Miles' "On the Corner"

I get how someone could hear BB as "stilted" actually -- although I love the early electric stuff some of it does have a tense, "we're not quite sure how this is supposed to work" quality to it. Not Filles though, that record is perfect.

Anyone heard carlos garnett's solo stuff from this period?

toying with getting a proper copy of this on vinyl. I like the cover and it's this record that's always intrigued me but I've never been able to get my head around. Bit hard to find a copy that isnt' quite pricey though.

There's copies going for around £20 on ebay!

but i'm scared of eBay.

One of the things that initially I found frustrating but now realize sets the tone for the piece is the way it just drops in mid-beat from the get-go.

I find this frustrating too... I assume this is just a necessity of the production method being used?

The longer I listen to this record, the more I think it actually did kill jazz.

There was so much about OTC that was an affront to the jazz scene at the time: the funk, the artwork, the lack of harmonic changes, and repetitiveness, etc. But a lot of that was already going on with other artists and earlier Miles records (to say nothing of modal jazz in the 50s).

I think the biggest offense here was the implication that Miles somehow "wasn't in control" -- in particular, that it was manipulated afterward (and, not insignificantly, by a white man). I don't think you can overestimate how offensive this was to jazz true believers then and now.

I think today we tend to forget what jazz represented in the late-sixties and early-seventies: the extension and expression of a musical language in a live setting, the transmogrification of songs largely written by white men into an idyllic and often very human coalescing of a musical unit.

The lack of melody suggested (certainly to white writers) that perhaps black men had less to say musically when they wrote on their own. Even worse, the post-production suggested to jazz musicians dependence and some sort of weakness (as well as probably a lack of masculinity).

I could probably say all of this more crisply if I gave it some more thought. But basically, this was a pretty radical record.

I think the biggest offense here was the implication that Miles somehow "wasn't in control" -- in particular, that it was manipulated afterward (and, not insignificantly, by a white man). I don't think you can overestimate how offensive this was to jazz true believers then and now. ]

this wasn't the first miles record that was compiled and stitched together from various sessions though? iirc bitches brew and the rest of his electric albums were similarly put together?

think today we tend to forget what jazz represented in the late-sixties and early-seventies: the extension and expression of a musical language in a live setting, the transmogrification of songs largely written by white men into an idyllic and often very human coalescing of a musical unit.

The lack of melody suggested (certainly to white writers) that perhaps black men had less to say musically when they wrote on their own.

and there were TONS of black jazz musicians writing their own music since as long as jazz music has been around - what makes you think this was largely a white composers/black musicians genre?

I don't get how a record next to nobody paid attention to could kill a genre. At any rate, while OTC is pretty unique sounding, it was not a total break from other trends in jazz at the time, and jazz didn't really die until the 80s, by which point the genre had diversified so widely there were no longer any identifiable signifiers that were uniquely "jazz".

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny

*rimshot*

*followed by incessant cymbal tapping*

to expand a little, I'm equating genre "death" to when a genre has passed through the following stages:
1) birth/initial codification. For jazz, this more or less centered around three things: jazz was played on acoustic instruments by ensembles, it incorporated specific room for improvisation into the arrangements, and it had to swing. (You can play this game w other genres too: rap initially centered around funk rhythms, some combination of drum machines/samples/DJing, and rapping, etc.)
2) refinement. every corner of the pre-established elements is explored and expanded upon (big bands, hard bop, modal, etc.)
3) expansion. jazz musicians start to jettison certain elements or swap them out for elements of other genres (swing rhythms abandoned in favor of funk or bossa nova or no rhythm at all, electrification/amplification, all improvisation and no prepared arrangements etc.
4) death. the genre has now expanded to incorporate so many different elements it no longer has anything that can be uniquely pointed to as jazz; the initial elements that defined the genre are either retreated to as a conservative reflex or are abandoned altogether. Often only one lone element will remain (saxophone solos, or in rap's case, the rapped verse) but it's been appropriated and pasted onto other genres as a signifier and not much more.

where does OTC fall in this schema? Somewhere in stage 3, but it was part of many of the other currents already flowing through the genre - electrification/amplification, funk rhythms, afrocentric imagery, really long extended improvisational pieces etc. The editing thing is an interesting point; I'm not sure who else was doing it (Sun Ra I suppose) or how much the audience was even aware that that was what they were hearing. I feel like Macero's role was not really widely known until a lot later...?

iirc, there was a lot of editing on The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and the master take of "Brilliant Corners" was assembled from multiple takes.

