The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-68 by Keith Waters (review)

In the three and a half years between January 1965 and June 1968, Miles Davis toured around the country and across the world and spent over a year and a half in the hospital or recuperating from surgery or serious illness. But the principal achievement of this period was the recording of six albums that captured performances ranking among the most intense and challenging in jazz. Jack Chambers writes, "For reviewers and fans alike, [these six recordings] belong at or very near the apex of Davis's achievements as a jazz musician."¹ And Harvey Pekar thought that the mid-sixties quintet was "the most unjustifiably neglected group that Miles Davis ever led."²

It is gratifying to report that the remarkable music on these albums is neglected no more. In a wonderful, always enlightening, and frequently brilliant book, Keith Waters, jazz pianist, prolific jazz scholar, Honegger expert, and coauthor (with Henry Martin) of Jazz: The First Hundred Years,³ has come to grips with these performances and, in so doing, has quite simply moved the whole of jazz scholarship to a new level. Waters writes in his preface: "I suppose in many ways I have been working on this book since I was a teenager," and the result is clearly based on a lifetime of critical insight and thoughtful performing.

Davis's so-called Second Quintet (after the pathbreaking one of the 1950s) fell into place gradually, but it came to include Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—each one a brilliant performer in his own right and also a composer—three of whom also led their own groups at the time with considerable success. But as Davis's band they developed a questing spirit and communal sense of purpose that have been rarely matched. Herbie Hancock says: "We had absolute trust in each other's ability to respond to whatever would happen." "Collectively," says Carter, "we were a mind of one." And in an interview, Wayne Shorter recalled the magic and excitement of working together: "We didn't even say anything to each other. In fact, we never even talked about anything. We never discussed what we were doing afterwards or before. But we all knew that we were going into some territory, some virgin territory." No wonder the band called their first studio album E.S.P. Looking back in his autobiography, Davis gave the band his highest accolade: "I knew right away that this was going to be a motherfucker of a group."⁴

E.S.P. was recorded in January 1965. But because of Davis's illnesses, surgeries, and recuperation, the group had to wait for almost two years to visit the recording studio again. The second album, Miles Smiles, was not recorded until October 1966. Sorcerer was made primarily in May 1967, and Nefertiti only a month later. Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro were recorded in 1968, the former in January and May, the latter in June and September. The last two albums start Davis's move toward jazz fusion, through the use of electric piano, bass, and guitar; less harmonic elaboration; pedal-point improvisation; extended forms; static or repeated melody and churning bass; and rock-based straight eighths. They also see Davis featuring more of his own compositions—six out of the ten—and turning to additional players outside the quintet, such as George Benson, Chick Corea, and Dave Holland. Finally, there is evidence that the doughty Gil Evans, continuing a long, and often hidden, relationship with Davis's work that dated back nearly twenty years to Birth of the Cool, may have worked on arrangements for these two albums with Davis.

Waters takes us through each album, carefully pointing out the innovations of each one and providing detailed analyses of representative tracks. He transcribes both solos...