Two jazz icons born a century ago. 2026 is the centennial year of both Miles Davis and John Coltrane and we’re celebrating both musicians in special shows that will showcase lesser known and more surprising tracks. This is our second Miles show (and, yes, we’ll be using that mononym throughout) – so let’s get started.
- Miles Davis – Pharaoh’s Dance (single edit) from The Complete Bitches Brew
The full length track on 1970’s Bitches Brew is over 20 minutes long and – uniquely for a jazz tune at the time – features over a dozen studio edits and loops from producer Teo Macero. Jazzwise noted that Miles would Never again would he turn himself, and the music of his time, inside out acknowledging Bitches Brew as the last epoch-making album to appear in jazz. Now whilst Cosmic Jazz might question this unequivocal statement, the influence of this double album on the world of jazz cannot be overestimated. I’ve written about Bitches Brew many times on this platform and elsewhere (see our first Miles @ 100 show) and so had to feature the album once more, choosing the second single edit from the Complete Bitches Brew box set from 1998.
2. Miles Davis – He Loved Him Madly from Get Up With It
Get Up With It is a rather misunderstood album in the Miles Davis canon. It emerged in 1974 and is the second of two sort-of compilations that emerged that year, the first being Big Fun. Both feature music from the 1970-74 period when Miles was wilfully bending genres – and Big Fun contains one of Neil’s favourite out-takes, the improbably funky Ife which would become something of a live staple in the 1970s. He Loved Him Madly is one of the later recordings and features Pete Cosey and Dominique Gaumont on guitars, Dave Liebman on alto flute, Michael Henderson on electric bass and James Mtume on percussion. And who did Miles ‘love madly’? The recently deceased jazz icon Duke Ellington who used to end his live concerts with the phrase We would like you to know that we do love you madly. There’s a really interesting version of of this tune on Bill Laswell’s excellent Panthalassa record – what he called a mix translation of this Miles period – you can check it out here. And Richard Cook in his brilliant book about Miles titled It’s About That Time (2005) says: Soft, spacey and as unearthly as anything Davis ever recorded, it is a luminous and unsettling piece. And in a parallel wilful bending of genres, Neil has chosen to mix this side-long standout track from Get Up With It with Eno’s evocative Suffolk sound picture from his fourth ambient album On Land…
3. Brian Eno – Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960 from Ambient 4: On Land
An odd pairing? Not really: in 1982 Brian Eno travelled to Ghana where he spent time recording ambient sounds on a portable cassette recorder and then listening to the results on his headphones. In his liner notes to Ambient 4: On Land released later that year Eno noted that The effect of this simple technological system was to cluster all the disparate sounds into one aural frame: they became music. In the revised reissue notes he added that after returning from Ghana, Eno noted that the guitarist Robert Quine had given him a copy of Miles Davis’ He Loved Him Madly and that Teo Macero’s revolutionary production on that piece seemed to me to have the ‘spacious’ quality I was after and … it became a touchstone to which I returned frequently.
4. Miles Davis – It’s About That Time (Live) from Live at Fillmore East March 7, 1970
Live at the Fillmore East is notable in that it records the final concert with saxophonist Wayne Shorter in Miles’ band. A few months after, he would join Joe Zawinul to create Weather Report – striking out in another direction completely. If Weather Report is new to you then compare what they do with Zawinul’s tune Orange Lady compared with its first outing on the Complete Bitches Brew set. This Fillmore East show is one of the first recordings to document Miles’ use of electric instruments in a concert setting and he’s assembled a great group too – Chick Corea is on Fender Rhodes, Dave Holland on basses, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Airto Moreira on percussion and cuica. This 1970 concert recording was actually released in 2008 and includes first live outings for number of tunes from Bitches Brew, which had not yet been released. Neil thinks this one is an essential live recording in the Miles canon: the band drives hard throughout and (like the second great quintet) their playing reveals new harmonies, counterpoints and polyrhythms with Miles screeching through his solos as Shorter echoes his leader’s new fire with his own elliptical playing. Highly recommended.
5. Miles Davis – It’s About That time (Remix) from Evolution of the Groove
It’s About That Time originally appeared on A Silent Way (1969) forming the core of the side-long experiment that was bookended by the title track. This remix from a 2007 tribute-cum-reinterpretation of some classic Miles tunes features rapper Nas on vocals and his father Olu Dara on trumpet, Carlos Santana on guitar and Miles’ nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr. on drums and programming, with co-production by drummer Lenny White. The centrepiece of this unusual EP is the updating of It’s About That Time but there’s a powerful take on Black Satin from On the Corner (1972) – and whilst we haven’t fitted in a tune from the groundbreaking On The Corner album itself you can hear the epic opening sequence of On the Corner/New York Girl/Sayin’ One Thing and Doin’ Another in our Jack De Johnette show from December 2025.
6. Miles Davis – Back Seat Betty from We Want Miles
Miles had returned to the studio in 1980, after a long hiatus during which he left the trumpet alone and focused on women and cocaine – according to his autobiography. He was certainly not in good health at this time but he recorded the patchy The Man With the Horn (1981) and then formed a live band with Mike Stern on guitar, Al Foster on drums, Bill Evans on soprano sax, Mino Cinelu on percussion and Marcus Miller on bass. It had been six years since Miles had played live and audiences were nervous about the outcome. They needn’t have worried. Miles subsequently won a Grammy for best jazz instrumental performance by a soloist but, characteristically, said that he didn’t know why… Neil saw this group in April 1982 when Miles performed three nights at the Hammersmith Odeon, London and where Back Seat Betty – a highlight of We Want Miles – was a standout. Writer George Cole in his excellent blog The Last Miles has written persuasively about this show – find out more right here.
7. Miles Davis – Introduction by Norman Granz/So What (Live) from The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6
Perhaps the most conventional of Neil’s choices for this second Miles special but, nonetheless, this final set of performances by Miles with John Coltrane is a must have. So What comes from a performance at the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen. It’s the same group that recorded the previous year (in 1959) the iconic Kind of Blue album with Wynton Kelly replacing Bill Evans on piano. These are intense performances with Kelly being an admirable foil for Miles’ modal constructions and Coltrane’s increasingly muscular solos. This anthology was released as part of the ongoing Bootleg series in 2018 and is available as a 4CD with a single vinyl edition of the complete Copenhagen concert also in the racks.
8. Takuru Okada – A Love Supreme from Betsu no Jikan
Betsu no Jikan is the culmination of a two-year exploration by guitarist Takuru Okada, improvising with artists from both within Japan and abroad including drummer Shun Ishiwaka, arranger Carlos Nino, saxophonist Sam Gendel, producer Haroumi Hosono and others. But why is it here? Simply because Neil is convinced that this music is the direction Miles would be taking if he was making music now. This outré ‘cover’ of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme takes sampling inspiration from the editing and looping approaches that that we heard in Pharaoh’s Dance – bringing the Miles sound into the 21st century.
More from Cosmic Jazz soon.
Neil is listening to…
- Herbie Hancock – Chameleon (live 1975)
- Miles Davis – Me & U (live 1988)
- Miles Davis Quintet – All of You (live 1964)
- Miles Davis – It’s About That Time/The Theme (live 1969)
- Wayne Shorter – Footprints (live 1991)