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Miles Davis: Milan, 1964

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On Oct. 11, 1964, the Miles Davis Quintet was in Milan performing at the Teatro Dell'Arte. The quintet at that time consisted of Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b) and Tony Williams (d). The last full song they played was Victor Feldman's Joshua, which Feldman had written for Miles Davis's Seven Steps to Heaven in 1963. It should be noted that Hancock was 24 during this Milan performance, having replaced pianist Feldman a year earlier when the Seven Steps to Heaven session shifted to New York. Rather than join the quintet, Feldman decided to remain in Los Angeles to take advantage of lucrative studio work.

Here's Feldman on Miles Davis and Joshua during a 1971 interview with British journalist Les Tomkins:

“It was partly through being with Cannonball that I got to work with Miles. He needed a pianist for a job at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, and his booking agent called me up. I was very excited; I said: 'Sure, I’d love to go.' As it happened, it was very awkward for me, because I had a staff job at ABC, doing daytime shows. But I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity. I finally managed to persuade the man who contracts the show to let me off for a couple of days.

“I called back and said: 'I can’t do the whole week, but I can do the first few days while you’re trying to get somebody else.' It hurt me to have to say that, because I really would have loved to play longer with him.

“It was very enjoyable, although I didn’t know any of the things we had to play. And Miles doesn’t tell you anything, which bugged me a bit. It’s inconsiderate but, on the other hand, maybe it was a compliment and he figured I could pick up very quick. Everyone seemed to be happy, anyhow. Then a few weeks later Miles came out to L.A. to do an album, and I was to be on it. Before the date, I used to go up to his hotel room, and we’d come down into the lounge lobby, where there was a piano, and talk about various tunes.

“He said: 'Write something.' Just like that. So I went home, messed around, and wrote Joshua. Actually, I think I finally finished that one the day prior to the recording. In between, I’d go to the hotel and we’d take tunes that we were going to do, he’d suggest certain changes and I’d say: 'How can that be?' But sure enough, a lot of the time what he’d suggest would turn out fine. The only thing, he’d sort of put you in a frame of mind where you really didn’t know what you were doing; you were groping. I sensed that he was looking for something, but he didn’t know how to tell me what he wanted. The feeling he gave you of searching, this finally brought out the chord structure for the arrangement. We’d be experimenting with the tune and it was 'Not this way—no, that way,' until we molded it into shape."

Here's the Miles Davis Quintet in 1964 performing Joshua...

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This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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