Why do Miles Davis CDs sell so well?

[Rosco]

I have to confess that I have never consciously heard Picasso's music.

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Much the same as Miles, apprently...

[sidewinder]

and seeing those mysterious 'Bitches Brew' and 'Live Evil' sleeves in record shops, magazines and on those old CBS 'inner sleeves'.

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That ploy certainly worked on me. I think I bought 'Bitches Brew' back in about '74 after seeing that great Mati Klarwein cover in the racks and being totally intrigued. Found the music totally bemusing at first listen but it's greatness was apparent from first spin.

Miles certainly has a huge profile with the media. Check out BBC4, who regularly run an animated trailer promoting their arts coverage. Very prominent in this is a snippet of Miles film taken from the Robert Herridge TV show recorded with Gil Evans. Even 10-15 years ago, the prominence of such a jazz figure would have been most improbable. For many of the UK public, jazz these days equates to Miles (and to a lesser extent I guess with Coltrane), just as it already did to Louis and the Duke. Totally justified, in my opinion.

Edited August 27, 2005 by sidewinder

[A Lark Ascending]

'Miles Davis' is a name that is known well beyond the jazz community by people who have never consciously heard his music. Like Beethoven or Picasso.

I have to confess that I have never consciously heard Picasso's music.

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I suppose a could be really arty-farty and respond "You don't hear the music in Picasso?" (imagine the suitably patronising tone)

[Ron S]

'Miles Davis' is a name that is known well beyond the jazz community by people who have never consciously heard his music. Like Beethoven or Picasso.

I have to confess that I have never consciously heard Picasso's music.

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I suppose a could be really arty-farty and respond "You don't hear the music in Picasso?" (imagine the suitably patronising tone)

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Actually, now that you mention it:

[jazzbo]

It's the marketing sure, that helped. I came in to jazz itself through Filles De Kilamanjaro and Miles Davis At Fillmore, two releases ripe for the plucking by a sixteen year old freshly back in the states jonesing after hearing African music and British blues and blues rock bands on the radio in Swaziland. After digesting electric Miles reading what Miles said and browsing his records from the fifties and sixties led me to both check out Duke and Pops and Bird (from what Miles said about them) to Coltrane and Cannon and Wynton Kelly and so many others (from their sideman status with Miles).

Yeah, and I'm one of the dickheads who keeps buying Miles over and over, at first because I kept wearing out tapes and lps, and then because my stereos got better and I wanted to maximize the sound of some of my most favorite recordings (and use them as a gauge to my stereo reproduction because I knew them so well). And also because the packaging often included extra material not released before that I wanted to hear badly.

I think it's definitely the hype and the promotion that accounts for a lot of initial sales. It's also the scope and the depth of the music and his artistry that accounts for a lot of other sales.

Edited August 27, 2005 by jazzbo

[Soul Stream]

Miles sells because it's great music that gets a great push from Columbia. Like it or not, he's THE jazz musician of the 21st Century. His scope went from Bebop to Hip Hop. Nobody did that but Miles.

[Kalo]

No rock star ever said: "Yeah, I listened to a lot of jazz, you know, Lunceford, Erskine Hawkins....."

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[Kalo]

One major factor here is that Columbia kept Miles's albums in print continuously and Sony continues to. You could and can find them in just about any store/record club, etc.

Then there's the fact that for the media and thus for the general public, there's only one jazz "name" at a time (Wynton, anyone?).

Also, recording techniques had advanced by the time of the classic Miles albums so that their sound quality is acceptable to most of today's listeners. Which is not true of the greatest recordings of other great jazz names like 1940s Ellington or 20s/30s Armstrong.

For as long as I've been around, Miles has always been either the token jazz album in anyone's collection, or one of the gateway albums to the world of jazz. My parents, not otherwise jazz listeners, had Sketches of Spain and ESP(!). Kind of Blue was one of the first five jazz albums I bought back in the late 1970s, and the others were on Columbia, too: Brubeck, Mingus, Monk.

And, of course, Miles made some great records. Whether they would be as widely hailed as they are without the factors mentioned above and throughout this thread, is another matter.

[Kalo]

I believe it's called inertia...

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Perhaps the true answer...

[JSngry]

His scope went from Bebop to Hip Hop.  Nobody did that but Miles.

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I don't know about that. To varying degrees, you could say the same about Max & Dizzy. But they didn't have the Status Of Cultural Icon that Miles did.

Let's face it - Miles had a personal and musical charisma that bred cult status, which was/is ably (and when he was alive, willingly) exploited for commercial ends. He knew the effect he had on people, and he put it to work. and the work continues posthumously.

"Bye Bye Backbird"? That quality of combined yearning, disdain, vulnerability, and invincibilty conveyed through an unnaturally intimately recorded, Harmon-muted trumpet is something that very few artists in any genre produce. Competent jazz musicians abounded in that era, and truly great ones produced truly great art. But few projected as "complex" a personality in their music as did Miles.

Now, there are those who find little, if any, appeal to Miles' playing. Fair enough. But many more do, and probably many more find themselves being attracted to more than "just" the music. And I don't think you can easily discount this, because hype only goes so far. It'll get'em in the door, but it won't keep'em there. People who don't buy the hype often seek to discount its object, but the fact remains - people respond to it on an ongoing basis. Whether they "understand" or not is not the point. They respond, which is. If they don't continue to respond over time, you have a fad. If they do, you have an Icon.

Miles, like him/it or not, is an Icon. If you want to know/understand why, you have to look beyond "just" the music. Yes, the Columbia machinery sold/sells it. And yes, Miles himself greatly contributed to its creation. But it definitely exists.

What is "it"? That's the qustion originally asked, whether or not the poster realizes it. And "it" is only partially concerned with the technical specifics of the music. If you really want to know the answer, be prepared to do a lot of psychoanalyzing and such, both of "the masses" and of yourself. Enjoy THAT trip...

And if you don't like singers, FUGGIDABOUTIT!

[JSngry]

I believe it's called inertia...

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Perhaps the true answer...

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I certainly thought so.

[Parkertown]

Ummm, because he could snap your neck like twig...just by looking at you...

It was his attitude...he was a motherfucker!

[A Lark Ascending]

He's also someone who, once you're bitten, keeps you coming back for more. That's partly helped by all those different phases he went through. Same voice, changing contexts.

With some jazz players if you're not really involved I'm sure one disc starts to sound very much like the next (though Keith Jarrett's success would seem to blow that argument out of the water - no criticism of Keith, I love his music; but on the surface there's not a huge amount of difference between Facing You and Radiance or the first and most recent Standards discs).

For 20 years my Miles collection did not go much beyond 1955-65. Then I discovered 1968 onwards...another splurge of buying. Then the full Second Quintet had to be explored.

I'm still pretty hazy about the 80s and the period between Birth of the Cool and the Coltrane Quartet period.

It's a bit like Dylan really! Similar marketing, similar charisma/enigmatic image-making, similar willingness to keep changing.

Same record company!

Edited August 27, 2005 by Bev Stapleton