Miles Davis Radio Project; 4; Miles Davis, The 60s Are Electric : 1959-1969

Hi, I'm Danny Glover, and this is the Miles Davis Radio Project. Miles Davis, the 60s are electric, 1959 through 1969. Yes, sir, the first time you're wearing miles in person for a while, Miles Davis back on the scene here with fine set of chops. What about a nice beautiful ballot like all the things? I think one of the things that determines musical changes when certain musicians themselves cannot stand to hear any more what they've been doing.

Miles gets bored real fast. Miles hates to do the same thing twice. That's the key right there. Never wanting to repeat anything is the key to ever-prething forward. Miles' whole existence is on growth. If you stay the same and you're born to death, you change, you're scared to death. So of the two, what you're going to take, you're then either way at a certain point you've had it. So you've got to go for the duty, the duty is to the art. Miles figured a game out.

He said, I'm going to be his rawest childhood bird park, but I'm going to dress so great that they've got to bring me in. I'm going to capture the essence of the times, you know, and excuse my language and all of y'all can kiss my ass. And he did it and everybody went for it. And then when the white kids in the 60s told their own system, y'all can kiss my ass too, Miles is right on time. I don't want to never map anything out. I can't map anything because I'm always changing it, you know. And Jim and I, sister used to say I was a true Jim and I, you never know what I was going to do. But it's just because I can't remember things, you know, like I can't remember things that I play in Marguisee. Remember when you played this, you remember all of it, I can't. When I hear it, I said, oh, you know, it's like I'm another person.

The end of the 1950s found Miles Davis at the height of his powers and popularity, especially after the album Condo Blue. Miles's sextet was considered one of the greatest jazz groups of all time. But for Miles Davis, things never stayed the same for long. In August of 1959, on a muggy summer evening, Miles was standing outside the Birdland Club in New York. He had just finished playing a special armed forces day broadcast for the Voice of America. Miles had escorted a white woman friend to a cab when he was confronted by a white policeman. Drummer Jimmy Cobb, who was working with Miles that night, recalls the incident. Just a rookie policeman came up and Miles just said, I'm just smoking a cigarette.

So the guy says, something like, you know, getting inside you can't stay here, you can't stay. You know, I mean, really bogus. So Miles said, oh, hey man, I worked downstairs and I'm just smoking a cigarette here. I'm not doing anything. There's my picture on the sign, so it's a picture. You guys say, I don't care, you can't stay here. So Miles said, when I'm not going to move, then the guy started to get physical. He went to hit him. We're just taking Miles's grabbing, you know, stopping from being in with his tick. So while it's tussling, it's just, just, uh, playing a close detector came up behind him and started hitting him in the head with, with the blackjack. We saw the cops beating him, hitting him in the head with these sticks. Dancer Jerry Gray was a close friend of Miles and his wife, Francis. He was trying to fight back, you know, and, uh, they had to walk him. And I mean, that cannonball and, oh, everybody was falling down to the police station. And he was bloody.

Right and Nat Hintoff. And the guy really beat him bloody. And that became considerable incident. I remember it was in the front page of the New York Post and things like that. And sure, I can see where that would radiate because here is this, by then, very famous musician. And it didn't matter. He was black and he got hit in the head. Photographs of Miles leaving jail the following morning, still covered in blood, were widely published. They drove home the point that while part of America might be ready to embrace black cultural heroes like Miles Davis, the country could still be a brutal and racist place. Miles Davis. Well, you know, I always have a little battle building thing for racism, and I can smell it, you know. I can feel it behind me on the side of me, you know, like you pull up and you call it respect to me, you know, of course I always ask girlfriends about it.

I said, what is it, I mean, do I spend somebody, or something, what is it about me? She said, have you ever seen the way you dress, the way you act? I said, hold on to that. I tell my mother f**kers really get mad at us, man. Writer in poet is Schmel Reed. You know, we are very interested in that. We read about that in Buffalo, Miles being beaten by some cop out of Saturday nightclub, and we saw the blonde earth. We all knew what happened, I mean, it's obvious, but it went down because the police allowed to be the judge, Jerry, and executioner. In my experience, I mean, district attorneys don't dispute their word, the judges usually go along with them, so they feel they can go out and have open season on black season because they desire. As a result of the attack, Miles came to symbolize the contradictions in American society,

and for many, Miles became a model because of his stature as a musician, his flamboyance as a public figure, and his defined attitude. Poet Quincy True. I think that the whole image of a strong black man coming out like he was and then playing at that very tender sound and that gruff out with appearance, you know, the detached stand back a little, only added to the appeal because the persona was glacial, you know, slick, glacial, and the sound was human, probing, sensitive, haunting, introspective. It was like his sound and all that was like, here I am, this person, this inside of me, and then that glacial front was intriguing. The police beating incident in New York had more than symbolic repercussions.

