J.J. w/Miles circa '61-62: any airshots?

[ghost of miles]

Came across another reference yesterday to J.J. Johnson's stint in Miles Davis' band around 1961 and '62. While I know J.J. recorded w/Miles in the 1950s, are there any airshots or bootlegs of him playing with Miles in the early 1960s? I'd be intrigued to hear anything that's out there...

[Chuck Nessa]

Somewhere ( in a Down Beat Yearbook, I think) I have a photo of the band. I don't think jj made any/many gigs. No recordings I can think of. While I can appreciate Mr. Johnson's technique, I don't think he could add anything beyond harmony to this band, and his solos would detract from the whole.

[ghost of miles]

What was the line-up at that point?

[JSngry]

You gotta think that for a while there Miles was on the verge of, consciously or not, slipping into a comfortabilty zone befittin a man of his age, stature, and career success. Look at who he used after Trane booked - Stitt, Mobley, Jimmy Heath, JJ, excellent players all, but none of them really looked forward in the way that Trane (and much of the then-current jazz scene) did.

I'm sure Miles didn'y mind having a good salary and a bit of celebrity, and I don't doubt that he could have maintained both for years to come. AND have been a totally satisfying musician to keep up with.

But for whatever reason, vanity, fear of complacency, a genuine curiosity, all/none of the above, Miles finally decided to move forward and get into what the younger players were into. I think it ws Herbie who said that he felt, at first, that the gig w/Miles was like playing for an old cat, that you fit what you did to their appraoch, and that he and Tony kinda viewed the repertoire as just a bit stale.

So Miles reached a crossroads - stand pat or go off into the unknown. After having spent the last week listening pretty heavily to some live tapes of the ON THE CORNER core band, stuff that just melts in your mind, not in your hand, I for one am glad he did what he did. I'm glad that Stitt, Heath, JJ, etc. did what THEY did too, and Hank will always have a special place deep in the bowels of my heart, but hey...

Edited September 26, 2003 by JSngry

[Jazzdog]

Yes, and I do think that the recent Blackhawk recordings show that to a degree that Miles may have started to question what he was seeing, Hearing Ornette and finding out what Trane was doing might have made him re-think his priorities a bit. Now, I love Hank, but it seems aparent that Miles' (real or not) frustrations with him had more to do with his own insecurites than anything Mobes was up to. I mean I love Wayne too, but look at what both men were doing around 61-64 and you see two completely different aproaches. Surrounding himself with youth and drive altered his outlook on his music a bit. Herbie and Tony may have found the music a bit stale, but Miles wasn't ready to completely abandon that music. It took Wayne's entrance (IMHO) to make Miles "See the light" or at least guide him closer to it.

Edited September 26, 2003 by Jazzdog

[Dmitry]

We all would've killed to hear that band. The rest is somehow...less important.

[Rooster_Ties]

The rare Miles band I really want to hear bootlegs of is the extremely short-lived version of the 2nd Great Quintet (Wayne, Herbie, Ron, & Tony), plus Joe Henderson. I think they only played 5 or 6 gigs total, if even that many.

I know, I know - I'm sure I'd be slightly disappointed if I heard an actual tape -- but I'd still love to hear that band with a two tenor front-line (though Wayne might have been playing soprano some by that point).

Anybody know of any tapes of THAT band???? (With Joe????)

[Guest youmustbe]

My memory might be wrong, but I think I heard the sextet with J. J. at the Vanguard in 62.

I used to hear a lot of stuff on the stairs, at the Vanguard ( see if you didn't keep drinking, they would kick you out...it took talent to nurse a beer all night, I didn't have it.) or at the Half Note, from outside, where you could hear the music fine, without having to listen to the Canterino's talk loud and ring the cash register constantly in the middle of solos, particularly the piano solos on the out of tune piano. Or Al the waiter shout "2 Veal Parmegians!! (he had this trick, like Pee Wee at Birdland, when he would see someone reach for a cigarette, he would run over and light it for them. Once, he was so eager, he set his apron on fire!) (Birdland had 2 pianos, and not only were both out of tune, but they had dead keys! The Golden Age! I remember a McCoy solo on Favorite Things, that brought tears to my eyes, it was so beautiful especially because I knew Trane would come back for a second and longer solo, but the piano was totally out of tune).

Funny thing about Miles' band with Mobley and with Coleman et al, they were popular. The quintet with Wayne hit at the time that Jazz in US started to wane (no pun intended). So, what is considered classic today, the quintet with Wayne was not as popular as with Hank or George. Go figure...or maybe the audiences were right, and the Jazz cognoscenti are wrong. The latter is probably correct, as always.