In 1957, the year of my birth, the pianist and singer Mose Allison, a Southern transplant to New York City who had supported such exceptional saxophonists as Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, and Stan Getz, recorded his debut album as a solo artist, Back Country Suite, which featured the titular ten-part work. A collection of original tunes—none exceeding two minutes and change, the majority even shorter—the suite spotlighted Allison’s idiosyncratic piano style, an amalgam of blues and jazz influences that nonetheless cohered into a singular sound, one redolent of the Southern airs of his background.

Popping up among this swinging assortment of instrumental bonbons lay a single vocal track, simply titled “Blues.” At a shade less than a minute and a half, this bare-bones performance practically vanishes into the air before you can fully grasp it. Yet it’s unforgettable, and for that we can thank Allison’s punctuating piano riff. This simple figure lodges itself in your brain in the sector that harbors elemental blues melodies—a repository that all Americans, whether they know it or not, possess. Unprovable, sure, but I’ll stand by this.

It’s also quite possible that certain Brits have this same cerebral chamber. One of them is Pete Townshend, the leader of The Who. Townshend most likely heard “Blues” when it turned up, renamed “Young Man Blues,” on the 1963 collection Mose Allison Sings, which brought together the vocal performances and some of the caustic, brilliantly constructed original songs that were by then bringing the laconic singer to greater fame.¹

While Allison’s lyrics documenting the travails of youth obviously spoke to the man who wrote “My Generation” and other paeans to the expanding British youth movement, it was Allison’s infectious blues riff that gripped the composer of such riff-laden hits as “I Can’t Explain” and “Substitute.”

And here’s where the archetypal transformation from blues to rock takes place. Grab the riff—no matter what main instruments it was originally played on—transfer it to electric guitar and bass, add thunderous drums for spice, crank the volume way up, and hold on for dear life.

The Who began incorporating their eruptive reinterpretation of Allison’s song in concert by 1968, first releasing a studio version of “Young Man Blues” on a British sampler collection in 1969. But the iconic version showed up a year later on the band’s Live at Leeds, released in May 1970. Borderline anarchic in its intensity, where Allison’s original was laid-back and charmingly acerbic, The Who’s live interpretation is detonated rather than performed. The sonic barrage bursting off the album’s grooves was, to my teenage self, as frightening as it was exhilarating—an ecstatic rock-and-roll buzz I will never forget.

The live version below, capturing The Who at a peak as a live act, is from the band’s July 1970 performance at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. Watch how Townshend and drummer Keith Moon are both driving the band and playing to each other, at times even attempting to crack each other up. Neither is playing conventional rhythm parts, yet somehow, they hold things together. With the innovative bassist John Entwistle filling in every other available space, and singer Roger Daltrey holding on to his territory with tooth and nail, it’s a wonder to me how the band as a whole was able to keep this sonic jigsaw puzzle from fracturing into a million pieces. All I know is that future hard rock and punk are inconceivable without them.

I was lucky enough to catch The Who perform at the Metropolitan Opera House just a month before the Tanglewood show in 1970, presenting their “final” performance of Tommy and playing tunes from the recently released Live at Leeds.

It was the most exciting rock music performance I’ve ever seen.

1: It seems likely that Townshend was drawing on Mose Allison Sings, which also contains his version of the blues classic “Eyesight to the Blind,” a song Townshend incorporated into the Who’s classic Tommy in 1969.

BTW, Allison and Townshend were vocal admirers of each other’s work. And with Live at Leeds selling tons of copies, Allison must have seen some pretty sweet royalty checks.

Let’s be honest: “I’m Blue” isn’t in the same league as other R&B treasures of the era. 1961 alone saw the release of “He Will Break Your Heart” by Jerry Butler, “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles, “Shop Around” by The Miracles, and “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King, among many other recordings that have yet to lose an iota of their luster. Still, “I’m Blue” is one of those stirring sides that captures singers who are simply unable to suppress their soulful expression, regardless of the composition’s quality. From its insistent piano figure and straightforward drumming to its utterly infectious vocal chants and impassioned responses, the Gospel-inflected elements of “I’m Blue” come together to create an earworm that, six decades later, shows no intention of releasing its grip on listeners.

Despite its staying power, “I’m Blue” remains shrouded in anonymity. Here was a female vocal group recording under a man’s name, while its lead singer—the source of the untamed retorts integral to the song’s success —went uncredited. Dig a little deeper, however, and the story begins to make sense.

The Ikettes were the vocal ensemble that provided backing vocals for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Before proceeding any further, an uncomfortable truth: Ike Turner was a deeply abusive and manipulative figure—a dyed-in-the-wool scumbag. Thanks to Tina Turner’s candid accounts and the revelations popularized by the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, his odious behavior has been thoroughly exposed.

Now comes the uncomfortable part. Paradoxically, even deeply flawed people can be culturally significant figures, and Ike Turner undeniably was. A pivotal, Zelig-like presence in the evolution of modern Blues, R&B, Rock and Roll, and Soul music, Turner, as an instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader, was involved in some of the more substantial recordings of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He was every bit as talented as he was controlling.

When it came time to cash in further on the fame that he and Tina had recently accrued with their hit “A Fool in Love,” Ike turned the spotlight on his background singers, an ensemble of women wearing his name. As for the uncredited lead singer, Delores Johnson, she was consigned to the netherworld of unfairly unrecognized supporting players that populate Pop music history. Hopefully she received a bonus when the single hit the pop Top Twenty and went to number three on the R&B charts. Given the man in charge, I tend to doubt it.

Duke Ellington didn’t live to a grand old age; he was seventy-five when he died in 1974. Yet the last decade of his life found The Master leading his inimitable jazz orchestra to achievements that, while not quite rivaling his massive triumphs of previous decades, still shine with radiant grandeur. During the years without Billy Strayhorn, his brilliant composing and arranging collaborator, who had died in 1967, Ellington seemed to double down, creating a flurry of fine recordings, including The Latin American Suite, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, The Second Sacred Concert, and This One’s for Blanton. Retirement wasn’t a word in Duke’s lexicon; music that went straight from his piano and pen to his incomparable ensemble was basic sustenance. The road and the recording studio were his true homes.

Continuing with his musical form of choice, Ellington wrote and recorded The New Orleans Suite in 1970, when he was seventy-one years old. Inspired by a city that has music coursing through its municipal veins, and by various significant figures with whom Ellington had collaborated, including such giants as Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, The New Orleans Suite—at least to my ears—doesn’t speak directly of The Big Easy. To his credit, Ellington didn’t try to specifically echo the polyphonic interplay and collective mirth that distinguished early New Orleans jazz. The music is pure Ellingtonia, rich in melody and instrumental texture, openly expressive in its bluesy declarations. It’s not the masterpiece that, say, The Far East Suite (1967) is, but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into, including lively spots for the trumpeters Cootie Williams and Cat Anderson, and the saxophonists Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, and Harold Ashby, as well as the last featured work of the alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, the loyal Ellington mainstay who died after the first of the recording sessions.

