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BOOKS
by Eric Fine
New Study
of Mid-’60s
Miles Comes
Up Short
Perhaps the ideal way to
read Jeremy Yudkin’s Miles
Davis: Miles Smiles And The
Invention Of Post Bop
(Indiana University Press) is
to begin at the book’s midway
point, where the author
broaches the main part of his
thesis. In the chapter “Not
Happening,” Yudkin chronicles
the years between the
breakup of the group that
recorded Davis’ landmark album Kind Of Blue and the formation of
Davis’ second quintet that “invented” post-bop.
Davis scuffled in the early 1960s: his parents died, his substance
abuse resurfaced, his first marriage ended and his recordings grew
erratic. The trumpeter’s reputation was called into question once
again. But Davis rediscovered his muse while recording Seven
Steps To Heaven (1963). Half the tracks heralded the arrival of
pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony
Williams. The addition of tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter in
1964 completed the second quintet’s lineup that, Yudkin argues,
fashioned a new style on Miles Smiles (1967).
“Davis brought together on one album ‘free’ playing and chordbased
improvisation, rhythmic innovation and timekeeping, elastic
form and rigid structure, ‘modal’ music and chord changes,”
writes Yudkin, who teaches at Boston University and Oxford. “His
vision in doing all this cannot be overstated, nor can the importance
of the extraordinary skill and musicianship of every other
member of his band.”
Miles Smiles was the group’s second of six studio recordings
released between 1965 and 1968, and Yudkin spends two chapters
explicating the album in the exhaustive manner of a classical music
score—with transcriptions, charts and more. The rest of the book
fits this painstaking analysis like a picture frame that’s too large.
Rather than further discussing the group’s legacy, Yudkin rehashes
the stages of Davis’ career leading up to this fruitful period.
He devotes chapters to Davis’ other groundbreaking albums,
notably Birth Of The Cool, Bags Groove and Kind Of Blue, and
summarizes the setbacks he overcame: heroin addiction from 1949
to 1954 that damaged his reputation; damage to his larynx in 1956
that reduced his voice to a “hoarse whisper”; the violent confrontation
with racist cops in 1959; and so on. While such details
provide historical context, all of this information is available elsewhere
and hardly reason to invest time in this particular study.
In addition, Yudkin fails to usher post-bop into the present. The
style transitioned from the vanguard to mainstream long ago. By
now post-bop has become a catchall for music that not only relies
on modal improvisation and simpler chord progressions; but also a
rhythm section given free rein to maneuver around—and even outside—the
pocket. The rubric encompasses such a broad range that
its definitions have lost much of their specificity. The book sheds no
light on this issue; its brief conclusion speaks only of the jazz-rock
era on the horizon. For this reason, the book comes up short. DB
Ordering info: iupress.indiana.edu