davis, jazz fusion or just great writing. Cannot say enough good things about this text. A wonderful addition to the 33 1/3 series.

Great book. The author does a great job of breaking down the music and the cultural context and impact of Bitches Brew on the jazz and pop music landscape at the time and beyond. Highly recommended.

Not too long ago I reviewed another 33 1/3 book, criticising it for its lack of comment regarding the music on the album it was supposed to be about. No such worries about George Grella Jr’s monograph of Miles’s Bitches Brew. Grella here gives a vivid commentary on the ground-breaking music contained on the album, combining well the technical and non-technical. For the people with an interest in the former there’s plenty of analysis, such as the different modal forms used in Spanish Key, without getting too detailed; for those who also or instead like a more descriptive approach, that’s there too.In addition, and as importantly, Grella contextualises Bitches Brew within Miles’s career, within jazz, within the debate over whether it is jazz, or rock, or fusion, or funk, and within the debate over Miles’s obligation to continue making the kind of jazz the purists thought he should over his urge to innovate and change the paradigm.A few things we do know. First that New Orleans, the city that claims to have been the crucible for jazz, was a musical melting pot into which were mixed African-American, African, Caribbean, French, Anglo, Spanish, German and many other nationalities’ influences. If that is not fusion, I don’t know what is. As to whether it’s jazz, I’m not sure it matters, and Grella appears to agree with that. As did Miles, who eschewed labels, even famously telling a journalist, “Call it what you like,” when asked for the title of the piece he had just played at the Isle of Wight Festival. The banners on several of his records pointedly said “Directions in music”, not directions in jazz.The other key factor discussed is the recording process. Grella describes Miles’s modus operandi, both live and in the studio, in which a sketch, no more, was given to the musicians, a cryptic instruction given to individuals, and then they walked out on stage and/or the tapes were set rolling. Miles and Teo Macero would then set to editing the tapes, if the music had been recorded. How that enabled them to alter the narrative is probably best heard when comparing the music on Live Evil with that on the Complete Cellar Doors recordings which formed its core material. In written terms, Grella points the curious in the direction of Paul Tingen’s Miles Beyond, which features charts showing how tapes were spliced together to form Bitches Brew.Amazingly, the book is only 117 pages long, yet it packs an awful lot in. I’ve personally read plenty of other books specifically about Miles, so some of the information imparted was familiar, yet I was also impressed that Grella was able to add to what I already knew, or helped me approach it from a different angle. Nevertheless, this is also an ideal book for someone at entry level, who knows nothing at all about Miles. Thoroughly recommended, therefore, for aficionados and beginners.

There are some outstanding books in this series, but this isn't one of them. The first half repeats all the information available in the standard biographies and Paul Tingen's wonderful "Miles Beyond", and the second half is a detailed description of what can be heard on each track, which rarely rises beyond the level of "Miles blows his trumpet" or "Jack Dejohnette plays a rhythm on the drums". The author also believes that John McLaughlin preceded Eric Clapton in the Graham Bond Organisation. think I spotted a jazzbo error too : Lee Townsend didn't replace Teo Macero in producing Kind of Blue, but Irving Townsend did, for ESP.May 2018 update: I've upgraded this to three stars, as I now feel the original mark was a bit unfair. It is, after all, an Introduction, and if that's what you want it does the job at a reasonable price. As I imply in the first review, Paul Tingen's book is the one to go for if you want the details.

Excellent book