Sixty five years ago, on October 26, the Miles Davis Quintet assembled for a recording session that yielded most of the Cookin' and Relaxin' albums and a tune apiece that appeared on the Workin' and Steamin'  discs. The other tracks on those albums were recorded in a one day session earlier that year. Four quality albums, not bad for two days of work.

George Clinton, P-Funk frontman turned 80 this week. For a while it was two bands - Parliament and Funkadelic, or maybe two facets of the same group. Funkadelic - and Parliament on their first album, Osmium (1970)  -  played a looser, rock-based, ragged, funky soul. Parliament, from 1974 on played a tighter, straight, polished funk. What follows here, is a selection from the early Funkadelic albums on Westbound. I put it together some years ago while looking for songs that reminded me of peak period Sly and the Family Stone. There really isn't much out there that sounds like this.  Missing are some of the songs with the nastier lyrics. That way I can maybe get away with playing it while Wife is in the car without having to answer the question: Honey...what are we listening to? There are a few albums that are missing from the streaming service. The first, Osmium,  was released in July of 1970. It sounds a lot like Funkadelic  and Free Your Mind ...And Your Ass Wi...

On this day in 1956, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones - the Miles Davis Quintet - went into the Rudy Van Gelder Studio and recorded fourteen tracks to help meet Miles's contractural obligations with Prestige.   Twelve of those tracks would later comprise the better parts of the  Workin'   and   Steamin' With the Miles Davis Quintet  albums, the other two rounded out the   Relaxin'  album. Pretty good for a day's work.

Miles released A Tribute to Jack Johnson fifty years ago . The first track - of two - " Right Off ", stands as his fullest excursion into straight ahead rock, while the second " Yesternow ," is a gritty, bluesy funky vamp. Who knew Willie Nelson could be so funky? It is the "Rock" part of his "Jazz-Rock" fusion that concerns us with this playlist. Some of the tunes here, "Right Off" and "Red China Blues", are straight ahead blues based rock. The pieces from the Bitches Brew sessions are spacier....almost prog...with "Great Expectations" never quite resolving into the implied quote of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.  There's plenty for a rock fan to enjoy, and some jazz too. When writing about this period of Miles' work, Stanley Crouch said that listening to it was like having nails driven into his forehead. We've got that covered too.

When I heard of Chick Corea's passing, I listened to Return to Forever and the follow up,  Light as a Feather , my two favorites by both the man and the band. A friend of mine, who has much better taste than I, prefers the ensemble's second incarnation of Return to Forever, citing a concert at Central Park as one of the best shows he's ever seen. Like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and others, it is a jazz-rock fusion that features a jazz group using rock instrumentation.  The first lineup - Chick, Stanley Clarke (primarily on double bass), Joe Farrell (flute, sax), Airto Moreira (drum set), and Flora Purim (vocals) plays on both Return to Forever and  Light as a Feather.  In between, Chick, Clarke, and Airto joined with Tony Williams to back Stan Getz on Captain Marvel . All three are included on the playlist. Is it fusion? I guess so, although save for the electric piano. The instrumentation is fairly traditional, but Chick's Rhodes floats in an out, bubbles on top. It...

Which is not to say, Workin', nor -again- is it with his quartet. Instead, we have largely the same players as featured in last week's Chillin' post. Most of Miles's studio output from the period 1970-1974 comes from a series of sessions - Bitches Brew , Jack Johnson , Cellar Door (Live Evil) , and On the Corner - that largely ended by mid '72. In addition to the main albums that came from each session, the albums Live Evil , Big Fun and Get Up With It were also compiled from the sessions. With regard to his fusion period, the story goes that Miles was impressed with a Sly and the Family Stone show and tried to incorporate those sounds into his music. These tracks are in line with that story. We have here the gritty funk of There's a Riot Goin' On rather than the slick sounds of Fresh . It's a sound like early Funkadelic more than Parliament.... ...and the On the Corner outtakes somehow catch the vibe of the cover more than that album did.

Which is not to say, Relaxin'....nor with his quintet. On this day in 1969, Miles Davis released his first fusion album, In a Silent Way.  He'd started to go electric the previous year, on initially on Miles in the Sky and more so on Filles de Kilimanjaro. While it has some grooves and uptempo material, Silent Way is a fairly quiet album that doesn't feature any of the more jarring work that one finds on Bitches Brew , Live Evil , On the Corner or Get Up With It , nor does it rock like Jack Johnson . Today's playlist features the mellow cuts from Miles during 1969-1975 his early fusion period. The complete sessions boxed sets (Silent Way, BB, JJ, Corner) from allow for the undoing of some of Teo Macero's edits. For instance, "Orange Lady", with its sitars and tablas can be disaggregated from "Great Expectations" off of  Big Fun . Likewise, the blues vamp from the middle of "Go Ahead John" can stand on its own, although it s...

About 50 years ago Miles Davis opened for Neil Young at the Fillmore. First of our lists here is Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the Fillmore , from March 6th and 7th, 1970. This tour, in support of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere , was the last undertaken with Danny Whitten before his sad death from an overdose of...well...horse. Neil actually played four shows over the two days, from which this release was put together. One song, Cinnamon Girl, did not originally appear but was subsequently released as part of the Neil Young Archives. Setlist fm  shows that the song appeared before Cowgirl in the Sand at each show. The Youngians among you will note two songs that had yet to see an official release: Winterlong - which came out on the Decade retrospective, and Wonderin' which came out on Everybody's Rockin' ' during the Geffen years. "Why is the set so short?" you ask. It is short because Neil played a solo acoustic set - not included here - before bring...