See It Now! European Concerts by Miles, Wayne, Herbie, Tony, and Ron
In 2011, Sony released the first volume in its Bootleg Series, Miles Davis, Live in Europe. The four-disc collection documents the 1967 tour that included concerts in Antwerp, Belgium; Copenhagen; Paris; Karlsruhe, Germany; and Stockholm. The bootlegs capture Davis’s historic quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams in peak form. Film of their concerts in Karlsruhe and Stockholm only adds to one’s appreciation of how organically the group’s performances evolved and how telepathic the rapport seemed between the players. E.S.P., the title of the group’s studio debut, declared this quality unequivocally.
Miles & Co were part of a “Newport Jazz Festival in Europe” package that criss-crossed the continent that fall and featured eight acts including Thelonious Monk, George Wein’s All-Stars with Buddy Tate, and Archie Shepp. Miles and the firebrand tenor saxophonist were often billed together. Ashley Kahn’s liner notes for the Sony collection includes the fresh perspective of trombonist Roswell Rudd, who was working with Shepp. “We took care of the rough edge. What Miles did was to take the music to a level of sophistication that hadn’t been achieved before– spacing out the rhythm, not playing every beat, so they could imply so much more.”
Each of the bootleg performances is a half-hour long. The tunes are played without interruption, Miles signaling the segue from one to the next, and the only variation in repertoire occurs with his choice of ballads. “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” the Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn song that Miles first recorded on Seven Steps to Heaven in 1963, was played before the German audience, one that most likely included a sizable number of American armed forces personnel as Karlsruhe was home to a U.S. military base between 1945 and ’95. In the Swedish capitol, Miles played “’Round Midnight.” Thelonious Monk’s modern jazz anthem had been in Miles’s repertoire for many years. He’d recorded it on the two tenors date he led in 1953 with Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins, and his performance of it at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 (with Monk on piano) was seen as a return to form after the period of inconsistency in the early fifties that was driven by the trumpeter’s heroin addiction. Miles arrived at Newport clean and ready for action, and following his appearance George Avakian signed him to Columbia Records. ’Round About Midnight, as Miles called it, served as the album title and opening track of his Columbia debut.
This film of the quintet is new to YouTube, and such gems are often withdrawn, so see it now. It opens with the Karlsruhe concert on November 7, 1967.
- Agitation (Miles Davis)
- @7:44 Footprints (Wayne Shorter)
- @13:46 I Fall in Love Too Easily (Styne-Cahn)
- @25:21 Gingerbread Boy (Jimmy Heath)
- @30:46 The Theme (Miles Davis)
The Stockholm concert was recorded on October 31, 1967.
- @ 31:35 Agitation
- @38:33 Footprints
- @47:42 ‘Round Midnight (Monk-Williams-Hanighen)
- @56:13 Gingerbread Boy
- @63:48 The Theme
Today is Miles Davis’s 89th birthday anniversary. In tonight’s Jazz à la Mode, we’ll hear three selections from the Quintet’s performance at the Paris Jazz Festival on November 6, 1967, including the Jule Styne ballad, Herbie Hancock’s “Riot,” and the Davis stand-by, “Walkin’.”