The album’s closing track remains my favorite. Maybe others more familiar with the achievements of the great gospel singer can hear intimations of her in Portrait of Mahalia Jackson, but they elude me. The tune is simplicity itself. Two blues themes conjoin, united by an insistent drum pattern that keeps what might have been dirge-like on its toes. It’s a modest little composition, yet only Ellington, through the rightness of his arrangement, could have produced the elegiac mood of this moving performance.

What gives the performance interest, and for Ellington fanatics, special note, is that it features a flute, played here by the saxophonist Norris Turney. Ellington, much like me, didn’t care for the use of flute in jazz. (Yet another reason why I so admire the man.) Yet here Turney holds the spotlight, and his contribution is a determining factor in the track’s success.

At seventy-one, some fifty years into a momentous career, Ellington pushes himself and tries something different. That it works beautifully would only be a surprise to those unfamiliar with his innate genius. Age only buffed Ellington’s luster. Now that’s inspiration we can all get behind.

As a prized session musician for Motown Records throughout the 1960s, Jamerson became more than a trusted hired hand. Working for a record label famous for exerting strict control over the presentation and musical production of its artists—think of the impeccably choreographed dance routines and manicured stage patter that characterized Motown acts, as well as the rigorous construction of songwriting and production that marked its epochal singles—Jamerson somehow became a musical free agent, encouraged to invent his own bass lines: intricate and surprising musical statements that roamed freely throughout a song, establishing an independent voice that caught the ear of a generation of attentive musicians, including Paul McCartney, while subconsciously alerting even the most casual listeners that something oddly beautiful was always bubbling up to the surface.

In the capable hands of Jamerson, the electric bass, an instrument that had, in its present form, only been around since the early 1950s, became an active and vital musical component. Listen to his sparkling work on such iconic tracks as “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “For Once in My Life,” among multitudes of others. He’s his own man, spinning effervescent bass lines whose melodic independence freed the instrument from its basic role of grounding harmony and rhythm. Jamerson was not to be denied, and Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. and the key composing and producing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland could only tamp him down at their own peril. Obviously, other session players were also essential in shaping the Motown sound, including drummers Benny Benjamin and Richard “Pistol” Allen, as well as other bassists. But no one had the autonomy that Jamerson did, and his audacious imagination set the standard.

There’s a whole lot going on during “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” the 1968 hit by the united forces of the Supremes and the Temptations. For starters, you’ve got the combined heft of eight singers. Diana Ross and Eddie Kendricks take the impassioned solo spots. Then, why not, there’s a spoken passage intoned by Otis Williams. You’d think that might have been enough to hold our attention. 1

Yet there’s James Jamerson, supporting, commenting, interjecting, making his presence known throughout the song. He’s the whipped cream on top of the luscious sundae. Take his contribution away and you still have a thrilling performance; add him, and you have a dazzling one.

1

Sounding much like a typical Motown track of the late 1960s, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” was neither composed nor produced by the Holland-Dozier-Holland team. Yet, taking cues from H-D-H, producers Nickolas Ashford (later of Ashford & Simpson) and Frank Wilson utilized Jamerson to his fullest advantage.

In late 1957, Urtreger, along with the outstanding American expatriate drummer Kenny Clarke, the bassist Pierre Michelot, and the tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen, accompanied Miles Davis as the trumpeter developed music for Elevator to the Gallows, the debut feature by director Louis Malle. Davis had accepted the offer to collaborate on the film while in Paris, combining the assignment with a short European tour alongside the same sidemen. It may be a persistent myth that Davis improvised the score during an initial screening of Elevator to the Gallows—he had, in fact, been working on loose sketches of musical themes for weeks beforehand—but the recording session itself appears to have come as a surprise to the other players. Davis introduced his basic ideas in the studio and then allowed controlled improvisation to guide the proceedings. The result was a series of magnificent solos from Davis, supported throughout by notable contributions from his collaborators, particularly Urtreger.

Apart from its moody beauty, the score remains fascinating for what it suggests about Davis’s artistic development. Its loose themes hint at the breakthrough of Kind of Blue in 1959, which found Davis working with modal forms in place of standard harmonic progressions. And his striking rapport with Urtreger anticipates his celebrated musical partnership with Bill Evans, which began the following year. Both Davis and Urtreger share an introverted lyricism that prizes economy and the musical le mot juste.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the recording is the way Davis’s personality permeates every moment. Through musical authority and sheer charisma, he could repeatedly impose his singular vision on his collaborators, infusing a recording with a distinct emotional atmosphere. My favorite example, among many, is Kind of Blue. I’ve always marveled at how Davis was able to sustain the same mysteriously poetic mood across studio sessions held more than a month apart.

He achieved similar magic during the single Elevator to the Gallows session, drawing out the lyrical sensibilities of four musicians who had spent much of the tour playing driving, straight-ahead bop. The blues ballad “Générique” remains a stunning example of both Davis’s introspective yearning and Urtreger’s sympathetic support.

Why I never fully explored Urtreger’s own recordings may come down to a personal quirk. I tend to treasure moments of musical bliss, wary that their luster might be diminished by less inspired work. It’s a ridiculous habit—one that has kept me from gaining a fuller appreciation of an apparently accomplished musician. To make belated amends, I now tip my hat to Urtreger by highlighting his solo interpretation of “Laura.” Superbe!

When there’s sibling discontent, though, you can find yourself facing a raging shitstorm. Sour grinds against sweet, darkness opposes light, velocity clatters into repose.

Then there are those unlikely encounters when opposites, if not attract, at least nudge each other toward greatness. I’ve long been fascinated by the one-time recording encounter by the pianist Art Tatum and the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, two titans of their respective instruments. Tatum and Webster met in an L.A. studio in 1956, alongside bassist Red Callender and drummer Bill Douglas.

Both men obviously respected each other’s immense talents. Yet could two instrumentalists have been further apart in their basic aesthetic? Tatum seemed to possess a separate mind and body in his fingers. They took on a life of their own when they touched the piano, voraciously scooping up keys as if sustenance were to be found in capturing as many notes as possible. Tearing across the keyboard with supreme command, Tatum—a one-man orchestra who worked best as a solo act—became the equivalent of a brilliant, voluble friend who enthralls a room for a while but don’t know when enough is enough. His virtuosity is stunning yet, for me, exhausting. I can take in his voluminous artistry only in compact doses.