It took a toll on Miles' band too. While awaiting trial, Miles' cabaret card was briefly suspended and he couldn't work. In the interim, saxophoneist Cannonball Adely left Miles' group to form his own. The quote, greatest group in jazz, was beginning to come apart. Miles looking to take stock of this situation went back into the studio with Gill Evans. This time, recording the now classic, Sketches of Spain. You know, you really should, with your sound and the sound of flamenco, I think it would be fantastic, marriage.

And there was a group called Roberto Inglaceus that came to the city of flamenco dancers, and I said, why don't you just, why don't we take it and just go see that, and you know what I'm talking about, no, no, no, but he finally agreed. We left the theater and we went immediately to the Colony Records door, which is right on Broadway. And he bought every flamenco record you can think of. And the next day, he called Gill Evans. That's how Sketches of Spain came about. As they had done with Porgy and Bess, Miles and Gill Evans brought an entirely new conception of what could be done with the jazz ensemble. A piece by this Spanish composer, Rodrigo, was an even more unlikely candidate for adaptation. This is the original version of Concerto Dioran West, written in 1939.

Taking an orchestral piece for acoustic guitar, rich with strings and writing arrangements for trumpet, with brass and winds, and no strings at all was a bold move. Third outtakes of the Sketches of Spain Sessions.

This session was complicated both musically and technically. Although an important artist to Columbia Records, Miles was still given very limited studio time. After an initial recording, many short segments were formed over in pieces and then edited into the master. Again, critic Nat Hintoff.

What I remember most about that particular session was how painstaking Gill was. I mean, he really could hear everything, and he didn't like anything he heard for a long time. And Gill was in his deceptively quiet, gentle way, was a commanding presence. They did take after take after take, and it was amazing to me that nonetheless, Gill and Miles together could keep the tension up or could bring back the tension even after three, four. It exhausted Miles. I mean, he was really knocked out at the end, he didn't want to even talk about it or think about it or anything else. Miles Davis in conversation with his biographer, Quincy Troop. What did you feel when you got through that out?

What was your feeling? I didn't want to hear that shit. We knew what I heard. I didn't listen to it when I came out of America. That's some deep shit. That's some secret shit, see. That's good. There's nobody who knows that. You didn't listen to it until you heard it. Such as the Spain proved to be another great success, it demonstrated again Miles' uncanny ability to be innovative and to strike a popular chord at the same time. It was time to turn his attention to the band again, now just to quintet. Miles returns a find that the great saxophoneist John Coltrane also wanted to leave to form his own group. It was only after pleading with him that Miles persuaded Trane to make one final European tour with the band before he left.

This is that band recorded live in Stockholm, 1960. Miles Davis recorded here in a rare public speaking appearance at the studio Museum of Harlem. When he went to Paris, a girl from the mindset, Miles this company wants to give you a horn, you know, I don't need a horn, I got a horn, I'll just go and say something to him. So I went and I saw a soprano saxophone, and I said give me a soprano saxophone, so I

gave it to Trane. I gave it to Trane, I said here. He never put that horn down, he plays in the bus and the airport, he played a saxophone and also he bananas, you know, I said why you eat bananas? He said he ate them and he's drawing them up. In the years to come, Coltrane would take that soprano sax and work wonders with it. Here's the late saxophone as John Coltrane in an interview recorded during that 1960 European tour. How would you say working with Miles Davis has influenced you stylistically?

Well, I've been free, I've been so free here, I almost anything I want to try, I'm welcome to do it, you know, so the freedom has helped me to explain it. I heard you were explaining it to Miles Quintette here and I'm trying something on your horn. Yes, I am. How is that? With whom? I have several men in mind but I haven't selected Simon yet, you know, I'm going to try to work with him. Would you feel like working with A Quintette? Yeah, to begin with and maybe in several weeks after I started, I made out a fifth man. Trane's departure from the band left a void that was hard to feel. Miles' next recording, someday my prince will come, was the last album Coltrane would do with him. The album broke new ground by teaching the black woman on the cover.

