Miles Davis - In a Silent Way

From the intense turtleneck cover shot to the audacity of consisting of only two tracks to the brilliantly succinct poetry of the title (as in, "do that in a silent way" and when used like "I'm in a real bad way"), it's easy to see that In a Silent Way is a classic Miles Davis album.  With a lineup that would become a virtual who's-who of jazz fusion music by the end of the 70's (including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Joe Zawinul, and John McLaughlin), the album is literally a first statement of the vocabulary that many other early fusion efforts reiterated close to verbatim.

From Hancock's (or is it Corea's--they both play electric piano) dissonant opening chord cluster to the last ringing guitar notes, the album is like a warm bath of pure tone.  Historically, a lot is made both of Davis' unprecedented and extensive use of electric keyboards and electric guitar as well as his pioneering introduction of rock rhythms into the jazz idiom.  Listening over 40 years later, when all of these things are commonplace, I'm struck--not with surprise at Davis' irreverent artistic choices, but more by a sense of how much better he did it than countless other followers who managed to turn fusion from an exciting and edgy novelty to a naughty word (much like "prog," hmmm...) in fewer than 10 years.

What's the secret?  It's hard to say, but near the top of my list has got to be taste, variously on the parts of Davis as a bandleader, the rest of the players, and producer Teo Macero.  As an avowed fan, I'll take the risk and say that I appreciate Miles Davis even more as a bandleader than I do as a player.  All you have to do is look at the careers he helped start or further (from the first and second great quintets on through the 70's) to see that he had a keen ear for talent, an ability to properly employ his bandmates, and an uncanny ability to nurture them and propel them to successful, often visionary careers of their own.  While most of the artists in this band weren't fresh (McLaughlin was practically unknown, though), Davis puts them to work with impeccable taste, fusing and contrasting two electric pianos, using organ as both a tonal and atmospheric device, slowing the guitar down in its statement of major melodies and laying out its full harmonic range, and employing an unbelievably great rhythm section (Dave Holland and Tony Williams) in some of the most boring and repetitive patterns seen in the history of jazz--because it's what the compositions need.

On the part of the players, infallible taste crops up again and again in their willingness to leave space for each other (after all, it's a pretty big band--show me footage of Davis from the 70's or 80's ever attempting to wring so much quietness out of such a large ensemble) and space for nothing at all.  Players take relatively long breaks between phrases, allowing the timbral subtleties to contrast without competition, and the keys and especially the guitar manage to produce enough jaw-dropping fills that full-fledged solos seem unnecessary.   Wayne Shorter's role on soprano saxophone, limited though it is, has got to be one of the most restrained and atypical soprano performances I've ever heard.  For his part, Miles provides undeniable cool (even quoting [or self plagiarizing, depending on how generous you want to be] his landmark "So What" solo in "Shhh/Peaceful") as well as just a bit of speed when the energy ramps up.  The entire performance, really, exudes an air of collective purpose that melds Davis' well-established cool with a sort of spare, breath-holding restrained energy--while few jazz albums even have a collective purpose, even fewer actually pull it off.

Likewise, Teo Macero's contributions to this (and numerous Davis albums to come) are integral to the album's success.  While I feel it sort of breaks the final studio album's inimitable spell, the Complete In a Silent Way Sessions box set makes obvious the differences between the traditional ballad style and final album version of "In a Silent Way" (the song) as well as the longer jams and final versions that were "It's About That Time" and "Shhh/Peaceful," differences which seem like insurmountable gulfs.  Macero's editing provides subtle but crisp breaks that punctuate the otherwise homogeneous extended tracks, especially within "Shhh/Peaceful" (listen for those lower-register electric piano riffs) and right before the "In A Silent Way" theme is repeated right at 15:35 in the second track--these moments of gentle juxtaposition, heretical as they may be to jazz's organic and spontaneous origins, are pure magic.  While the entire album has been accused of not going anywhere (though I believe describing the music as ambient or even proto-ambient is a laughable proposition; let's not confuse a de-emphasis on obvious melody with a genre solely focused on exploring one--and only one--of music's many great characteristics), I think the beauty lies in the subtlety--crank up the sound to soak up those glorious analog keys and guitar, and by the time the crescendo in "It's About That Time" happens, you know that things are changing.  I think Macero's editing is again crucial, since the songs--long though they are--use vaguely classical structures to state themes, travel elsewhere, then return.

Like I hear it is for many people, Miles Davis was one of the very first jazz artists that got me more interested in trying to understand and enjoy the genre.  The more I explore avant-garde and free jazz, the more I realize that while those movements are aimed at stretching the expressive, compositional and pure sound aspects of jazz to the fullest extent, Davis never really went that direction and was almost always focused on jazz as a pop form.  Now, both approaches are equally valid and I'm not saying "pop" as in lightweight, lowest-common-denominator or shallow, but rather as an ideal of accessibility and an attempt to acknowledge what the people are listening to.  As he began to transcend the trappings of cool, modal and bop forms of jazz, Davis attempted to combining jazz with other forms of popular music, including rock, blues, R&B, funk, and folk music from around the world in effort to keep the genre evolving.   While it worked brilliantly more than once for Davis and nearly as well for some others, it's debatable whether it was healthy for the genre's identity in the long run to continue attenuating its key characteristics and adding more and more generic content (much like what's happened to country music since the 70's).  Stuffy historical observations aside, In a Silent Way remains a revelatory experience with every spin and a great jazz album for people who don't even like jazz.