Webster, on the other hand, was one of those giants who allowed the sheer beauty of his tone and exquisite taste to serve as his calling card. He could turn up the heat when the context called for it, but no matter the tempo or intensity, Webster reined in his notes. He said what needed to be said and little more. There’s a selfless beauty to his parsimonious nature.

So bringing Tatum and Webster together was no sure thing. In fact, it was more akin to a culinary experiment combining clashing ingredients. Their rendition of the ballad “My One and Only Love” is a case in point. Things seem to be pretty much on course through Webster’s unadorned reading of the melody, yet you can almost hear Tatum growing restless. By the time he digs into his own solo, he’s darting around the keys with aplomb. Webster then begins his improvisation, taking it characteristically nice and easy. Yet Tatum doesn’t seem to realize that his featured moment in the spotlight is over. “Busy” isn’t the word for his accompaniment. It’s a wonder he allows Webster even to reach the bridge before he bursts forth again, his fingers dashing across the keyboard.

How was Webster was able to stay the course? To me, it sounds as though he has artfully dissociated himself from Tatum. Webster fashions himself into his own star, circling with effortless grace around Tatum’s dazzling sun. Yet for all the artistic disparity on display here, Tatum, in isolation, sounds as magisterial as ever, and Webster is, miraculously, as affecting as always.

Oil and water? You decide.

To my great dismay, I find myself oddly immune to the charms of many important jazz singers—vocal artists whose technical skill and communicative power should have me kvelling with delight but too often leave me cold. Holiday is the rare exception, an artist whose extraordinary gifts continue to entrance.

Musical artists of every stripe have paid tribute to Holiday since her death, producing commemorative recordings that range from respectful impersonation to outré reimaginings of her work. Here, I want to consider two of the more left-of-center homages—tributes that approach this singular artist with imaginative nerve.

A tribute to Holiday that eschews vocals may seem counterintuitive, but her supreme interpretive powers and virtuosic improvisational skills were as important to instrumentalists as they were to other singers. (Consider, by contrast, how an instrumentalist like Miles Davis has influenced singers through his tone and phrasing.)

In 1961, with Holiday’s passing still fresh, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin recorded a loving tribute to her: White Gardenia. Built around songs that Holiday immortalized, including “God Bless the Child” and “Don’t Explain,” White Gardenia showcases Griffin’s robust tone alongside stellar contributions from fellow jazz luminaries such as Clark Terry, as well as tasteful arrangements by Melba Liston and Norman Simmons.

The album’s only original composition is the title track, a ballad written by Griffin. His full-bodied horn carries the performance, its sumptuous tone bringing the lyrical melody to life with warmth and conviction. I particularly enjoy how Griffin—a hard bop stylist renowned for his cascading torrents of rapidly tongued notes whenever the mood struck him (and it struck him often)—simply can’t contain himself, unleashing a streaming flourish into what had, until that moment, been a notably restrained performance. It’s the very opposite of Holiday’s approach: she was a rigorously economical artist, while Griffin’s outburst becomes a necessary assertion of his loquacious musical personality.

In 2009, Warpaint, a West Coast band with few, if any, connections to the jazz universe, recorded “Billie Holiday” on their EP Exquisite Corpses. The song is nothing if not a question mark wrapped in a riddle. Its chant of a melody is essentially a musical reading of Holiday’s name. Original verses follow alluding to a romantic entanglement, the lyrics often deliberately engulfed by the arrangement. Unexpectedly, the band slips into the 1964 Martha and the Vandellas hit “My Guy” (written by Smokey Robinson). Huh?

Is the song actually a tribute to Holiday, or did someone simply stumble upon the central melody while looking at her name? Are the original lyrics connected to Holiday in any way? Is the “My Guy” interpolation a nod to Holiday’s signature song “My Man”? For me, these unanswered questions are the very heart of this cryptic and haunting song.

Do either the performances by Warpaint or Johnny Griffin specifically—or even tangentially—evoke Holiday’s artistry? I believe they somehow do, though your ears may tell you otherwise. Either way, if they lead you back to Holiday’s music, that’s a win-win.

Billie Holiday died on July 17, 1959, at the age of forty-four. I think of Holiday much as I do a handful of towering jazz figures—Lester Young, Miles Davis, and Bill Frisell among them: artists who completely transcend their given instruments, transforming them into handy tools for deeply personal expression. Miles may indeed have played a trumpet but to merely label him a trumpeter diminishes the sheer individuality of what came out of his horn. Holiday was a singer, but what she did with her voice—and with the relationship between voice and song—was so singular that the word singer can neither define nor contain her artistry. No one sounded quite like her during her curtailed lifetime, and despite her profound influence, no one has since.

Holiday has also become a litmus test for writers. You can try to parse her inimitable style or describe her extraordinary gift for emotional expression, but no matter your attempts at insight or eloquence, you never quite reach the mark. Nor should you. Some artists possess gifts so mysterious that they are best approached with a measure of distance, allowing them to exert their inexplicable magic while we remain grateful that it exists.

So, let’s return to her art and revel in its enchanted authority. Below is a rarity that reveals Holiday’s unmatched gift for unfettered communication, shorn clean of sentimentality and ornamentation, and her ability to establish a chilling intimacy with both a song and her listeners.

Possibly the most unlikely song Holiday was ever captured interpreting is “My Yiddishe Momme,” a heart-on-sleeve homage made famous by Sophie Tucker’s 1928 hit recording. Although the year in which Holiday was informally recorded has been established—1956—most other details remain cryptic. Whose house is she in? Who’s playing the piano? Whose child is heard so fortuitously, yet so fittingly, in the background?

Most mystifying is the way Holiday fuses her own utterly distinctive background with the song’s ethnically explicit lyrics to create a moving—let’s just say it—heartbreaking interpretation. In her hands, the specificity of origin and detail falls away, leaving her, and us, to confront pure emotion.

It’s an album that, in its original form—shorn of the de rigueur bonus tracks that have become the norm since the advent of the CD era—is over almost before it’s begun. Yet its brevity is essential to the album’s artistic success, summing up the band’s commitment to no-nonsense rock and roll. Hit hard, say only what needs to be said, then jump in the band van and head to the next town, pronto.

Although John Fogerty, the band’s mastermind, might have rejected the idea of an overarching artistic aesthetic as pretentious, he actually had a blueprint for CCR that kept the spotlight fixed on his lean songwriting, ferocious vocals, and the band’s extraordinarily disciplined approach to utilitarian arrangements. In retrospect, it was all very punk—if you can imagine a punk band as tight as Booker T. & the M.G.’s, with a singer as soulful as David Ruffin and songcraft approaching Leiber and Stoller standards.