Monk's Columbia albums (also produced by Macero) were pretty heavily edited too, though it mostly consisted of cutting out bass solos and the like.

haha wow I had no idea about the Reggie Lucas-Madonna connection wtf

Dog Latin, you can get this new on vinyl from Amazon for £14.50 from 3rd party sellers

The lack of melody suggested (certainly to white writers) that perhaps black men had less to say musically when they wrote on their own. Even worse, the post-production suggested to jazz musicians dependence and some sort of weakness (as well as probably a lack of masculinity).

this makes no sense in the context of, like, miles' own career, let alone jazz

duke ellington, count basie, billy eckstine, thelonious monk, charles mingus yeah those black jazz guys couldn't write a melody

thanks IAUYW!

just remembered there's a bunch of weird edits/sound effects stuff on Rahsaan Roland Kirk's early 70s work too

xxp

purchased! along with a long overdue copy of the shape of jazz to come

yea Naive Teen Idol i don't want to be a dick but i think you are on some bullshit

cosign

this wasn't the first miles record that was compiled and stitched together from various sessions though? iirc bitches brew and the rest of his electric albums were similarly put together?

I think the difference between On the Corner and In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew or A Tribute to Jack Johnson or Black Saint and the Sinner Lady or Brilliant Corners is that all the latter are edited together in a way that sounds fairly organic, like plausible jazz performance even when Jack Johnson is doing things that would be impossible to do in a live setting like throwing an ambient loop under Miles trumpet (at least given suspension of disbelief), whereas On the Corner is the first to fully throw its artificiality in your face. It doesn't in any way sound like a live jazz performance and I think that's where a lot of the resistance to it came even in spite of some predecessors sharing other radical elements with it.

I don't know if the comparison's often made but My Life In The Bush Ofor Ghosts is taking this exact idea and running with it, but that was a lot later.

And aumgn beat it to the punch by a bit

What Rev said. Chambers dedicates pages to how offensive it was that "In a Silent Way/It's About That Time" begins and ends WITH THE VERY SAME RECORDING. I doubt he'd have even noticed much less criticized it had Miles not recorded OTC and subsequent records a few years later.

I don't get how a record next to nobody paid attention to could kill a genre.

Jazz musicians and critics didn't ignore it. They actively hated it and wondered why someone of Miles' caliber would record it. Witness the lead from this piece:

Within weeks of its release in 1972, Miles Davis's On the Corner had become the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz. "Repetitious crap," wrote one critic. "An insult to the intellect of the people," remarked another. Even the musicians who played on the album were bewildered

When I first discovered this stuff in the 90s, I poured through Downbeats and countless blindfold tests to learn more about it and I honestly don't remember a single positive comment from anyone. The record was toxic.

I think the question you have to ask is:

Why? Why was this record so reviled by the industry (and many of the people who played on it even)?

And I think to begin to understand that you have to remember what jazz *was* by 1972. It was an increasingly intellectual exercise. It was an extremely sophisticated cultural expression. It was an exclusive language that very few people understood. And ... its audience was small and largely comprised of white people, many of whom harbored, shall we say, somewhat complicated ideas about civil rights.

All of these things were the things that Miles Davis HATED about jazz by 1972. Essentially, he hated his audience – and resented what they perceived he was doing up on stage night after night.

So it's not just that the jazz community didn't "understand" OTC. It's also that it represented everything about music that jazz wasn't: simplistic, brutal and for blacks only. It came from one of the foremost practitioners of the genre, who was openly hostile to these self-appointed "guardians" of the music, many of whom were in his own band. And even if the music he was recording didn't ultimately pave the way a new direction for jazz, it made damn clear that there was nowhere else to go.

It killed jazz.

I think the question you have to ask is:

Why? Why was this record so reviled by the industry (and many of the people who played on it even)?

I don't know why I should even care about this, frankly

and again - "killed jazz" in what way? Jazz remained commercially viable and aesthetically distinct for roughly another decade. OTC sold dismally, but subsequent jazz funk releases sold hugely (Herbie Hancock springs to mind).

Re: what rev said- I don't know if the comparison's often made but My Life In The Bush of Ghosts is taking this exact idea and running with it, but that was a lot later.

Dah stupid phone. Sorry for the duplicate post

I think the comparison is even made in the liner notes to the reissue of MLITBOG, isn't it?

Possibly. I just made a play list with cuts from both and they sit well together.

Ok second time around I think I see what NTA is getting at a little more -- jazz was certainly fraught with political and historical meaning for people and records like OTC clashed with what jazz meant to a lot of critics, fans and even musicians, for better or worse. Sort of comparable to the way that Dylan going electric clashed with an entire philosophy about music's relationship to its audience, it wasn't just "oh I'm grumpy and I don't like that harsh sound." Those records clashed with the idea of jazz as intellectual and respectable, and that was important to a lot of people, not least because it had been and still was a struggle to convince people that black people could even make intellectual or respectable music. And I don't mean "respectable" in some kind of caricatured, "I'm playing Autumn Leaves in a tuxedo" kind of way, I mean actually worthy of respect as a serious creative endeavor. You can't quite call the reaction "conservative" because conservatives of the time mostly wouldn't even have taken jazz seriously, but it was conservative relative to the burgeoning psychedelic/hippie/spiritualist culture that was spilling over into fusion records.

