One a.m. - listening to " 'Round Midnight" - the version with Miles and Coltrane. It is the essence of late night. Some one once described Miles' sound as like that of a little boy standing out side a closed door, trying to get in. On this cut he has that outsider sound, but it is the outside of cool - he stands at the door and sees that everyone else is outside. He, and we who hear him play, are inside. Then Coltrane comes in, wraps it around a different way. There is a satisfaction in Coltrane's sound, but different, not smug. While Miles paints a phrase, Coltrane picks it up and turns it around like a glass sculpture. He's the little boy jumping off a rock, landing on springy feet. They end the song in a conversation of mutual admiration.

Take the melody, invert it, add a flatted fifth and arpeggios around alternates of the chords. The melody isn't played, it's reflected. You can't catch it by looking directly at it. You have to look away and catch the movement, darting around a corner at your approach - hide-and-seek with intervals.

I was in my very early teen when I first heard this music. When I used to listen to a song, I heard the melody as though it were the story. When I heard Miles, I learned to listen in the moment. What he played before the moment was the path that got him to now. What came after? That's a surprise! The first time I figured that out was on a recording from the album "Miles Davis - Live at Antibbes". The song was "Autumn Leaves." I knew the old chestnut as a sad-assed ballad, not so much melancholy as flat-out depressed.

"The autumn leaves (one, two) float by my window (one, two). The autumn leaves ()one, two) blah, blah." Miles turned the song on its head, skittering up a hill, stopping for a look and a dare. "(quickly) Bop-a-da Bop! (an announcement) da. da. (a statement) ba doo-ba da-ba-dop!" Where was the song? Why didn't it sound like the "Autumn Leaves" I know?

The song, it seems, was turned inside out. The same and new - like a chair that has been refinished;it is the same old chair and not. The song was not the end, but the vehicle. The song was not a straight-jacket, but a black beret or a pork-pie hat. The song was the language the musicians used to talk to each other.

Think of Cinderella, lying on the floor in front of the hearth, singing her lonely, hopeful song. "Someday My Prince Will Come." Now listen to Miles play this jazz waltz as a sexy, anticipatory bounce. "Someday My Prince Will Come and When He Does - Look Out!" Hank Mobley steps in with the saxophone counterpoint. He's the prince singing. "You are a fine looking princess," he's saying, "and we have got to get to know each other right now so how about it.!" Wynton Kelly on piano provides the heartbeat and the drive, the stutter-step, perfectly timed behind the scenes driving princess and prince toward each other. Then Coltrane comes in, tells the story again with a Lord Buckley 'This is how it went down". Miles brings us back to hearth again. Cinderella sees her dream, smiles and we all hear it and feel it. The song ends on a heartbeat of anticipation.

Hearing these musicians at the peak of their performance makes me feel good, feel connected, in ways that few other things can. Their music changed me, changed the way I listen to all music.
8:35:49 AM    Comments?()