12/21/07

This is an absolutely stellar song, released originally on:

(click to go to the album page on allmusic.com)

Cannonball Adderley
Somethin' Else
Blue Note 1595

Art Blakey on the drums, Hank Jones on piano (he's with Ella FItzgerald on "Smooth Sailing"), and Sam Jones on bass (no relation to Hank).  Cannonball Adderley (so called because of his spherical figure) plays alto.  And of course, Miles.

There's two things that really stand out about MIles' playing.  The first is his incredible use of negative space, much like Count Basie.  The second is his incredible ability to take ANYTHING that happened, and make it part of the music.  It's this latter quality that I want to discuss here.

You can get the head (melody) to the song here.

Now, in Miles' solo, he opens with melodic lines that end on pauses, held just long enough to make you really anticipate their continuation.  He does that for a few bars, then builds a run up the range of the horn, holding onto a few notes near the top before releasing the energy and swinging back into the lower range of the instrument.

You can hear that here.

 On his next phrase, he does something similar (theme and variation is what music is all about, right?).  Presumably the plan is to hold that last note of the run up the scale.  But something goes awry - to wit, he squeaks the note. 

You can hear the second phrase here.

That wasn't on purpose.  That was a mistake.  But what makes Miles so cool was that he believed in taking everything and making it part of his song.  So if you close your eyes, you can almost see him grimace, take the horn down from his lips, and pause for a second (actually, 4 seconds) as he tries to consider what to play next.  It needs to be something that acknowledges what's just happened, but still continues the development of the story, and brings the song back.  Listen to that clip a couple of times, you'll hear it.

So next, he plays this (if you can, play them back-to-back, without any pause between clips)

Is that awesome, or what?  This is why Miles once said:

"Don't fear mistakes.  There are none."

He could take anything and make it part of his story.  Brilliant.  There's obviously a lot of parallels possible between dancing, and life in general.  Once you know to look for them, they're there.

And that is why Miles Davis is such a badass.