I was out of town and not weblogging on Saturday, so I missed my chance to note Miles’ 75th birthday. Fortunately, journalist and online friend (“e-friend”?) Jim Higgins wrote to point me to this article he recently wrote on Davis, which makes an important point on the lack of attention paid to Miles’ electric years from the late ’60’s onward. Higgins describes Dutch guitarist Paul Tingen’s Miles Beyond, which claims that Davis’ plugged-in years still pack plenty of influence. I’d have to say I fit Higgins’ description of “many

listeners from the jazz continuum (who) dismiss his electric

era as a mistake, a sellout, a dead end in bad odor” I make an exception for In a Silent Way, at which I imagine most electric Miles fans scoff, probably because of its transitional nature. It’s not being plugged-in per se that’s the problem for me, any more than I would’ve joined the Newport Folk Festival audience in boo’ing Dylan when he played electric. It was rather the bastardization of jazz by funkifying and rockifying it that was the problem for my tastes. I’ve been relieved that many electric jazz musicians have, more recently, migrated back to straight-ahead acoustic formats, including Miles’ former sidemen Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel