The bop tune Stablemates, by Benny Golson, is something of a test piece for drummers. As now-Portland pianist George Colligan said, “Stablemates can be revealing for a drummer….”, and Golson himself said “It moves around […]
Category: Miles Davis
DBMITW: happy 80th to Wayne Shorter
In honor of the 80th birthday of the great saxophonist Wayne Shorter, here is one of my favorite solos of his— or of anyone else’s, ever— from Miles Davis’s Complete In A Silent Way Sessions […]
VOQOTD: Al Foster on taste
“I’m trying to play less when keeping time behind a soloist,” Foster says, “not answering every phrase with the left hand and bass drum. You want to be on it, but not on everything. I’m […]
Transcription/GOTD: Betty Davis — Nasty Gal
H/t to my brother on this one— he played me this record. This is from the title track of Betty Davis’s album Nasty Gal. Davis (*née Mabry) was married to Miles Davis in the late […]
Groove o’ the day: Al Foster – Rated X
As promised– or hinted at, rather– here is Al Foster’s hip and unusual groove from Miles Davis’s Rated X, from the record Get Up With It: As you can hear, the 1 and the 4 […]
DBMITW: Rated X
From Miles Davis’s Get Up With It: That’s the great Michael Henderson on bass. From Wikipedia: Davis saw the young Henderson performing [with Stevie Wonder] at the Copacabana in New York City in early 1970 […]
Groove o’ the day: On the Corner
Today we’ve got Jack Dejohnette’s James Brown-like groove on Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X from Miles Davis’ On The Corner: There’s an overdubbed part by Al Foster that’s more forward in the mix, so it’s a […]
DBMITW: Can YouTube do this?
See, another reason I like my turntable is that I can just reach over and hit one button and it will replay side B of The New Miles Davis Quintet for the tenth time in […]
Jazz percussion
This is a concept I’ve been kicking around for years, I think since the term first came up for me in reference to Tony Williams in the history section Jack Dejohnette/Charlie Perry book: Tony didn’t […]
Transcription: one hour with Live Evil
This morning I sat down with one of my favorite pieces of music- Sivad, from Miles Davis’ Live Evil, with Jack Dejohnette on drums- to see what I could do with it in a reasonable […]