Yet I didn’t stay with CCR. I soon became enthralled by the instrumental virtuosity of British blues rock and—please forgive me—prog rock and fusion, leading eventually to a fascination with jazz. CCR, to their credit, wanted little to do with any of this fancy stuff. The band followed Green River with two more strong albums, Willy and the Poor Boys and Cosmo’s Factory, along with a slew of memorable singles, before disbanding in 1972.

At the time, in the early seventies, I shamefully took CCR for granted. Now I hear them as nothing less than the Hemingway of classic rock bands.

1: Green River was the third album CCR released in 1969—a level of back to the grindstone productivity typical of the band.

In jazz circles, the legacy of the late Clive Davis will always revolve around the alleged day in 1973 when the then-Columbia Records honcho dismissed established jazz stars including Ornette Coleman and Bill Evans from the label. Personally, I lay even greater crimes against humanity at Davis’s feet, including later giving the world Barry Manilow and Air Supply.¹

Did anyone actually imagine that the free-jazz avatar Coleman—or even the more popular Evans—was ever going to sell in numbers that could justify his place at a megacorporation like Columbia, then flush with pop music success? I tend instead to be grateful that Coleman, Evans, and a few others were given a moment in the corporate sun—and that they took full advantage of it.

During that brief tenure—roughly the year 1972—Coleman managed to bring to life two ambitious, intermittently successful, yet consistently fascinating recordings: Science Fiction and Skies of America. The latter was an original orchestral project that set Coleman’s searing alto saxophone against the London Symphony Orchestra. I don’t find it wholly satisfying and leave it to others to evaluate its place in Coleman’s oeuvre and in jazz history.

Science Fiction is another story altogether. Coleman assembled a loyal group of collaborators—including bassist Charlie Haden, tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, drummers Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell, and trumpeters Don Cherry and Bobby Bradford—then turned them loose on a batch of his originals that had never before been recorded. The result was an album alive with edgy improvisation and razor-sharp ensemble interplay, as these longtime confreres proved themselves perfectly attuned to Coleman’s alternative musical vision. 2

“Law Years” is simply a classic performance. Lurching yet lyrical, the tune announces itself unmistakably as a Coleman composition. Haden sets the scene with an unaccompanied bass statement of the distinctive melody before, with jarring suddenness, he digs in for the first of the performance’s five featured improvisations. Redman and Bradford follow with focused solos whose restraint only heightens their intensity. Only then does the master appear. Coleman’s engulfing solo, bursting with memorable phrases, is as startling as a brief thunderstorm, after which he cedes the spotlight to Higgins and Blackwell before a short, sharp reprise of the melody. Could the performance have been three times as long, as was typical of free-jazz recordings of the period? Sure—but who’s complaining?

¹ I still can’t dismiss Davis’s exceptional accomplishments at Columbia, even after this ruthless bloodletting. The late sixties and early seventies found him signing Janis Joplin, Santana, and Bruce Springsteen, among other worthies. He also kept Miles Davis on Columbia’s roster.

² In 2000, Columbia released The Complete Science Fiction Sessions, an invaluable addendum that included additional collaborators and sparkling Coleman compositions, including the swirling dirge “Broken Shadows,” which had previously appeared on the 1969 live recording Crisis.

The Swing Era was at its peak. The country craved optimism, and the rhythmic vitality of the many popular big bands and smaller ensembles provided both a welcome diversion from hard times and an elevated aesthetic vision that offered hope. Your job may have been in jeopardy, but you could still dance away your blues, or at least turn on the radio and take comfort in the realization that if a phenomenon like Duke Ellington existed, how bad could life really be?

Not that instrumental music can, or even should, pinpoint a specific moment in social history. Music without words cannot define, but it can evoke. Enter “Blues in C-Sharp Minor,” credited to Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, a majestic recording that, for me at least, cannot help but reflect the societal anxiety hovering over the era.

In 1936, Wilson, like Lionel Hampton, was a member of Benny Goodman’s quartet; Goodman himself was the most popular bandleader of the Swing Era. A brilliant pianist, Wilson brought the refinement and technical elan he had acquired through early classical training to an innately driving sense of swing. He was also the first African American to be featured in an integrated ensemble. Owing to the attention he garnered through his work with Goodman, Wilson was given the opportunity to record under his own name. Surrounding himself with some of the most illustrious soloists from the era’s leading big bands, as well as phenomenally talented newcomers such as Billie Holiday, Wilson produced recordings that, in their concise and focused artistry, remain among the high points of a remarkably fecund musical epoch.

“Blues in C-Sharp Minor” is exactly what it claims to be: a down-tempo blues that, after its whisp of a melody line, showcases compact, highly memorable improvisations by Wilson, clarinetist Buster Bailey, tenor saxophonist Chu Berry, and trumpeter Roy Eldridge, the last two among the greatest jazz instrumentalists of their time. What truly distinguishes the performance, apart from the individuality of the soloists, is the overwhelming insistence of the bass line, performed by yet another superb Swing Era musician, Israel Crosby. It is this simple yet strikingly repetitive anchor that sets my imagination in motion.

Although I completely reject the notion that wordless music can pin down specific images (unless it is explicitly mimetic in nature—if you want me to think of a train, mimic its rhythmic movement and I will), “Blues in C-Sharp Minor” has become, for me, the ultimate instrumental anthem of the Great Depression. Crosby’s bass pattern is transformed into a tolling bell of inexorable fate; Bailey, Berry and Eldridge’s melancholic solos are steeped in sorrow, while Wilson’s measured improvisation is all caution, a dogged reminder that danger may be lurking just around the corner. I conjure bread lines, fascist rallies, and unemployed men aimlessly wandering the urban streets in weather-beaten hats. (1)

Or so I envision it. Feel free to summon your own images—or reject the entire notion. In its chiseled artistry, “Blues in C-Sharp Minor” needs to be nothing more, and nothing less, than a pinnacle of chamber jazz, regardless of era.

(1)

If thoughts of evoking the hardships of the Depression were on the minds of any of the musicians, we will never know. But thoughts of saying something fresh over a blues form each had played thousands of times, while also navigating an atypical key, certainly were.

Competitive sports? Forget it. Porch hangouts with a blues guitar virtuoso? If you insist. (A fond callout to picker extraordinaire Roy Book Binder, who died in March. Then only in his late twenties, Roy seemed as elemental as the United States itself. He appeared to be a living mythic figure, some extraordinary combination of weathered folk artist and Beat-era free spirit.)