It "killed" jazz in the sense that seeing possibly the top figure in jazz deliberately turn his back on what "jazz" meant to them, at a time when jazz was already struggling commercially (yeah shakey actually it was) and slipping in cultural importance weakened people's belief in jazz as a still-viable idea. I think now we can kind of get past all that, especially in an era where you can so easily listen to everything from every era and free it from all that critical baggage, and this makes it hard to remember that jazz used to signify more than just another interesting kind of music to listen to for a lot of its listeners.

'albums that killed genres' would be an interesting and highly fraught thread. is there an album that 'killed' rock?

K1d 4?

I was going to suggest 'Funeral' for some reason. That whole 'who the fuck are Arcade Fire' thing on Twitter a few years ago certainly rammed home the idea that today's youth generation isn't necessarily interested in rock music as an exciting force for change.

but insofar as musicality and genre picketlining, Kid A's probably a better suggestion.

picket-fencing, not picket-lining

Tho I had forgotten about it until you mention it, apparently this is a thing for me:

Loveless: The Death Knell of Rock?

I even mention Miles in the 70s!

I think there were some significant rock records after Loveless. Although perhaps not many.

But yeah, I can buy the idea that OTC killed jazz figuratively.

Significantly, many of the practitioners of the New Music, who themselves were accused of "killing" "jazz" in the 60s, weren't fans of Miles' electric work.

So let's say jazz as a sep genre (racial codes for retailers and DJs only somewhat aside) began to sheer away from, or find its own place in the pop convergence, the biz maw, with the arrival of bop as a movement. Which was also, with the arrival of WWII's draft, the temp restriction on recording (v-discs aside) and the Musician Union strike, the end of the big band heyday, thus back to small band swing, with Benny Goodman and Charlie Christian jamming hot, fast concise and complex, on the radio even, but not nec; for dancers and frat boys at all. Back from war, maybe some study via the GI Bill, third stream and Birth of the Cool, rise of the educated suburbanites grooving to Take Five, yadda yadda, free jazz upsets the apple cart, then becomes, for fans and those who actually prefer to read or write about it, another niche, another tag, as and as for more of that refined suburban appeal, the Quintet's audience wasn't buying the records or coming to the shows anymore.
So Miles brings jazz back into the pop convergence---not like Bud Shank having a hit with "Michelle" and then sneering at the Beatles, nor like younger jazz musicians, like Gary Burton and Larry Coryell, who grew up listening to and absorbing rock, country etc,--but by being what he is, an older guy who has also listened to and is still absorbing the post-War developments, who gets the pan-genre appetites of the beast they called Rock (absorbing rock 'n'roll, rhythm & blues, other previous hybrids and niches), the post-Woodstock mass bohemian munchies, not just of kids, but of somewhat older people with more educated jaded, maybe middle-aged crazy tastes (bored-ass music junkies in their late 30s and early 40s, like himself, for instance, and remember a lot of the ringleaders of the 60s were not actually kids).
He uses jazz, as previously known as one more element of a syncretic approach--coming from the other side of, say, Music From Big Pink, or Astral Weeks, or Sgt. Pepper's---but also, as he says in his autobio, he was cruising to tapes of Stockhausen and James Brown, speculating about *that* kind of convergence...
Anyway, I've started listening to the OTC box on Spotify, and right off, the uncut master of the title track, 23 minutes and change, is very beautiful, very lyrical, in the conversational cadence of several voices---as with the arrival of Ornette, the controversy seems silly now---except that Miles's melodic electricity does move through a non-programmatic context, it finds/becomes its own context in the context which might be no context 'til he and his crew showed up (also pre-empting dorko bop-prog "fusion" and elevator filigree floatation, as would soon follow).
Speaking of context, this box also includes "He Loved Him Madly" and others I really don't (and prob won't care to) associate with the OTC moment (a reason for the title: it was something on a corner, a transitional moment in the expedition)

Good summary, and just a note about this:

free jazz upsets the apple cart, then becomes, for fans and those who actually prefer to read or write about it, another niche, another tag,

At the time, the new music was accepted -- often grudgingly, but accepted nevertheless -- by the critical establishment as the next significant development after Parker, Gillespie et al. The tone of some Down Beat pieces from the time is, "Yeah, I know this is the new movement in the music, but that doesn't mean I have to like it!" not "This is NOT the new movement in the music!"

<3 u dow, great post

Thanks, guys. Also, using jazz elements in this syncretic approach was not only a trans-genre experiment,it was also a *jazz* move, the kind that keeps becoming and is always necessary, in terms of shaking it up and finding new ways to express, to breathe.