Sunday, June 21, 2020

Something For Sunday Dept. - Kind Of White

Note absence of blackness.
Selling jazz to us white folks (I'm speaking on behalf of white folks here) used to be a marketing headache. A black face on the cover wouldn't deter the hardcore Downbeat© subscriber, but it might not win sales in the crucial suburban hi-fi demographic, the Populuxe generation of Botany 500 sophisticates who mixed martinis and adjusted R.I.A.A. curves for their equally attractive neighbors at weekends. It was a risk. Gil Evans was the guy who could break Miles Davis into that lucrative market, but the covers had to avoid featuring a black face.

"Why'd you put that white bitch on there?" asked the ever-diplomatic Miles [n.b. never "Davis" - Ed.] on seeing the cover of Miles Ahead, the first of their orchestral collaborations. For later editions, when he was a marketable brand across most demographics, the cover was changed to feature his face.

Note pioneering silhouette brand.
Quiet Nights, the last of their four projects together, avoided the problem by featuring a gorgeous abstract cover, prefiguring the psychedelic light shows of a year later. This album generally gets a sniffy reaction from jazzbos, to whom I flip the bird. I can hear nothing on it that is less than sublime (and perfect Sunday listening). The Time Of The Barracudas is more than a bonus track - it's integral to the album.

EDIT: Download contains all four Miles n' Gil albumens.

30 comments:

  1. The whole "whitewashing" covers for white audiences for what they called "race records" then wasn't only for jazz, but most r'n'b records as well. Not only would they only put white folks on the cover, sometimes they had them completely ridiculously dress up like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" as juvenile delinquents (now more looking like precursors to the Village People, oh well) to emphasize the "danger" and "rebellious" aspects of the music. Some of the finest hours of marketing, no doubt.

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    1. Surely. The interesting thing about Davis - wupes - Miles - is that he had absolutely the right profile to break into the Populuxe demographic, as no other black jazz musician did. Coltrane and Monk were too serious, too "difficult" - it's not easy to imagine Evans teaming up with either. But he was the cream in Miles' coffee, and his orchestrations were exactly what hip suburbanites looked for in jazz. I'm not denigrating this music - I love it.

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    2. At OBG...
      Your comment evokes a vintage image of an assaulted Sonny Bono in leather out front of Birdland...The Mild One!
      Thank you!

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  2. Miles to Columbia Records executive George Avakian, "Why'd you put that white bitch on there?"

    All of the Miles and Gil collaborations are sublime. Quite Nights from '64 blows Merseybeat music out of the water. Yeah Yeah Yeah.

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    1. Uh - remind me to put that quote in the piece. What's that you say?

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    2. I just thought it beared repeating.

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    3. It's a weird one. It was later claimed (not by Miles) to have been "light-hearted", but that's bullshit. It clearly mattered to him, but it was an artistic compromise he made anyway. His "blackest" album is probably On The Corner, which I went through a common white-boy phase of pretending to like.

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    4. In '72 On The Corner was de rigueur in artsy circles. A few years back I was given the boxed set, haven't made it through all six CDs no matter how hard I try.

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    5. SIX!?!? I can't make it through one. Allmusic (uh-oh) calls it "the most street record ever recorded by a jazz musician." No street I ever lived on or walked down sounded like this, and I think there's something artistically hypocritical about calling this mess "street music" to legitimize it - you know, this is what kids on the street are into, man, get over it! In '72, street (a white euphemism for "black") kids were probably listening to disco, or Motown. Not this shit.

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    6. It does get sampled quite a bit on Rap/Hip Hop things

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    7. huh I love ''on the corner'' different strokes I guess

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  3. '72 was Sly & The Family Stone, James Brown, and their progeny for street music.

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    1. I'm sure you're right. I was a long way from the "street" in '72 - getting it together in the countryside, man.

