Miles Davis Sets the Roof on Fire
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Twelve years ago, Columbia Records began an extraordinarily comprehensive and authoritative reissue series of the essential Miles Davis catalog. The releases came impressively packaged and annotated. They were ideal for either the Miles Davis obsessive, of which there are many, or even the jazz novice, since almost any random sampling from Davis’s Columbia catalog is bound to include some jazz classics.
Now, the series is going out with a bang with “The Complete On the Corner Sessions,” a six-disc set offering the full, unedited music from the sessions that created this pivotal release. It also includes material from the later ’70s-era work of the trumpet legend.
Unlike most of the other releases in Columbia’s Davis series, the sonic bursts on “The Complete On the Corner Sessions” may bewilder all but the most open-minded jazz fans. Davis released the 54-minute “On the Corner” in 1972, and it marked a shift in his artistic direction, from the gently textured jazz-rock of his seminal “Bitches Brew” (1969) and “A Tribute to Jack Johnson” (1970) to the full-frontal assault of funk that characterized the remainder of his work in that decade.
Plop on the first disc in this boxed-set and it becomes immediately clear that Davis was not intent on offering the quintessentially delicate lines and virtuosic solos that characterized his earlier and best-known work. Instead, the first seconds of the boxed-set, the unedited version of the title track, roar out of the speakers with electronic menace. A sizzling bass snorts short, infectious funk lines; fuzzy, electric guitars rain furious cascades of scratchy tension; what sounds like at least two drummers cross hatching, polyrhythmic beats, and a trumpet soars over all the wonderful music mayhem. It’s like stumbling into a small club with a party going at full throttle. The listener has a split-second to decide: Retreat or release yourself into the sonic maelstrom.
In 1972, many jazz fans retreated angrily. During the ’60s, as jazz record sales plummeted and rock and soul rose to prominence in mainstream culture, Davis had been the jazz stalwart. His quintet — with pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, drummer Tony Williams, and bassist Ron Carter — had pumped out record after record affirming their stature as one of jazz’s greatest groups, and their output sold well. Thus it was betrayal on the order of Judas when Davis began integrating rock stylings into his work on “Bitches Brew” in 1969, just as it seemed rock music was poised to push everything else from the mainstream. “On the Corner,” only his second studio recording since “Bitches Brew,” affirmed that he was not coming back to the jazz side.
The Davis band had gone through substantial changes in the months leading up to the “On the Corner” sessions. Davis had begun working with drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Cornell Dupree, and bassist Michael Henderson — all veterans of soul and funk sessions. Henderson’s heavy bottom was a stark contrast to both Carter and Dave Holland (the Davis bassists for nearly a decade), and his bass lines anchored a music that grew dense and taut.
Two drummers (Jack DeJohnette and Jabali Billy Hart) and two percussionists (Don Alias and James Mtume) are heard on the first track, as well as tabla player, Badal Roy. The solos grow terse, building heat over a short series of notes rather than extended meditations on the chord changes. While jazz purists dismissed it as pop, it resembled nothing in the mainstream at that time (only “Maggot Brain”-era Funkadelic comes close). The Davis band often played pop venues opening for the likes of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, but this music didn’t pander to any audience.
The original recording of “On the Corner” was the result of producer Teo Macero editing down several days’ worth of sessions into a single 45-minute recording The new expanded set enables listeners to hear the more organic sessions. The solos are longer without losing their tension, the rhythm section maintains its density, and the sound experiments inspired by the groundbreaking electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen are more readily apparent.
The first two-and-half discs of the new set are devoted to music from “On the Corner”; the rest is devoted to expansions of the material that appeared on Davis’s 1969 recording, “Big Fun,” and outtakes that give a glimpse into the final Davis band of the ’70s, which would record the landmark 1975 live discs, “Agharta” and “Pangea.”
The music on “The Complete On the Corner Sessions” offers a rare glimpse into one of the best working bands of the ’70s, jazz or otherwise, and helps chart a course to modern-day r&b and dance music. The rhythms in the music had a huge impact on what would become the chattering percussion of drum ‘n’ bass. The textures exerted a clear influence on what is now called “intelligent dance music” and its purveyors. And the music’s ability to create a shifting, danceable bass-line groove, along with fiery solos, inspired many a jazz band to try — and usually fail — to match the daily double scored by the Davis band in this era.
The great irony is that Davis took a six-year hiatus in 1975, and when he returned, he did make pop music, scoring smooth jazz hits with his covers of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” To some purists, this confirmed the knock against Davis’s ’70s work, but these six discs offer a strong refutation. It may not have been jazz as we know it, but the Miles Davis band of the early ’70s created great music, and the final document of the Davis reissue project presents it with fabulous detail.