It was Miles' wife, Branson. He was tired of having white ladies on the cover. He said, I want my wife on this cover and so it was called someday my prince will come. Miles was out of town when the photo session took place but yet he was there because he was calling every two minutes, now do it this way, don't do it this way, don't smile, don't do it that way. No, he was, as he said, very tired of having white ladies on the cover so that's why it came about. In the following years, Miles' personal life was in turmoil. In 1962, Miles' father died, followed by his mother in early 1964. Miles also began to experience severe physical pain from an arthritic hip which eventually

had to be replaced. Miles began to use much more cocaine than he ever had before. Look abuse has always plagued Miles Davis, they'd make a different person in your eyes. Everything looked like it was alive, you could make it alive in your ear. I think this reason when I sketch all those faces on one body, I just don't have to go to a move, I just see, I got it right here. That's all I mean, it was a gym and I used coke, you got two more, used two more, you know. They get two. My time they get two, you ready to say f*** it. In his music, Miles was still searching for a new sound.

The new band consisted of Miles, George Coleman on tenor, Ron Carter bass, Herbie Hancock on piano and a 17 year old drummer whose fresh approach and intense drive laid the foundation for what would be Miles' next great period. That drummer, Tony Williams. Um, . . . . .

Drummer Tony Williams. I knew that Miles liked people who took charge of their instruments. It was just that we were great. It was a great rhythm section. We were happening guys. You know, there's a telepathy when you play with people. That's what I'm talking about. And it comes from a lot of knowledge and a lot of intuitive ability and a desire to play with people. That phrase for me is very important playing it with people. If you want to do that, those things happen. That kind of playing is very special. . Miles Davis. If you can set a person down, music is down. And you can explain to them.

This, you play. Don't play out of this. These are the notes. This is the rhythm section. You play these notes. This is a chord you can play as you want to play. This for one beat. You know, every time you play it, it sounds different. I did it for Tony. Tony Williams. It's such a great term. I just wrote one pattern. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. If you play it, it played different. You have to get a musician like that. You know, you have to see it in him in order to give it to him. Tony Williams. There's an interplay within a group. And that's what's always been something for me that's been very important. It's like a group feeling, the feeling of a group of people playing together. Like a family.

You know, when you talk to somebody, if you don't listen also, then there's no interaction. An interaction is what I'm talking about. An interaction is rhythm. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Chopper players have more affinity, more respect, more regard and everything for drummers. I'm an art tailor. I come with decades has to do with the recursive aspect of the instrument, because you can take a drum and say, crack. And hit the rimshot and you can take a chopper with it. You can't do that in any other instrument. You know, a drummer is the driver, Brazilian percussionist, Ayerto Morriera. A drummer is the pilot, and you just go, you know, now you turn bright, and the guy goes

batch to boom, and he turns right, and he's got to be a total communication. Maybe that's why Miles sometimes feels like he's totally hooked up with the drummer. As Tony Williams was providing a new fire and inspiration for Miles, the band and the music are now quickly. In 1964, Miles finally settled on a tenor player, four years after Coltrie's departure. He hired Wayne Shorter, and his second great quintet was complete.

He called me, he said, Miles is in California, you know, and he said, why don't you give him a call? Saxophone is then composer, Wayne Shorter. That's all. I gave him a call, he was at the Chateau, my mom, and he said, you got eyes, join the band. I said, yeah, I got eyes. He said, well, come on. And he sent me a first-class ticket, and he said, you got a tuxedo? And I said, no. And he said, why don't you get one, mate? He told me to play Victor's, down the street from where he lived. I went down to Victor's, got a tuxedo made, and I got my ticket. I flew to California, and then we opened up at the Hollywood Bowl. No rehearsal, we all met in the dressing room, Miles was sharp, you know. And he said to me one thing, he said, he asked me.

You know, you know my music. And I said, yeah, he said, oh, oh. And then we did it. And we played the whole night, and then, later on that night, Miles called, he said, we're going to record. And he knew, it was time to record. The band recorded five albums in four years. Many of them were made up mostly of Wayne shortest compositions.

And every time I brought a piece of music, he would look at it. And he would say, this is complete. Like a Nefertiti. He said, he's a Nefertiti. The way it's written, the melody is a solo too. But he didn't have to say that. We just kept recording, playing the melody over and over again. And he said, there's no more to say. Tony Williams. When we'd go to the recording studio to record something, Miles would give little enigmatic hints as to what he wanted. You know, very cryptic kind of hints. And you had to decipher things, you know, because he didn't want to over-explain things, or to explain things to the point where it becomes crystallizing your head. And you do only that. He wants to give impressions so that you have a wider range of discerning what he wants. You know, the direction of the band came from the musicians themselves.

