When Shorter replaces Coleman, it’s as if after assembling the most perfect machine imaginable, a musical form capable of anything, at any tempo and of communicating emotion at whatever intensity might be required, the members of the group then decide to smash it up and start again. When Shorter begins his solo on “So What” (the third and final version of the tune in the box, from the Paris Jazz Festival at the Salle Pleyel in January 1964), following Davis’s already deconstructive, neighing like a donkey take on the melody that immediately precedes him, the beautifully flowing, bluesy style of Coleman – who sounds at the top of his marvellous form throughout his sides – gives way to a typically Shorterian (Shorteresque?), almost parodic, loony-tune approach, boldly going into the outer reaches of who knows where. And the band just has to go with him. With the rhythm section hammering along at ninety miles an hour, and an 18 year old Tony Williams dropping explosive bombs all over the place, Shorter first slows things down with some heavily Coltrane-influenced deep growls before building up a new head of steam with a bravura series of clustered repetitions, gospel wails and almost Ayleresque squawks before passing the baton over to pianist Herbie Hancock. And as if to show what an absolutely perfect all-rounder Shorter is, he then plays an infinitely tender solo on the impeccably in the tradition version of “Stella by Starlight” that follows. Wow. 

Previously, as on the version of “So What” that opens the first disc of the box, and “All Blues” that immediately follows it, it’s the contemporary Miles Davis repertoire including those two Kind of Blue modal classics, plus “Autumn Leaves”, “Walkin’”, “Joshua”, “Bye Bye Blackbird”, etc., but played at hard-bop tempos with plenty of intensity. The sense of all-out attack is relentless, with Tony Williams – only seventeen then! – driving things on at a ferocious pace. “I’m really in the nosebleed territory”, Ron Carter says of his high-register playing on “If I Were a Bell” in a brief interview included in the box. “And it got faster every night, I think….I had never played with anyone like that, of course, and certainly not for this extended period of time. It was just stunning to hear him play like this, play with that intensity, play with that tempo, play with that direction night in and night out and not turn it on to the band and say ‘Stop that.’ He allowed us to do whatever the chemist allowed his proteges in the lab to do.”

And, indeed, Miles Davis himself sounds audaciously good throughout, perhaps as good as one has ever heard him, and in complete control of his instrumental gifts, fiery and contemplative by turn, but with more fire than contemplation. “Being with these young guys”, George Coleman remembers for the box, “he could do his thing and they’d be right there with him. They listened to him and he listened to them. That’s why we were able to play with spontaneity…And he was stepping into another realm too, because before, he was playing straight bebop. But when I joined the band, he started stretching out. This was a transition for Miles, too.”

All in all, this box is quite a listen, and a stretching intellectual exercise just to hear and then process what you have heard. There’s an illuminating essay, ‘Miles in France’, by Marcus J. Moore, some excellent photos and a few contemporary quotes from Downbeat. The box was produced by Steve Berkowitz, Michael Cuscuna and Richard Seidel, and dedicated to Cuscuna, who died earlier this year, and whose scholarship and taste lay behind so many great releases over the last decades. The late Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams receive dedications too. One feels truly gratified that such great historic music should be packaged with such evident love and care, which is not always the case.

Miles in France 1963 & 1964 releases today, 8 November.  

from https://ukjazznews.com