Six decades on, my memories remain as sharp as direct sunlight: the incredible sense of discovery—personal, social, artistic—that an average day up there in the bucolic woods brought. It was a place where your perspective could be changed.

A few indelible memories:

Having the entire camp woken up in the middle of the night to gather on the field and watch the moon landing on what might have been the camp’s only TV.

Being taken to a local screening of Woodstock in the summer of 1970, and then having us all gleefully scream out Country Joe McDonald’s F-U-C-K chant.

Going on an afternoon jaunt to “liberate” abandoned roadside houses—what I guess you’d now call breaking and entering.

You get the picture.

It wasn’t all fun and games. You can’t bring a few hundred adolescent kids together and expect social status and raging hormones not to stir up occasional churning waters. Things got messy at times. Despite the engulfing peace-and-love vibe, kids remained kids. But the benevolent ethos of the era prevailed, and the counselors—figures of experience and maturity whose average age was probably twenty—usually ironed things out.

For a sheltered Brooklyn kid accustomed to circumscribed social situations, the blend of free thinking and imaginative conjecture, all taking place in the pastoral woods, was a daily eye-opener. I wasn’t always happy there, but that, too, was part of the learning experience.

How my parents had the foresight to choose this progressive summer experience for me, I will never know. I’m just thankful that they did.

2026 Perspective Report:

I was exceedingly privileged to have the opportunity to leave the hot, dirty city and drink in the fresh air and fresh thoughts. And I was even more privileged to have been too young to worry about the draft.

Acknowledged.

In many ways, though, this is a very American story of unlikely transformation. Raised by straight-laced parents in turn-of-the-century Davenport, Iowa—hardly a hotbed of innovative musical culture—Bix (I can’t bring myself to identify him as “Beiderbecke,” that ungainly, distinctly un-jazzlike moniker) somehow became obsessed with jazz, an African American art form then in its infancy. He taught himself cornet and, in a brief but potent career (roughly 1923–1931), not only established himself as a brilliant horn player but also carved out a stylistic path distinct from that of the magisterial Louis Armstrong.

Let that sink in. Here’s a guy in his twenties finding and perfecting an innovative style—one that emphasizes lyricism, harmonic experimentation, and rhythmic ease—while Armstrong is simultaneously creating what we have come to know as jazz itself. In grand American—dare we say Gatsbyesque?—fashion, Bix writes his own rulebook. Armstrong and other African American visionaries had assuredly laid the paving stones of the new music, but Bix almost immediately took a daring detour.

After creating his own series of masterful improvisations in both small and large jazz ensembles, Bix muddied the stylistic waters even further by indulging his passion for classical music. I’m not familiar with the work of the American composer Eastwood Lane, but judging from Bix’s own four keyboard pieces—said to be heavily influenced by Lane—I’m not rushing off to immerse myself in the art of this now-forgotten figure. “In a Mist,” with Bix at the piano, was recorded in 1927. For me, it has obvious historical interest, but if Bix’s name weren’t attached to it, I’m not sure I’d give it a second listen. It’s stiff and, lacking any improvisation, staid and, well, a bit self conscious. Nor should we overlook Bix’s enthusiastic yet rudimentary piano skills.

Yet in the right hands, “In a Mist” can be successfully revived, and in 1964, Clark Terry was just the man to breathe new life into it. Where Bix played the cornet, a smaller horn, Terry was highly accomplished on both trumpet and flugelhorn (hence the title of the album on which “Mist” appears: The Happy Horns of Clark Terry). How does Terry bring charm to a piece I had found distinctly lacking in charm? Most likely through three ingredients.

The first is the trademark warmth and tonal beauty of Terry’s flugelhorn. The addition of brief bursts of improvisation doesn’t hurt, either. In just a few bars, Terry displays his phenomenal technique, enlivening the performance with sparkle and wit. Lastly, Bob Hammer’s thoughtful arrangement brings contemporary zest to this period piece. By isolating and highlighting the work’s contrasting themes, Hammer even introduces a fresh touch of modernism.

Bix, ever the forward thinker, would have approved.

Another pithy line that speaks to the heart of Davis’s musical approach—at its best—is this: “Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.”

I don’t take his words literally. By “pretty,” I don’t think Davis meant an instantly gratifying, universally appealing musical moment that delivers only superficial pleasure. Rather, I take “pretty” to mean the right note—the one that perfectly expresses the pleasure or pain the artist intends to convey. Create a single moment that evokes intense emotion, and you’re already three-quarters of the way home.

No musician, in any genre, could perform this feat of aural magic quite like Davis. He proved it hundreds of times across the myriad recordings of his five-decade career. Yet when I think of a quintessential example of his ability to say the most with the fewest notes, I turn to the title track from the 1957 album Miles Ahead, his magnificent collaboration with arranger Gil Evans. Davis and Evans share composition credit for “Miles Ahead,” and for me, every note Davis plays here—on flugelhorn rather than his customary trumpet—is a “pretty” one.

Without ever raising its voice, each note sings; each soars. Every phrase feels essential, as if no note could be removed or replaced. Weaving through Evans’s large-ensemble interjections—superb in their own right—Davis places his gem-like notes with exquisite deliberation, yet nothing could sound more natural or spontaneous. His phrases become words in a wordless poem, one rich with emotion and mystery.

A mid-tempo performance that floats with effortless assurance, “Miles Ahead” lacks the stark, emotionally fraught gravitas of a Davis ballad such as “My Ship,” also from the album. Yet despite its brevity and buoyant spirit, “Miles Ahead” is shattering in its artistry.

“Pretty,” indeed.

*Davis later elaborated on this remark in the interview excerpt below. His comments on racism strip away the line’s outrageous nature and reveal the personal anguish that lay beneath it.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1746557053429448

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination... Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”

Jarmusch’s statement resonated because, for too long, I’d been preoccupied with the role of artistic originality and the function of influence in shaping individual expression. In other words, is a singular artistic voice—one that stands apart as utterly distinct from others—the apex of creativity? Is a totally unique vision the elusive goal all genuine artists should pursue? Or is an open, conscious, and identifiable embrace of preexisting influences an equally valid path to artistic worth?

They’re good questions, and, no surprise, I don’t have definitive answers to any of them. But I do know this: while I’m thrilled by the work of idiosyncratic musical talents who seem to have sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus—Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman, to name an obvious handful (though each artist’s formative influences can be uncovered with only a modicum of digging)—I’m equally stirred by the work of those whose artistic expression openly reflects the colossi, or near colossi, who came before them. There are only so many giants to go around; most artists have no choice but to walk in their footsteps.

