Anglonautes > Arts > Music > Jazz > 20th century > USA

Miles Davis is one of the most advanced innovators in modern jazz: the same was said of Dizzy Gillespie fifteen years ago. Two recent releases afford an interesting comparison between them. Davis's work (Fontana TFL 5072) does not seem as far out of the normal pattern as Gillespie's at the time, but the ear has now grown more accustomed to accepting change.

The first sound of Gillespie's brittle and angular flights, apparently in defiance of the chord sequence behind them, struck a world used to the bland harmonising of "traditional" and swing bands.

The reaction was meat and drink to Gillespie. His music, brash and extrovert, has always reflected its creator. The more controversy he could stir with his melodic and rhythmic juggling, the more intricate his experiments became. At one stage it became a point of principle with him that no other musician should be able to follow his circumnavigation of any tune. (He and Thelonious Monk used to map fantastic chord progressions which they set about if any other player came to sit with them, leaving him adrift wondering where the tune went.)

The questing spirit remains. His latest record (H.M.V. CLP 1318) shows he is concerning himself with leavening what he regards as the rhythmic dough of jazz. His fingers press here and there, and the result is a more digestible offering. In places he has overdone it slightly and we have to make do with puff pastry where we expected bread, but that is to be expected from experiment.

Davis also concerns himself with rhythmic effect, but in another way. His preoccupation is mainly with the pattern of the melodic instruments. He is as fond of riffs as any rock'n'roller, though with a little more sensitivity. Where the rock man will bash his way up the chord from tonic to dominant and back, apparently to eternity, Davis plays nervously with repeated semitone figures, different for each instrument and constantly changing in accent and rhythm. The effect is less unsettling than it may sound, for Davis's bland, unifying trumpet knits it together admirably.

There could not be a greater contrast between Davis's and Gillespie's approach. Where Gillespie looked his audience over, laughed at it and defied it to understand what he was doing, Davis seems unaware that he has an audience. His effects are aimed at himself and at those who play with him. He never laughs; nor, for that matter, does he cry. The general aspect of his music is one of inquiring melancholy. His work repays study.

Harold Jackson

From The Guardian archive > April 19 1960 >
Davis and Dizzy compared,
G,
Republished 19.4.2007,
p. 32,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/04/19/
pages/ber32.shtml

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