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Miles Davis: Playing
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Miles Davis was much more than just a trumpeter. As a bandleader he was a brilliant talent scout, able to recognize potential in its formative stage and bring out the best in his sidemen.
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Davis had been releasing live records like mad, and a bunch of studio tracks had piled up, resulting in this double LP. Many of these tunes had already appeared on concert LPs ("Calypso Frelimo"), but there's some fresh stuff like "Red China Blues" (the sole product of a March 1972 session with Bernard Purdie and Cornell Dupree) and the half-hour Ellington tribute "He Loved Him Madly."
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The same year, while taking a break outside the famous Birdland nightclub in New York City, Davis was beaten by the New York police and subsequently arrested. Believing the assault to have been racially motivated (it is said he was beaten by a single policeman who was angered by Davis being with a white woman), he attempted to pursue the case in the courts, before eventually dropping the proceedings.
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It should be mentioned that Miles Davis is ... considered a great artistic painter. In 1988 he created a series of abstract paintings. He was inspired by a Milan -based design movement known as "Memphis" founded by Ettore Sottsass. Known for "hot colors" and "clashing shapes" Memphis mixed and matched a variety of historical motifs and closely resembled a "postmodernism" style. Miles found this style appealing and created a large quantity of paintings. Most of the time Miles appeared on-stage in bright colored clothing that matched his painting style.
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Davis was married three times—to dancer Frances Taylor, singer Betty Mabry, and actress Cicely Tyson. All three marriages ended in divorce. He had, in all, three sons, a daughter, and seven grandchildren. He died on September 28, 1991, in Santa Monica, California, of pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke.
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By the time of Live-Evil in December 1970, Davis' ensemble had transformed into a much more funk-oriented group. Davis began experimenting with wah-wah effects on his horn. The ensemble with Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett and Michael Henderson, often referred to as the "Cellar Door band" (the live portions of Live-Evil were recorded at a club by that name), never recorded in the studio, but is documented in the six CD Box Set The Cellar Door Sessions, which was recorded over four nights in December 1970.
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