Which inevitably leads me back to William DeVaughn.

I came late to “Be Thankful for What You Got,” a 1974 R&B high-water mark by a one-hit wonder, but I could listen to it at least once a day. (I don’t, for fear that repetition might someday dull its charms.) While the song proclaims a message we can all profit from—yes, we should be thankful for what each of us has—it’s the blend of openly displayed musical influences, fused into a satisfying new creation, that makes me smile with pop-pleasure contentment and laugh at the sheer audacity of its borrowings.

The performance grabs from some of the best early-to-mid-Seventies R&B with eager hands. We are soon in the world of Philly soul, the jazzy guitar lines and floating vibraphone shimmers conjuring classic Gamble and Huff productions, (1) yet the insistent groove, driven by the insinuating drumming, drops us squarely into Al Green territory. The bass line smacks a bit of Norman Whitfield’s Motown productions.

And then there’s the lead vocal. Let’s just say that if there had been a national Curtis Mayfield sound-alike contest, DeVaughn would have walked off with first prize—and maybe even a cease-and-desist order from Mayfield’s legal department. He has Mayfield’s trademark falsetto and behind-the-beat delivery—his very Chicago cool—down to a tee. So before you know it, “Be Thankful” has conjured up the sounds of North, South, and East R&B. And don’t let me stop you from spotting other peak era influences. The more you parse, the more you find.

Yet for all its unapologetic style-grabbing, “Be Thankful for What You Got” stands proudly on its own. We can love it for many obvious reasons—the killer chorus, the way DeVaughn pronounces “antennas” as “Ain’t-tennas” among them—but flaunting the R&B riches of a great era may be what we respond to most.

Is it all so shamelessly brazen that it actually becomes a celebration of its influences?

Bob Dylan may have summed it up perfectly with one of his album titles: Love and Theft.

1:

Although not a Gamble and Huff production, “Be Thankful For What You Got” (also known as “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got”) features such ace Philly soul session players as guitarist Norman Harris and vibraphonist Vince Montana.

As anyone familiar with the art of this great jazz singer and pianist knows, Shirley Horn (1934–2005) was a woman who took her time. Her ballad tempos were invariably leisurely—and, if the mood struck her, near-glacial. Caressing each word in whispery tones and stretching a song’s rhythm until it practically cried “uncle,” Horn reached her destination when she was good and ready, the tune pulling into the station only when she deemed it on schedule.

Listening to Horn required patience, which was the last thing I possessed until I was well into middle age. Maybe it was the lingering effects of what I now realize may have been undiagnosed ADHD, but sitting still to listen to—let alone enjoy—a motionless ballad just wasn’t in the cards. I recognized Horn’s artistry, but I was content to let others take a warm bath in it. I needed things to swing harder and faster.

Then the years passed and, fancy that, I began to change. Waking up one day in my mid-sixties, I suddenly realized that, given the choice, what I most wanted to hear when listening to jazz were ballads and mid-tempo performances. If aging had rewarded me with anything, it was a new appreciation for the artistry of introspection and composure. I had finally calmed down—or, more likely, slowed down—and with that repose, a new love blossomed. It was time to reinvestigate Shirley Horn.

Horn may have been primarily a languid ballad singer, but an animated spirit could still take hold of her. Picking up the tempo and swinging with joy, if not sheer force, she took full advantage of her exceptional command of inner rhythm even when moving things along in a zestier mood. There’s a marvelous sense of personal contentment and emotional containment in these brisker performances; Horn willingly reigns herself in, allowing only as much passion as she deems fit.

Yet it’s Horn’s way with a ballad that gained her jazz immortality. “It Had to Be You,” from the 1991 album You Won’t Forget Me, is a quiet masterpiece. Horn’s breathy vocal and perfectly supportive piano work; the single-heartbeat undercurrent of her longtime rhythm section (Charles Ables on electric bass and Steve Williams on drums); and the sensitive restraint of Branford Marsalis’s tenor saxophone all blend seamlessly, transporting us into a world of musical serenity that only Horn could conjure.

For me, aging has come with a payoff. I can finally savor Shirley Horn as I should have all along.

One of the best places to find capable drummers who never quite grabbed the spotlight is on organ recordings from the late 1950s and ’60s. It’s rare for a musical genre to be initiated by a single artist, but that was essentially the case with organ albums. Jimmy Smith, a resourceful Philadelphia musician who had previously played piano and bass, bought a portable Hammond B-3 organ, mastered its dual keyboards and foot pedals, and then hit the clubs. An instant sensation, Smith began recording in 1956.

True to what would become the norm, Smith entered the studio with a fine drummer whose name rings few bells today (and may have tingled few even back then as well). Experienced yet basically unknown, Bay Perry, manned the sticks on A New Sound... A New Star..., Vol. 1, Smith’s debut album. A tradition had begun: wherever there was a Hammond organ, there was often a drummer whose talent far outshone his fame. Let’s listen to a few exemplary examples of these dependable, if faceless, yeomen.

Big John Patton was just one of the many popular organists—steeped in jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B—who sprang up like mushrooms after a rainstorm in Jimmy Smith’s wake. “The Yodel” kicks off his 1966 album Got a Good Thing Goin’. Hugh Walker, a name now basically lost to history, is behind the drums, immediately making his presence known with a martial beat that never lets up, somehow transforming itself from head-spinningly wacky to deliciously funky. Everything then rides on Walker’s paramilitary groove. Richard Landrum’s congas cling to the drummer like beans to rice, while the always swinging guitarist Grant Green can’t help but swing even more. Patton himself settles into the churning rhythmic undertow, turning in a dazzling solo. The organist’s concluding improv is faded out; you can just imagine him unwilling to let go of Walker’s beat until the producer finally pulled the plug.

“Baby Face” Willette also came to Hammond with fingers flying and feet dancing. The basic blues “Swingin’ at Sugar Ray’s” — inspired by the popular Harlem club owned by boxer Sugar Ray Robinson — from Willette’s 1961 debut album Face to Face featured the omnipresent Grant Green, the little-remembered tenor saxophonist Fred Jackson, and the drummer Ben Dixon.

These days, Dixon may be better known than Walker, but that’s still not enough recognition for this trusty journeyman. A glance at his discography quickly reveals that if you were making an organ — or organ-adjacent — recording during the genre’s heyday, Dixon was the drummer you wanted to call.

It doesn’t sound as though Dixon is doing anything especially flashy on “Swingin’ at Sugar Ray’s,” but that may be the whole point: he doesn’t have to. His light-as-air cymbal work and perfectly placed snare interjections keep his compatriots on their toes and the track, well, swingin’. Buoyant and jubilant, Dixon is the glue holding this emblematic performance together.