Wayne shorter. Well, you know, the story actually was the truth about when Herbie stopped using his left hand on the piano, stopped using playing chords to accompany his solo right hand. He felt that he couldn't think of anything to do with the chords in a standard way. You know, then Miles said, well, if you can't think of anything to do, don't do nothing. Don't do nothing. Miles was standing behind him and Miles would put his hands on top of Herbie's hands and lift them off. You know, just lift them off and then Herbie waited. And before the night was over, Herbie would put his right hand on the piano and start doing something. And Miles didn't touch him, you know. This has always been a part of Miles Davis's magic.

His uncanny ability to let musicians develop their own ideas and steal forward the group. Drummer. This is really white. This is Miles album and this is Gingerbread Boy, CBS Records. One thing you got to notice here is that, like, it's a quintet with Miles, Wayne shorter, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams. The piano will not be playing chords behind the solos. And it's basically a blues, but like, you know, they're really stretching all parameters here. And see, you can have this happen when you have somebody that has the knowledge of a Ron Carter and Tony Williams because, like, they act so well tandemly to create this great rhythmic and harmonic force behind Miles. There's nobody playing chords. Herbie Hancock has no playing chords here.

But listen to how the space happens between Miles and what Ron Carter's playing. And, like, how Tony creates this great tension, you know. See how Tony falls in there? They're like, they're like playing, there's a conversation that's happening between Tony and Miles here. It's great, it's great. And see, Ron is playing straight through that. Like, he's keeping, what you call Ron Carter, checkpoint Charlie, because you always know where the beat's supposed to be. If you ever get lost, Ron will always tell you where it's supposed to be. Now, see how these guys harmonic changes? It's so great.

See, Miles says of something, Tony answers it. It's this constant dialogue that's happening. I see how the odds I was saying before. You notice how, like, with a trumpet, the notes are pointed and it's like on top of the beat. And, like, that's why this thing happens with the drums and your trumpet. It's amazing. It's amazing. Even with all the new work being done in the studio, when this band performed live, they played material almost exclusively from Miles' 50s and early 60s songbook. But, the tunes are reworked completely. Keep Borders composer and producer George Duke. I mean, even the tunes that he was playing, like, kind of blue and stuff like that. Well, three, two, three years later, if you went to hear him play kind of blue,

you might not even recognize it. He might play the first three bars of the tune and it was over. You know, or he'd play it three times as fast. All of this, you know. All that kind of stuff. I mean, what you on the record was... I mean, when I went to hear him in concert, it was like... I mean, it was like, good God, how could anybody play that fast? I mean, I was sitting up watching this band. I mean, I don't think I've ever heard a band like that since then. I mean, they just seem like they don't have bands like that anymore. I mean, I just need to say that.

I mean, I don't have bands like that anymore. I mean, I mean, I don't have bands like that anymore. I mean, I don't have bands like that anymore. You used to tell me about how that band used to change a bunch of all your bands when I don't think they were that, but Wayne Sharer, Tony Williams, Van, and they play a tune at the end of the year, you'll be different. Yeah.

The reason it's different is to play in front of so many people that it changes, you know, and the best response is all in your sub-conscious mind. That white group of people received at the best at this tempo, that's when it changes, you know. I've used to rejuvenate itself if you keep playing it, you know, good musicians, keep goose and it's making it better and better. Despite the great achievement of building yet another classic band, Miles' personal

hard times continue. He had slipped further into alcoholism and developed an even more serious cocaine habit. And after marriage marred by Miles' physical and emotional abuse of his wife, Francis Davis left in 1965. It's like, it's a funny, like, when I left Miles running for my life, it's right around the corner and got my child out of a private school and got on a plane and went to Chicago. And my son is saying, I mean, we usually get dressed up and we're going somewhere. You'll understand later. But the point is, when I reached Chicago, I mean, Miles was on the phone at all hours of the morning night calling, waking my parents, talking to me, saying that if I don't come back, he'll commit suicide.

