Miles Goes Electric: In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and the Birth of Fusion

By 1968 the trumpeter Miles Davis had been at the top of the jazz world for more than 20 years. His experience ranged from his days as a sideman with bebop innovators such as Charlie Parker, to his own innovations in launching the "cool jazz" movement and creating the modal jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue. His quintet at the time, which many would say was his greatest, included Ron Carter on bass, Herbie Hancock on piano, Wayne Shorter on saxophone, and the teenage prodigy Tony Williams on drums. Because they had been together for nearly five years, a long time for a jazz group of that caliber, Davis was growing restless and searching for new sounds. Since his arrival on the music scene in the 1940s, the sound of popular music had gone through major changes, including the introduction of electric instruments, which the trumpeter was thinking of using in his own music. After Davis heard the music of Jimi Hendrix, a guitarist, singer, and composer noted for his unique instrumental technique, the two musicians met and spent some time discussing music; Davis later acknowledged Hendrix's influence on his own musical thinking.

Davis's desire to change his sound eventually necessitated alterations in the quintet. Ron Carter was the first to leave after he refused to switch over to electric bass; he was replaced by Dave Holland, a classically trained British bass player. Concurrently, Davis was exposed to the electric piano in a jazz composition when he heard Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, a piece coauthored by former band member Cannonball Adderley and the Austrian-born keyboardist Joe Zawinul. Thus when Davis returned to the studio in early 1969 to record what became In a Silent Way, his band contained three electric keyboardists/pianists--Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Zawinul (who doubled on electric organ), the Englishman John McLaughlin on electric guitar, Holland on bass, and former quintet members Williams and Shorter.

Davis ran the Silent Way sessions much as he had for the groundbreaking Kind of Blue album a decade earlier--none of the musicians saw the music until the day of recording. This technique lent an immediacy to the album's improvisations that would have been lacking had the pieces been rehearsed. The use of electric instruments was not the only innovation on the album; Davis and his new producer Teo Macero began to explore the use of recording studio technology on the sound and structure of the music. The two compositions on the record, Shh/Peaceful and In a Silent Way/It's About That Time, were constructed by splicing together different sections of live takes to create the desired sound. In a Silent Way marked the end of Davis's purely acoustic music and the creation of an entirely new genre of jazz-rock, also known as fusion. In later years Davis sought to explain this musical shift by noting that "musicians have to play the instruments that best reflect the times we're in, play the technology that will give you what you want to hear. All these purists are walking around talking about how electrical instruments will ruin music. Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play."

After several months of touring with Holland, Shorter, Corea, and the drummer Jack DeJohnette, Davis was back in the studio for three days in August to record the double album Bitches Brew (1969). The album built on the techniques used on In a Silent Way but with more extensive use of studio effects--such as delays, reverbs and tape loops, and the overdubbing of additional instruments (up to 12 musicians played on each track)--and the addition of two basses, percussion, and bass clarinet. The resulting music was more influenced by contemporary rock and funk, and it in turn influenced musicians of those genres, bringing Davis's music to a whole new audience. With jazz record sales decreasing, Miles and his group played to half-empty jazz clubs, prompting the new president of Columbia Records, Clive Davis, to suggest that Davis contact the promoter Bill Graham, who put him on bills with rock bands such as the Grateful Dead. Bitches Brew sold well, launching the fusion movement. As with his previous innovations, the principal beneficiaries of fusion were Davis's own sidemen; Corea, Shorter, Hancock, Zawinul, McLaughlin, Williams, and others soon became stars in their own right. Davis was accused by many jazz critics of selling out his music to appeal to white audiences, but his music on fusion albums such as Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1970) and the funk-inspired On the Corner (1972) was by no means easy listening; all three works were infused with dense, dark textures and improvisations difficult for even musicians to understand. Although much of the music that came out of the fusion revolution is forgotten today, In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew remain classics of the genre and continue to influence many forms of contemporary music.