He had gotten up on the stand, taken Cherry’s horn and started playing. One night we were playing, Cherry was taking a solo and all of a sudden I heard the solo change direction and I opened my eyes and it was Miles. I’d never been there before, and after checking into the hotel we went down to the Five Spot for a rehearsal…When we started playing every night, the place was packed with people not just from the music world but from the art world, from everywhere.

It was really something.Ĭoming to New York in 1959 was really exciting. We would play every day and stop and talk about what we were doing and then we would play the tune over again. We got together and started playing at Don Cherry’s house. “I’d actually met Don Cherry and Billy Higgins before Ornette. The horns riff behind the piano solo, as Evans responds with complex chord voicings on the bridge of his chorus. Each soloist confronts the challenge of blowing over modes brilliantly and each horn soloist draws distinct accompanying textures from Evans. The two-note kicker is another “amen” cadence that gets at the church-music echoes Davis wanted in the music, although the interval creates a far different feeling here than on Freddie Freeloader. Chambers states the melody, with responses by Evans and the horns. It is introduced here by piano and bass, playing the only detailed written material employed at the session which has been attributed to both Gil Evans (the more likely source) and Bill Evans. Once musicians grew accustomed to blowing over this open terrain, So What became the I Got Rhythm of modal jazz. It is a 32-bar, AABA structure, built on two Dorian modes rather than a more detailed chord sequence. Liner notes studio version: Bob Blumenthalīill Evans takes over for So What, which remains the most influential track from this most influential album and one of only two that became a permanent part of the Miles Davis repertoire. Miles’s playing here is absolute perfection! – Michael Cuscuna Over the years, the tempo accelerated to avalanche speed. Played at its original medium-slow tempo, the piece is haunting. The first recording of “So What” was made exactly one month earlier. This stunning version of “So What” comes from an ApCBS program featuring Miles’s quintet with John Coltrane and an ensemble arranged and assembled by Gil Evans. The accompanying 44 page booklet crammed with informative notes and discographical data from Dan Morgenstern, Billy Vera and Scott Wenzel introduces a remarkable roster of talent, eccentrics and near-mythical characters… Also considering that the original source material is around eighty years old, the sound quality is nearly all pristine and clear, owing to fastidious restoration and mastering by Andreas Meyer and Nancy Conforti. It’s a jazz history lesson at a bargain price. Johnson, Pee Wee Russell, Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus, Lucky Thompson, Meade Lux Lewis, Barney Bigard, Charlie Shavers, Dizzy Gillespie, Erroll Garner, Charlie Ventura, Howard McGhee, and Gerald Wilson. Here is just a partial list of the names of jazz legends (some appearing solely as sidemen/accompanists): Art Hodes, Sidney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, Willie “The Lion” Smith, James P. With exceptions for Ellington, Basie, Armstrong and a few others, The Black and White label was motivated in putting the jazz titans of this era together in groupings for approximate (4-6 tracks), the time length of a 78 rpm album. What makes this massive 11 CD set so valuable, and historically significant, is that in barely seven years they recorded most everyone not exclusively tied to a major label. This stuff hadn’t been done yet until Don started playing them.” – Billy Taylor They were long phrases and new ways of using harmonies so that they sounded like the dominant melody. What I mean by pre-bop is he was playing things that led up to bebop. He was head and shoulders above everyone else. Don was trying to do that on the tenor back then. They both had heard Art’s seamless runs on the piano. He and Coltrane had the same idea for the same reason. He was trying to make the tenor saxophone sound like Art Tatum. He was way ahead of Coltrane on those sheets of sound. What the Europeans heard him play was the beginning of what John Coltrane and others like him eventually did. He did something that was unbelievable in terms of really playing and showing the Europeans that the music was moving forward. Pianist Billy Taylor waxes poetic in a JazzWax article on the importance of Don Byas and what he meant to not only tenor saxophonists but to improvisors in general on any instrument.

Take five alto saxophone