Tag: Cedric Lawson

1.12 + 1.13.1973 Village East

On By Jeremy ErwinIn 1973, Audience Recording

Miles Davis reached both a personal and critical nadir in the fall of 1972. Returning to New York following a brief but thrilling tour with a revamped nine-piece ensemble, he totaled his Lamborghini Muira and broke both legs in a gruesome, cocaine-strewn accident on the West Side Highway. The same week, his On the Corner LP was released to near revulsion from the music press. Yet, in the throes of his most fertile creative period since the spring of 1970, Miles refused to end the year a broken man – his studio sessions continued unabated from November into the following spring, often with the bandleader hobbled on crutches.

Miles would also make several changes to his live ensemble across the first half of 1973, including swapping out saxophonists, adding guitarists, ditching the tabla and sitar, and burning through keyboardists before taking over organ duties himself. This two-night stand at the Village East Theater (formerly Bill Graham’s Fillmore East) captures the 1973 band in the first stage of its evolution, with Dave Liebman on flute and saxophone in place of Carlos Garnett. Captured on grainy film and a passable audience tape, the sets feature a mustached Miles in incredible form, miraculously unencumbered by crutches or cast, and engaging with an intensity he hadn’t shown in years.

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10.1.1972 Palo Alto

On By Jeremy ErwinIn 1972

While Miles spent the spring and summer of 1972 recording his On the Corner LP and much of the material that would define the second phase of his electric period, documentation of his live activity from January through early September is cloudy at best. A brief fall tour yielded a relative abundance of riches, including a pair of radio broadcasts, a double live LP, and a couple of rough, but enjoyable audience tapes, one of which captures this performance at the Frost Amphitheater in Palo Alto. A tape rumored to have been recorded by Wally Heider Studios is yet to surface, making this audience tape the band’s final live document of 1972.

The unusual double bill of Miles’ nine-piece ensemble and cosmic cowboys, New Riders of the Purple Sage was the last show at the venue until late 1974 – Stanford officials suspended all concerts after pre-show fistfights and gate crashers overwhelmed Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies. By contrast, the crowd sounds fairly tame and the band drops one of its most restrained sets of the tour, so the vibe had clearly mellowed by this point in the afternoon.

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9.29.1972 Lincoln Center

On By Jeremy ErwinIn 1972, Official Release

After little more than two weeks on the road with his re-tooled live ensemble, Miles returned to Lincoln Center to record the double LP titled simply, In Concert. Though it lacks the captivatingly in-the-red moments that made the group’s Ann Arbor set such a thriller, the pristine sound and evenly balanced mix of this official release make it easily the best live document of Miles’ 1972 working group. Recorded days prior to the October 11th release of the On the Corner LP, In Concert is a companion piece if there ever was one, from the albums’ impenetrable textures and unrelenting momentum on down to their complementary cover illustrations.

Much like Miles Davis at Fillmore, Black Beauty, and well… all of his live albums from the electric period, In Concert included no info on personnel or recording dates, labeling the LPs “Foot Fooler” (the evening’s first set) and “Slickaphonics” (second set) in lieu of proper song titles. According to Mtume, it was all part of Miles’ grand plan.

“He had pictures of all these black characters — the pimp, the Panther, the prostitute. There’s a white band in there and if you look at the drummer’s foot, it says “Foot Foolers.” That was Miles saying, “I really got the funk.” He put the critics to work; he didn’t want to put anyone’s name on the LP, so the critics wouldn’t even know whose music it was.”

Mtume – The Fader, June 2005

Whatever Miles’ intent behind the album’s packaging, the music from both sets at Lincoln Center absolutely rips.

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9.14 – 9.17.1972 Paul’s Mall

On By Jeremy ErwinIn 1972, Audience Recording, Broadcast Recording

Legendary Boston venues, Jazz Workshop and Paul’s Mall shared an address at 733 Boylston St., with both clubs situated comfortably in the basement of the Cinema 733 theater. While Miles performed with some regularity at the Jazz Workshop from the mid-to-late sixties into the summer of 1971, it was likely the sheer volume of his nine-piece band that precipitated a move across the hallway to the more rock-centric Paul’s Mall beginning in September of ’72. He would return to Paul’s for a few more multi-night stands before his 1975 hiatus, leaving a trail of bootlegs in his wake.

Fresh off its sternum-rattling live debut at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, the nonet settled in for this seven-night subterranean run the week of September 11-17 (Tuesday through Sunday for those keeping track). Two tapes from these performances are in circulation: the first is a superb WCBN-FM radio broadcast from the evening of September 14, the other is a blown-out audience recording from an undated set later in the week. If you need just one tape from these shows, make it the radio broadcast – there are a few moments of brilliance in the audience tape, but it’s a pretty rough listen.

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9.10.1972 Ann Arbor

On By Jeremy ErwinIn 1972, Broadcast Recording

While dicey health kept Miles from the road throughout much of 1972, his studio activity during the spring and summer was a revelation, producing the still-futuristic On the Corner album, providing much of the meat for his Big Fun and Get Up with It LPs, and collected in part on the Complete On the Corner Sessions box.

Much like his 1970 sessions documented on the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions set, Miles’ 1972 studio ensemble featured a rotating cast of familiar faces (Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Henderson, Keith Jarrett, Mtume and others) and fresh blood (guitarist Reggie Lucas, Khalil Balakrishna on electric sitar, organist Cedric Lawson, drummer Al Foster, and tabla player Badal Roy). This time though, Miles took every member of his final 1972 studio session on the road – beginning the mercurial practice of smearing the line between his studio and live output.

Even with Henderson and Mtume the lone holdovers from his 1971 working group, the music Miles’ band produced when it returned to the road in September 1972 is astonishingly different from what poured from the stage just a year prior. The impetus has been dissected by the more qualified, and frankly, genre signposts serve no use – this music is the equivalent of magma erupting from a crack in the earth. Borne seemingly out of nowhere, it simply exists. The first fissure occurred on the final night of the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz festival.

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