I was killing myself. I used to get drunk so much upon alcohol in the daytime, waiting on the place to open. I would have, like, bloody marres all day, and night I would drink scotch and milk. I got so at 12 o'clock, I would throw up. My band used to look at their wives. I'd like to talk about survival. Redbird a flag. He has probably been his own worst enemy in some ways. No matter what has come his way, his own personal problems, his own creative doldrums, his own inability to get out of bed or to go to sleep, you know, all of that. He has managed to be still be a person who can play. You always know it's Miles, no matter what else is going on, you know, under him or around

him. Saxophone is Gary Barts. He's still playing basically the same. You know, he's not changing too much. You know, maybe his sound is getting better or his range is higher or bigger or, you know, maybe subtle things change, but he's basically staying the same. Just what's around him that's changing. Miles Davis's world was changing, not least the world of music, which was rapidly changing all around him. While Miles had been extending ideas from the 50s, others had dropped them all together. Composers like Sunraw, Cecil Taylor and Arne Coleman had flat out rejected playing any stand is at all. They realized that they could control the music at least in an artistic sense, if not

a business sense. In the way, their defiance picked up where Miles had left off, and it was now they and not Miles who were regarded as role models for the many involved in the movement defining the new black identity. Many of the bebop pioneers of Miles' generation found themselves alienated from the wildness of the new music and rejected it entirely. Miles being by nature curious could not do that, but he could not fully embrace it either. Keith Jarrett. Miles always used to come to hear my trio before, oh, whenever he could, he used to come to hear whatever trio I had, and even in Paris in this five tables down in the basement

club, he brought his band down and, you know, they were the only audience we had. He would say, how do you start from nothing and play? How do you just play? And he meant personally, how did I do that because that's what I was doing with sometimes with the trio, we would just sit down and then we'd start to play with no framework whatsoever and no tempo and no anything, just start to play. I think he didn't understand it, you know, I mean, he might not just, he might just not have understood how to do that. He liked to play with us when we did that, but he didn't know how to do it. In 1968, Dave Hollum replaced Ron Carter on bass in Miles' band. A little later, Jack Dijonette replaced Tony Williams on drums, and Chick Carrera replaced Herbie Hancock on piano, the new players were all gravitating toward free jazz.

Once we all had bamboo flutes, you know, and at one point, then we all just started playing these flutes. Basis, Dave Hollum, or at another point, like, Chick would play some drums and Jack would play some bass, and I'd play some piano, you know, I mean, we got into some really different things, you know, if you understand the psychology of the time, you know, you don't understand too because it was like that kind of thing of freedom, you know, just saying, hey, you know, let's just do it, you know, whatever we feel like doing. And Miles never stopped us, you know, he let us go, you know, he wanted to see what we had to do. And I mean, he would always be listening, you know, he'd leave the stand, but I'd look over to the side and he'd be sitting there or standing there listening hard and checking it out. But I don't know if you listen to some of the live recordings, you know, you hear that

like on Miles' solo, the stuff is kept within the structure, and then as soon as the rhythm section solos, or as soon as the saxophone play solos, stuff goes into some other stuff, you know. And that was typical. We'd hold the form very, very carefully for Miles, but then after that it was like whatever we wanted to do. At the same time, jazz itself was being eclipsed by rock music. Miles had always been drawn to jazz because it represented the cutting edge and all that

was cool. But now the youth movement was defining a new hipness. Jazz seemed to Miles less and less central to either the hip scene or the mainstream. I think he likes being a hero, you know. He probably sees himself as a hero when he's alone. I know he's self-critical beyond what a lot of people would imagine. And yet I think he's attracted to that hero position so much. I mean I can speak for a certain process pretty personally when your audience gets bigger and bigger and broader and broader. Can you deal with it becoming less big and less broad?

And that's probably something Miles would not want to deal with. Deep Holland. I think one thing he wanted was not to become a museum piece, you know, and not to just be recreating the past victories, you know, that he's had. He wanted to reach the young people. He wanted to incorporate some of the new music in black art and, you know, James Brown's approaches and things like that and saw that as a valid part of the black culture too that he wanted to be a part of. Wayne Shorter. It's a life process here. It was not a musical, you know. Miles was listening to a lot of at his house. He's listening a lot of James Brown. That's when James Brown was at the Apollo Theater. And he's listening to a lot of things where the beat is not scattered, all of the drums, you know. Where the bass playing would stay in a certain place and then move on to another place and stay awhile.

