Miles Davis In Paris
By Miles Marshall Lewis
The So What Band ambles on stage with a cool saunter worthy of Reservoir Dogs gangsters, dressed in downscale suits less Brooks Brothers than JC Penney. But as welcoming applause rises and falls from the crowd, the sextet kick into “So What” and make it clear that they didn’t come to the Musée de la Musique in Paris to fuck around. Eighty-year-old veteran jazz drummer Jimmy Cobb, trumpeter Wallace Roney, saxophonists Vincent Herring and Javon Jackson, pianist Larry Willis and bassist Buster Williams launch into their live recreation of jazz legend Miles Davis’s landmark 1959 album, Kind of Blue, to kick off a new three-month museum exhibition, “We Want Miles: Jazz Face to Face with Its Legend,” opening 60 years after the jazz icon’s first gig in Paris.
Their crisp performance of the first track from Kind of Blue—possibly the best known jazz album of all time, and historically the genre’s top seller—jogs the collective memory of thousands in the auditorium. Nostalgic smiles break out during variations on the original solos of saxists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, as the spirited band works its way through classic numbers like “Freddie Freeloader” and “All Blues.” Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kind of Blue and all the life and times of Miles Davis (1926–1991), “We Want Miles” features archival concert footage, original sheet music, as well as private photographs, instuments, and clothing from the enigmatic jazzman’s estate.
Ticketholders stride through the Musée de la Musique gift shop passing all manner of books (Miles: The Autobiography), magazines (Jazz Hot and Jazzman), and DVDs (The Miles Davis Story) before arriving at the exhibition entrance. Museum assistants distribute headphones that plug into outlets piping in audio commentary about seminal Davis albums like Birth of the Cool, Sketches of Spain and Bitches Brew. Hushed lighting shrouds handwritten manuscript scores to tunes like 1949’s “Deception”; Davis-inspired paintings Horn Players and No Title (Bird of Paradise) by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat; and vinyl album covers arranged on the walls: Milestones, Filles de Kilimanjaro.
The exhibition proceeds chronologically, beginning with the East St. Louis childhood of Miles Dewey Davis III, teenage apprentice of trumpet instructor Elwood Buchanan. Following his storied career trajectory, the darkened halls wend their way through Davis’s 1944 arrival in Manhattan as a Julliard School of Music student in search of sax god Charlie Parker; his meeting with arranger Gil Evans; his First Great Quintet (including John Coltrane); his orchestral album recordings with Evans (Porgy and Bess, etc.); his invention of modal jazz on Kind of Blue; and his Second Great Quintet (with pianist Herbie Hancock and bassist Ron Carter).
Miles Davis and arranger Gil Evans in the Columbia Records studios, NYC, 1957.
Jazz-loving Parisians crowded the Musée’s so-called “mutes,” oval-shaped areas specially designated as listening rooms dedicated to specific Davis albums. Interactive audio and video stations lined the walls as well. A scene from the 1958 film noir romance Ascenseur Pour l’Échafaud flickered against a wall, “Générique” ringing out behind actress Jeanne Moreau evading les police. Davis recorded its soundtrack during his first visit to Paris, and enlarged newspaper clippings report his brief affair with French actress Juliette Gréco. The hall’s dead end contains a screen displaying the Miles Davis Quintet burning through “So What” during a September 11, 1964 appearance on The Steve Allen Westinghouse Show.
A wall projection of a 1970 performance at the annual Isle of Wight festival ushers in the exhibit’s second wave as “We Want Miles” continues on a sub-level underneath the first hall. By then, Davis had shucked his bespoke suits and unstructured blazers for suede vests, flowing scarves and snakeskin pants. Under the sartorial influence of the singer Betty Davis—his second wife—Miles reinvented himself as the premiere jazz musician of the bourgeoning rock era, playing rock festivals before wider audiences than ever while leaving some longtime admirers behind.
Dents from Davis’s fists mark an Everlast boxing bag swinging from a hook, a memento from days spent sparring in the gym. (Davis did the soundtrack to a 1970 documentary on the heavyweight champ Jack Johnson). The second level is decorated with blown-up album artwork by painter Abdul Mati Klarwein (Live Evil, Bitches Brew), and more “mute” rooms featuring Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way. Distinguished as much by the German musique-concrète composer Karl Stockhausen as the populist soul of James Brown and Sly Stone, Miles Davis’s electric period—however controversial—gets its due exposure.
Immediately after the So What Band closes its hour-long set with a rousing “Milestones,” jazz heads begin lining up for tickets to performances of Birth of the Cool and Bitches Brew scheduled for later in the week. American tourists inquire about the next installation of We Want Miles, launching at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal in spring 2010 and continuing on to New York City thereafter.
One leaves the Musée de la Musique wondering what a third floor to the exhibit may have looked like had Davis lived past the age of 65, given the hip-hop flirtations with rap producer Easy Mo Bee on his final studio album, 1992’s Doo-Bop. But really, isn’t changing the face of popular music four times enough?
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
(add)- One Comment
- Trackbacks/Pingbacks