Monday, July 25, 2005

Anniversary of a couple 'Miles'tones

Isle of Wight Festival 1970

Today marks two major anniversaries in the career of Miles Davis.

The first is it's the 50th anniversary of his legendary performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, playing "Round Midnight" with Thelonious Monk. ("Monk plays the wrong changes," Miles complained to the Newport head George Wein. "Miles, what do you want?" Wein replied. "He wrote the song!")

The second is the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, where Miles performed for Europe (600,000 of them) electric for the first time. The bill included Jimi Hendrix and The Who, and he debuted another new band, which included Jack DeJohnette on drums and both Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett on keyboards.

A great show called Open Source detailed much of the performances, featuring George Wein (Newport Jazz Festival,) Marcus Miller (bassist and musical director of Miles' late career - and was the emmy-nominated musical director of Night Music,) and others.

Here's a streamed mp3 of the show... and yes, they podcast their shows.

Favorite remembered quote from Miles... Charlie Davidson, who tailored Miles' clothes in the 50's says:
"One day I asked him: 'Miles, do you really like Frank Sinatra?' 'Do I like him?' he said. "If he had one tit I’d marry him!'"
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3 comments:

Shawn Anderson said...

Isle of Wight Music Festival 1970

* "Call It Anything" - Miles Davis
* "Suzanne" - Leonard Cohen
* "Can't Keep From Cryin'/Extension On One Chord" - Ten Years After
* "Nights In White Satin" - The Moody Blues
* "Desolation Row" - Bob Dylan

J Shifty said...

Another fine list, my good man. Of note Jethro Tull, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix all have entire Rhapvailable Isle Of Wight 1970 albums that could also be good fodder.

In other news, I've just dug out from under a two week tall mountain of work and look forward to catching up on all the lists I've missed recently...

Douglas said...

I visited your site because you had a post with a Cardinal tag, and then I noticed you had a very nice Miles commemoration post. I have an audio clip of "So What" at Crossword Bebop.

Is there audio of the Isle of Wight performance available