‘Social music’

To commemorate the 90th birthday of the late, revolutionary trumpeter Miles Davis, Prestige Records and Sony Legacy have repackaged or “reimagined” music from various periods of his career. And they’ve done so creatively.

The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection contains all 11 of the 10-inch vinyl albums that Davis recorded under his own name or as a featured sideman for Prestige between 1951 and 1954 and lists for a pricey $145. (Non-vinyl devotees can pay as little as $30 for MP3s of the same 46 tracks.)

The music, much of which was later released on 12-inch LPs when those became the norm, captures a period of transition between Davis’ triumphant 1949-1950 nonet recordings (eventually released in 1957 as Birth of the Cool) and his late-’50s, early-’60s recordings for Columbia.

In a sense, it’s amazing that Davis accomplished anything at all during the early ’50s, beset as he was at the time by a nearly all-consuming heroin addiction that frayed his friendships and family ties and got him both busted and blacklisted.

Nevertheless, he toured and recorded steadily with an ever-changing cast of band members—many of whom were already enjoying or on the verge of stellar careers themselves—and in the process expanded the possibilities of post-bebop jazz. It’s this sense of starting somewhere familiar and then seeing how far one can go without getting lost that gives Davis’ Prestige output its musical through line.

A similar sense pervades the soundtrack of Miles Ahead, the 2015 cinematic labor of love for which Don Cheadle, the film’s star, director, and co-screenwriter, not only raised independent funds but also learned to play the trumpet lest his “horn syncing” lack believability. Set during another Davis period of transition—the mid-to-late ’70s, when he became a disillusioned recluse—and substantially fictional, it still gets at a good deal of truth.

Its soundtrack does too. Beginning with the title track of Davis’ Gil Evans–arranged 1957 album Miles Ahead, it picks up where the Prestige box leaves off then hops from one Davis highlight to another, chronologically sequencing one selection apiece (several of them significantly abridged) from Sketches of Spain (1960), Seven Steps to Heaven (1963), Nefertiti (1968), Filles de Kilimanjaro (1969), On the Corner (1972), Agharta (1975), and The Man with the Horn (1981) with two from The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (1969-1970).

Besides its far-from-obvious track selections, two elements keep the soundtrack from sounding like a lazy fan’s introduction to Davis: the originals by the pianist Taylor Eigsti (one) and the Fender Rhodes–playing co-producer Robert Glasper (four), each of which provides emotional counterpoint as well as stylistic continuity, and the snippets of Cheadle-as-Davis dialogue (eight)—most of them profane, in keeping with the real-life Davis’ expletive-ridden vocabulary. “I don’t like that word ‘jazz,’” goes one of the clean ones. “That’s some made-up word to try to box somebody in. Don’t call [my music] ‘jazz.’ It’s social music.”

Getting Davis out of the box is the point of Glasper’s other Davis project, Everything’s Beautiful: The Recordings of Miles Davis Reimagined by Robert Glasper. Layering rappers, R&B vocalists, and nu-jazz instrumentation and beats atop Davis’ recordings and voice, Glasper creates 11 tracks of essentially original music.

It’s impossible to tell what sort of music Davis would be making now were he alive. But considering the direction in which he was moving during his final decade, Everything’s Beautiful—especially “Right On Brotha” featuring Stevie Wonder’s harmonica—probably sounds pretty close.