Miles Davis On The Corner CD

Could there be any more confrontational sound in Miles Davis' vast catalog than the distorted guitars and tinny double-timing drums reacting to a two-note bass riff funking it up on the first track from On the Corner? Before the trumpet even enters the picture, the story has been broken off somewhere in the middle, with deep street music melding with a secret language held within the band and those who can actually hear this music -- certainly not the majority of Miles' fan base built up over the past 25 years. They heard this as a huge "f*ck you." Miles just shrugged and told them it wasn't personal, but they could take it that way if they wanted to, and he blew on his trumpet. Here are killer groove riffs that barely hold on as bleating trumpet and soprano sax lines (courtesy of Dave Liebman on track one) interact with John McLaughlin's distortion-box frenzy. Michael Henderson's bass keeps the basic so basic it hypnotizes; keyboards slowly enter the picture, a pair of them handled by Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, as well as Ivory Williams' synthesizer. Finally, Colin Walcott jumps in with an electric sitar and there are no less than five drummers -- three kits (Al Foster, Billy Hart, and Jack DeJohnette), a tabla player, and Mtume. It's a four-tune suite, "On the Corner" is, but the separations hardly matter, just the shifts in groove that alter the time/space continuum. After 20 minutes, the set feels over and a form of Miles' strange lyricism returns in "Black Satin." Though a tabla kicks the tune off, there's a recognizable eight-note melody that runs throughout. Carlos Garnett and Bennie Maupin replace Liebman, Dave Creamer replaces McLaughlin, and the groove rides a bit easier -- except for those hand bells shimmering in the background off the beat just enough to make the squares crazy. The respite is short-lived, however. Davis and band move the music way over to the funk side of the street -- though the street funkers thought these cats were too weird with their stranded time signatures and modal fugues that begin and end nowhere and live for the way the riff breaks down into emptiness. "One and One" begins the new tale, so jazz breaks down and gets polished off and resurrected as a far blacker, deeper-than-blue character in the form of "Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X," where guitars and horns careen off Henderson's cracking bass and Foster's skittering hi-hats. It may sound weird even today, but On the Corner is the most street record ever recorded by a jazz musician. And it still kicks. ~ Thom Jurek
ON THE CORNER enjoys a special cult status among musicians, anticipating as it does the punk funk/acid jazz movements. For Miles Davis, ON THE CORNER was another seismic shift. Miles was particularly fond of the lyric sweep of Hendrixian electric guitar, the James Brown-like rhythmic thump of Fender bass, and the bell-like timbre and chordal possibilities of the Fender/Rhodes electric piano. Now the trumpeter sought to incorporate the feel of street rhythms from around the world and to reflect the influence of modern electronic composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen.
So while ON THE CORNER is generously populated with top-flight jazz players, Davis was zeroing in on a contemporary approach not beholden to jazz players of jazz rhythmic postures--although group improvisation is still very much the order of the day. In paving the way for his Afro-psychedelic working bands of the mid-70's, Davis was roundly dissed, but ON THE CORNER endures brilliantly--the dark lady of Miles' musical sonnets.
The album is a furious carnival of rhythm. The first section is dominated by an Afro-Cuban groove, the eerie distortion of Miles' wah-wah trumpet, John McLaughlin's nasty electric leads and a swelter of rhythms--every instrument seemingly transformed into a drum. The second section beginning with "Black Satin" is driven along by a commanding Michael Henderson bass line, a celestial drone of Indian bells, sitars, tablas, congas aAlternative Press (11/00, pp.104-6) - 4 out of 5 - "...Essential....a masterpiece and a visionary forecasting of modern music....representing the high water mark of his experiments in the fusion of rock, funk, electronica and jazz..."
JazzTimes (11/00, p.70) - "...A sound that provides an eerie parallel to some of Funkadelic's more atmospheric stuff..."
Musician (12/93, p.95) - "...With its hypnotic post-soul grooves and its sound collage aesthetic, ON THE CORNER can now be appreciated as a seedbed of hip-hop, M-Base and other post-modern byways..."