You know I feel alright. You know I feel alright, children. I feel alright. James Brown, what you talk about, James Brown with it, you like James Brown a lot. Everybody likes James, but they don't know you like James Brown. You know that number I call so what? Yeah. I think I got that from him or he got it from me or the other one. But I think I got it from him, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, I love James Brown.

The end of melody was in the instruments, now it's in the bass and drums. Like there she runs and thinks, like Slides to use, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, Slides to use that a lot when he would write, when he played a blues. It's like a sanctified church. A sanctified church? That's right. Not the baptist, a sanctified church. I love it, you're mad. In the late 60s, jazz was playing to a shrinking audience. Miles wanted a new audience and new fame. His answer was electricity. He was tuned in to rock music and like this energy.

He began to experiment with electric instruments and new personnel. Once again, it was the beginning of a new period for Miles. In 1969, Miles recorded the haunting electric album in a silent way. He had a good one. I would say that, in a silent way, was the first real fusion record, and from that,

man, all those other bands came, and like, you had a new movement. Well, there wasn't much fuss about it, all we, you know, we got the pieces, there was no, again, not, hardly any rehearsal, you know, we just went in and made a couple of takes of things, and it was over really before, before you knew what was happening. Deep Holland. And this was one of the things that kind of earmarked Miles' sessions for me was that there was never any kind of a fuss made, you know, or a big panic intensity or anything like that. It was just, you know, well, he had the taste rolling, we do it, boom, it's over, you know, and that would make we do one other take, or maybe two, not a whole lot of takes usually. And it was a very relaxed thing, half the time it was hardly clear whether you're recording or if you just rehearsing or what was going on.

Anytime we played anybody else's music, you know, Miles had always put his own impression on it. And this would go for Wayne's tunes and Joe's songs, and more often than not, he would simplify it. Like, there might be a whole lot of changes or a whole lot of stuff, and he'd say, no, let's just like play with one section that he liked and just have you play that over, you know, so usually he would really put his own mark on it. I wrote this whole thing in one minute, it was home in Vienna, looked out and it was snowing, and I wrote the melody down on a piece of napkin, man. And it was beautiful, the whole piece, composer and keyboardist, Joe's I went home. He arranged it by leaving all the things, that's the only thing, the tune is much longer. And he only used a bar, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's the odd chorus.

But there are certain statements to lead up to that which are very important and therefore I didn't like it, you know. But it's okay, because it was the sound of it, the McLachlan playing the melody. See, Mars knows how to set a stage, you know? That's what was the most important thing, he really knew how to set it up. The 70s would see Mars going deeper into electricity, deeper into the popular culture and rock and roll, alienating, traditionalists, sometimes losing his audience, sometimes gaining a new one, improvising, inventing his music, inventing his life, George Duke. He wants to be on that cutting edge, he always has been on that cutting edge.

So for him to experiment with the Spanish kind of thing, with the orchestras, to go, you know, with Gill Evans and all of that stage, to try different arenas, to do show songs, you know, all of a sudden make them hits, my funny valentine, all those kind of things. I mean, he was constantly moving to other areas that a lot of artists wouldn't touch. You could see him growing. And to some people, he grew to the point where he outgrew a lot of people. I mean, musically, he was so far to the left that I know a lot of people just, they just didn't understand it all. You know, by the time he got the bitches groove, for example, I mean, he left a lot of people behind. You know, I mean, even some musicians were like, man, he is really going out there, you know. But I respect an artist's right to be able to change, especially somebody like him. You know he's not going to play the same music he played in 1963. It's not going to happen, and you shouldn't expect it of him. Miles Davis, the 60s Our Electric, was written and produced by

Steve Roland, Quincy Troop, Larry Abrams, and Jay Allison, historical and musical consultant, Lewis Porter, editing and production support by Joe Waters, Amy Staples, Chris Engles, David LaValle, and Chris Kellett. The narrator is Danny Glover, special thanks to the painted bride art center, Michael Ellum, Tom Stevenson, Skip Peasy, Steve Wolley at Panasonic, Arkansas at Sony, Shelley Perkins, Roland, Tina Eggloff, Margaret Porter, and the staff of American Public Radio.

Principal funding for the Miles Davis Radio Project was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional major funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the William Penn Foundation of Philadelphia, and the American Public Radio Program Fund. For the Miles Davis Radio Project, executive producer and producer, Steve Roland, co-producer, Quincy Troop, co-producer and mix engineer, Jay Allison, copyright 1990, Zook Productions. This is the American Public Radio Network.