Tag Archive: jazz

28 Songs that Changed My Life: Miles Davis, “So What” (9 of 28)

February 9, 2021 0 Comments

It would be hard to overstate the impact Miles Davis has had on me, my taste in music, and how I approach music in general. His relentless experimentation, his drive to forge his own path, and the plain ol’ fact that his work is FANTASTIC have ingrained themselves into my life in a deep way. It all started with “So What,” the opening track from his legendary Kind of Blue record, arguably the greatest jazz record of all time. When someone wants to get into instrumental jazz, I always recommend they start here. Listen for the aspects you like — the tinkling piano, the roaring sax solos, the meandering pace — then go check out the artists responsible for those elements (Bill Evans, John Coltrane,…
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Music

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28 Songs that Changed My Life: Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (7 of 28)

February 7, 2021 0 Comments

When I first started exploring jazz in the late 1990s, vocal jazz wasn’t tops on my list. I preferred (and still prefer) the instrumental stuff from the late 1940s through the late 1960s. However, I still made it a point to listen to the major names of the genre when it came to vocal jazz, too, because if I was self-educating, I wanted to take it all in. Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and many others helped me zero in on the aspects of vocal jazz I liked. Then there was Billie Holiday. Her haunting voice was already familiar to me, in no small part because it’s been imitated so many times. It was … different. Otherworldly. There was little joy…
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Music

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28 Songs that Changed My Life: John Coltrane, “A Love Supreme” (2 of 28)

February 2, 2021 0 Comments

Prior to my journey into jazz beginning (which largely started with Miles Davis and the legendary Kind of Blue), all I knew of John Coltrane was a fleeting reference in a U2 song. I assumed their reference to A Love Supreme was because it was some important or influential work, but I was young and not nearly as musically adventurous as I’d become, so I did as I often did and didn’t think much about it. Then jazz happened to me. I discovered how great escape it was. How it could put me at ease and transport me somewhere else. It began to influence my own freeform, meandering music. I’d first heard Coltrane on Davis’ classic records of the mid-to-late 1950s and it made me…
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Music, Random Musings

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In A Silent Way is the semi-overlooked Miles Davis masterpiece you need in your life

December 18, 2020 1 Comment

When I first discovered the music of Miles Davis in the late 1990s, it was something of a musical awakening for me. It came during a time when I was setting aside the strident music “purity” of my youth — you know how some people will only listen to a specific kind of music and ONLY that kind of music? — and exploring new frontiers in sound. Miles Davis certainly provided that. His personal story was compelling, but he was more than an intriguing figure. He had the tunes to back it up. LOTS of them, an ever-shifting career filled with experimentation and attempts to push the boundaries of what he could do with his music. The man knew no rules. He CREATED rules, over…
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Music, Random Musings, Videos, Works by Eric

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Miles Davis, music, and toll of institutional racism

June 4, 2020 1 Comment

Miles Davis has been one of my favorite artists for close to 25 years. If I started going on about how his work has touched me, the scope of his influence, and the importance of his creative legacy, I’d be here all night. The act of expression through creation is sacred to me, and few exemplify this more powerfully than Miles Davis. Yet Youtuber Adam Neely makes an excellent point in the video below: A now infamous police brutality incident in 1959, just after the release of Davis’ masterful Kind of Blue album, almost robbed the world of 30 more years of groundbreaking music. It’s an unfortunate story all on its own, but it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Miles was just…
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Music, Politics, Random Musings, Rants

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