Finally, how could I resist calling attention to the drummer Jimmie Smith, or turning to his work with yet another great organist who took the drummer’s near namesake, Jimmy Smith, as an early model? The now-revered Larry Young eventually carried the organ far beyond the Smith foundation on which he built his initial style. His daring work on the 1966 album Unity, followed by his groundbreaking explorations with the Tony Williams Lifetime, established a new model for the electric organ — one that absorbed both the modal innovations of John Coltrane and the sonic intensity of rock music.

Young was still deep in a Jimmy Smith groove when he recorded the marvelous Horace Silver composition “Nica’s Dream” for his 1960 album Young Blues. Drummer Smith introduces a Latin rhythm that effortlessly shifts into swing and back again throughout this vibrant performance, tracing the contours of Silver’s arrangement. Smith remains continuously inventive yet so discreet that his contributions can easily go unnoticed. He does what so many of these quiet near giants could do: keep everything moving and perfectly on course while adding telling subtleties that never drew attention away from the featured players. Professionalism has rarely sounded so noble.

Let’s not forget the drumming. It’s often said that a band is only as good as its drummer, an assertion I agree with. I’d go further: there’s no such thing as a timeless pop recording without, at the very least, a solid drum performance—and in many cases, a distinctive drum part that catapults a song from fine to fantastic.

Below are a handful of examples of pop classics that benefited from the contributions of alert, creative drummers. That each of these musicians remains largely unknown to the vast number of listeners who’ve enjoyed these songs is yet another bittersweet element of pop music’s magic.

The marvelous vocalist Chuck Jackson may not be forgotten—if you’ve ever heard his handful of hit singles they aren’t likely to ever be erased from your internal musical hard drive—but he certainly doesn’t get the collective love he still deserves. In that he can join the long line of pop music luminaries who, no matter their talent, had but a micro moment in the spotlight and then were set adrift to make way for the next sensation. Hey, it’s a tough business…

Jackson’s peak may have been his 1962 hit “Any Day Now,” a wrenchingly sung ballad by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard.* “I Don’t Want to Cry,” a Top 40 hit from the previous year, is another animal altogether. If “Any Day Now” is a soulful stroll, “I Don’t Want to Cry” is a spirited sprint. Jackson sounds as if he’s running from the hounds of despair, with drummer Gary Chester just barely holding them at bay.

Relentlessly working the brushes rather than sticks, Chester nips at Jackson’s heels, urging him on. He never lets up—and, in turn, neither does Jackson. The slashing strings and staccato guitar interjections heighten the drama, but I hear the performance primarily as a duet between the impassioned singer and the insistent drummer. If you think I’m hyperbolizing a bit (Me?), just try to imagine the performance without Chester’s contribution.

That Chester—who can be heard on dozens of Sixties pop hits—was also Burt Bacharach’s favorite studio drummer comes as no surprise. The maestro understood that, for a song to truly register, the musician providing the rhythmic pulse is an indispensable lynchpin—even if the intended listener only registers that hired hand’s contribution subliminally.**

“I Know (You Don't Love Me No More),” a New Orleans R&B mainstay, was Barbara George’s only foray into the big leagues. Reaching number three on the Top 40 charts in late 1961 (and number one on the R&B charts), the song is an infectious piece of Big Easy pop that rides on George’s ardent vocal, Marcel Richardson’s jaunty piano runs, and a delightfully elemental trumpet solo by Melvin Lastie. So far, so good—but there’s no denying that the beating heart of the performance is John Boudreaux’s drumming. Elemental, rock‑steady, and funky in a barely‑there way, Boudreaux’s work is as economical as the song requires; yet listen to how he snaps the performance into focus when needed. The crack of Boudreaux’s snare, his drum roll announcing the trumpet solo, those perfectly judged fills that punctuate George’s vocal and keep the whole performance on its feet—it’s so simple, and simply beautiful.

Procol Harum was lucky to have one of the great rock drummers as a key member of the band. B.J. Wilson brought his propulsive and dramatic work to nearly all the band’s classic late Sixties and early Seventies work. I say nearly because he’s notably absent from the group’s most famous song, “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” (As is Robin Trower, the band’s future guitar hero.)

There’s a lot going on during this Summer of Love hit (for those born in the current century, that was in 1967). Between Matthew Fisher’s ethereal organ quoting Bach; Gary Brooker’s majestically earnest vocal; and Keith Relf’s defiantly impenetrable lyrics, you have plenty to chew on. And then there’s the contributions of Bill Eyden, a name lost, if indeed ever known, to the annals of rock music history.

Eyden was a session drummer who was brought in to assist the fledgling band on their debut release. Thanks to his prominent place in the single’s mix, it’s obvious that Eyden, a respected jazz drummer at the time, somehow understood what PM were going for. His alert drumming cuts through the psychedelic haze with forceful concentration, keeping things lively and on course. As it’s difficult to imagine Gary Chester’s work removed from “I Don’t Want to Cry,” it’s practically impossible to envision “WSOP” without Eyden’s buoyant beat keeping the song from slipping into the lugubrious mists. Let’s put it this way, Eyden rocks, and “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is all the better for it.

*

(“I Wake Up Crying,” another passion-filled 1962 Jackson–Bacharach collaboration, is not to be missed either.)

**

Chester had his moment in the sun on “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” Dionne Warwick’s 1968 hit, where he fills the space between verses with bass drum kicks. His unexpected interjections are integral to the performance.

Bonus Track

Since we’ve got percussion on our minds, there’s always Jackson’s “I Keep Forgettin’,” a Leiber and Stoller extravaganza that features timpani, xylophone, and any number of other membranophones. All that aside, Jackson, of course, sings the stuffing out of it.

My high school friends and I had our own designated hangout. To call it a “turf” would have been ludicrous; that might have implied this bunch of low-impact nerds could—or would—defend it if challenged. We were nice Jewish kids: you want this part of the block? It’s yours. We’ll find other real estate.

Still, every so often a few of us would break ranks and spend time with another group of peripheral acquaintances on their own territory.

As I remember it, it was a spring night when a few close friends and I wandered over to a nearby school—no more than half a mile away—to mix up the routine. It wasn’t a momentous visit. We sat around the schoolyard, carefully shooting the shit, always aware that we were, if not intruders, then outsiders who didn’t quite fit and never could. This crowd was tougher than ours (who wasn’t?), and without saying so, they made it clear we were merely tolerated guests for the evening. Comrades in mayhem we were not.

What united us was the music coming from what was probably a radio—portable tape machines weren’t yet common. We leaned against the schoolyard fence: the guys clustered together, the girls—whom we didn’t know and who showed little interest in getting to know us—a few feet away.

The Allman Brothers Band had broken big that year. At Fillmore East, an epochal live recording whose blues-rock intensity and invention still sound fresh more than half a century later, had already been making waves. Then, in early February 1972, Eat a Peach—the band’s first release after the untimely death of their leader, the brilliant guitarist Duane Allman—arrived. It was a huge hit, deservedly so.

The song filling the schoolyard air that night was most likely one of the album’s live tracks, “One Way Out,” a driving interpretation of a 1962 recording by the iconic blues singer and harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson.* Recorded in 1971, when the band was at its peak, the track showcases the rhythm section’s effervescent swing, Gregg Allman’s lusty vocals, and Duane’s slicing slide guitar. But the secret sauce for me, then and now, is the stunning work of the band’s other guitarist, Dickey Betts.

Do I need to sing the praises of Duane Allman? Gone too soon at 24, he was one of the most skilled and imaginative guitarists of an era bursting with extraordinary players—a genuine guitar deity. Betts, on the other hand, while not overlooked, may still be underrated. Where Duane was extravagant and dramatic, Betts was subtler, more refined. But this isn’t a simple comparison; both were rare stylists whose differences illuminated each other’s strengths.

What made Betts special was his melodic instinct. When improvising, he tended toward sharp, succinct phrases that linked together with beautiful fluidity. His solo on “One Way Out” is typical of his shorter blues statements: so drenched in pithy melody it sounds composed. The phrases feel inevitable, as if they’d always belonged to the song.*

I was no casual fan in 1972. I had absorbed and dissected the work of my guitar heroes—Clapton, Hendrix, Beck—and over the previous two years had made room for Allman and Betts. And I was cocky; I didn’t expect many of my peers to be as attentive to the intricacies of these players.

So there I was, grooving to “One Way Out” with the schoolyard crowd when Betts’s solo arrived. Suddenly, everyone—guys and girls—started singing along to the lines he was playing. Not humming, not mimicking guitar licks—singing.

I remember feeling humbled and exhilarated at the same time. Here was the beauty of melodic improvisation. It wasn’t a secret language reserved for the cognoscenti or the superfan. Believe me, I wasn’t surrounded by budding musicologists that night. Yet they heard it—they got it—and joined right in, effortlessly.

What I learned was simple: if a solo carries a melody you can sing, people will connect to it and hold it close as an essential part of the song. It’s as true now as it was then—and as it was before.

Is it much of a leap to vault backward from Betts’s blues-rock to Louis Armstrong’s early jazz? Hardly. Melody is melody, regardless of genre. Listen to Armstrong’s second cornet improvisation on “Potato Head Blues” from 1927—it shares the same concision, structure, and commitment to singable melody as Betts’s solo on “One Way Out.” Betts may not have been thinking of Armstrong when he shaped that solo, but without the man from New Orleans leading the way, the foundation might not have been there.

Bless them—melody makers both.

*

1972 was a long time ago. The song I heard that night might have been a live version of “Trouble No More” or “Done Somebody Wrong.” No matter. Betts’s solos on all these performances are poised, marvelously phrased, and, above all, melodic.

*

Betts’s solo was a true improvisation, not a set piece. Enough alternate live versions from that period are now available to reveal how differently he approached it each time.

I’ve decided to honor the great man on his centenary not with a sweeping overview of his multidirectional music, but with personal glimpses into my own Miles obsession. Occasionally, I ponder the sweeping Davis repertoire and wonder how this incomparable improviser might have interpreted certain material he never got around to recording. It’s a parlor game, steeped in fantasy. By imagining myself as a producer—or at least an acquaintance whose advice Davis respected—I become a proxy collaborator. I suppose it’s a lot less grandiose than picturing how I might have advised Caesar about attending the Senate on that fateful March day.

So here are a few pieces of music I can envision Davis tackling, had he been so inclined.

If Davis recorded a song from the worlds of Sixties pop, rock, or R&B before he took on “Guinnevere,” I’m unaware of it.* David Crosby’s haunting piece, a highlight of Crosby, Stills & Nash—the mega-hit album released in late May 1969—obviously crossed Davis’s radar, as it did for most sentient beings under the age of fifty. Davis’s version—“fantasia” might be a more apt term—was recorded in January 1970 with an expanded unit that included three percussionists, two keyboardists, and an electric sitarist. It was such a personal interpretation that an off put Crosby supposedly asked Davis to take his name off the song. (Davis’s adaptation was eventually released nine years later on the compilation album Circle in the Round.)

Another Crosby tune, “Tamalpais High (At About 3)” from his first solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name (released in February 1971), might have been a fine fit for Davis. “Tamalpais,” much like “Guinnevere,” features a recurring guitar figure that suggests reflection and evocative introspection—two Davis calling cards. The tune seems to float in its own hazy atmosphere, slightly opaque yet arresting. The L.A.-based Crosby is assisted here by a San Francisco contingent: guitarist Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann of the Grateful Dead, along with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane. I can easily hear Davis’s trumpet and a hand-picked rhythm team filling those roles.

Joni Mitchell has revered Miles Davis since the beginning of her career—not necessarily as a direct influence, but as a continuing inspiration. Even on her first album, Song to a Seagull (released in March 1968), traces of Davis can be discerned. At least, I can hear the trumpeter in my head in the opening track, “I Had a King.”

Talk about haunting. Remove Joni Mitchell’s words and voice—dare I even suggest it—and you’re still left with a beautifully contained piece of music that speaks volumes within its minimal frame. Miles Davis could easily have found his way into this tune, his heartbreaking horn taking on the role of the disillusioned lover. “King,” like “Tamalpais,” exists in its own private world, a similar terrain Davis staked out throughout his career. (The David Crosby connection surfaces here as well: Crosby, Mitchell’s first great champion, produced her debut recording.)

“Quiet City” was composed by the great American classical music icon Aaron Copland in 1939 as incidental music for the Irwin Shaw play of the same name. He later transformed it into a standalone work, one that features a striking role for a lone trumpet. That’s where I picture Davis commanding the spotlight. But “commanding” may be too strong a verb, for Copland’s piece is, true to its name, a quiet work—one that would be enhanced by Davis’s inward, probing approach to lyrical music. I can imagine him bringing even greater poignancy to this affecting piece. A Gil Evans arrangement would complete the picture.

Ah, pipe dreams.

*A recording of the 1968 concerts where Davis, accompanied by a Gil Evans-directed ensemble, played “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” has yet to surface.