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  4. Talk about extremes! The Miles Ahead artwork is beyond discussion in terms of insulting symbolism. Who's the little white boy? A level horizon and a tilted 'vessel' must mean white wind is pushing things along. Tack back...tack back! I guess we could be on the reef already since the owner of the hat is already tangled in the rigging and nobody owns a life preserver. I wonder who added the pink '19' to the title. Knots, fathoms, leagues...maybe the music can explain the imagery in more precise terms. I would have demanded the title be 'seamen' and thrown in some boxes of Cracker Jacks!!! Good God!
    On the other end of the spectrum...there is no album artwork more racially slanted than the Cosby Kids themed On The Corner! And Miles was aloof to these proceedings? Admiral Boatswain seems to be in a daze...one minute high...the next minute low! Sunk on the corner.
    Quiet Nights would be a beautiful piece of (art)work were it not for the ridiculous mini-silhouette of Miles. Did that really increase sales or prestige? I can't imagine it.
    I've never heard these albums but racism seems to have plenty to say however it's marketed.
    The melting pot...heeelarious terminology!
    Thank you, farq!

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  5. I'm presuming we all gots this stuff awready? If you don't - ask!

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  6. The Stealth Link for all four Miles n' Gil projects is hidden somewhere (!) in this furshlugginer comment - *Sketches Of Spain*, *Porgy And Bess*, *Quiet Nights*, and *Miles Ahead*. It's incredible to see what lengths they went to to avoid showing Miles' face. Porgy And Bess (which I'm sure has been rightly castigated by Millennials for Cultural Appropriation) is the worst culprit - his head is cropped right out of the shot, making the composition meaningless as well as ugly.

    ⁄€‹›fifl‡°°·‚—±

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  7. Thank you, JKC...
    I've already betrayed every vow of JAZZ Poverty because of Miles Davis! I relate to him on many levels and I get jealous of him whenever I hear his voice or see him in interview footage. I always wish that drugs got me as high as he seems to be. However, I'm over it...and today's post made me realize that he might have just been a LOT angrier about life than I have ever been! For once, farq's post has brought a taboo subject too the fore and though I'm not really a soap-box kind of babbler...I relished the opportunity to reflect on Miles' own predicament regarding racism. I don't think the music will improve upon my previous comment and I think Miles had every right to be NOT-amused...even, reactionary about the unsubtle treatment that he had to endure. But let's not dwell on it...I'm sure that the lady on the boat is miles ahead out there sailing Miles' yacht with her grandson. The +19 must refer to her daughter...who may have taken the photo with a white camera! There is no need for farq to upload ANYTHING further. Man, OVERBORED!
    Peace, brother...(and best wishes to Mrs. pmac...GET WELL SOON!!!)

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    1. That cover looks like an exercise in corporate ass-licking to me. The Art Director's main squeeze, maybe, the CEO's grandson ... that kind of deal. It's a nice shot for a family album, but the worst thing (almost) imaginable for a Miles Davis album cover.

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    2. The "WASP" Newport Rhode Island crowd.

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    3. Kind Of Blue Gil...
      (I had the Porgy And Bess Album)
      It was some terrible mayhem from the graphics dept.
      Offset lithography??? Yew betcha!

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  8. Looks like that Isley Bros. lp with a white girl and guy at the beach. And, you're right. That's exactly what Miles would have said.

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  9. I just love farq's ability to choose the words with surgical precision...
    (Re: the captions on the two photos...)
    the absinthe of blackness is only found on the artist's name...
    and the pioneering silhouette 'BRAND' which indicated ownership and discouraged rustling!

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    1. Howzabout another TL-DR piece, Kwai? We have another pmac screed ready to run, but after that - zippola.

      (This applies to anybody out there what likes to write - if you're reading this you're qualified)

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    2. I had a long winded soliloquy on the Spheeris piece which disappeared from the comments, then a post came up saying "FGW Spill on Aisle 3" which led to a page not found one day so I am a little curious about what happened.

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    3. I have no idea. If you want to submit something to the TL-DR series, it has to be posted under the "We're Looking For Guys What Like To Write" piece for me to understand what's going on. So I probably got confused and the Spheeris comment got lost. I apologise. Please submit something else, but specifically for the TL-DR feature, not just a comment - no matter how long-winded - on a blog piece! C'mon, FGW - you deserve a trading card!

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  10. Funny thing is my Miles Ahead album has a completely different cover. Its Miles playing the trumpet on the cover. I've seen the cover that Farq posted before, but I never saw it for sale in my neck of the woods. Granted, I didn't purchase it when it was originally released, so I guess Columbia had to make amends at some point.

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    1. I mention that in the piece.I just looked it up on discogs - the revised version came out the same year as the original - didn't take them long to see the error of their ways.

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  11. This type of Album Cover white-wash has been going on since day one. Back to the days of the first "albums" which consisted of a stack of 78s.

    Motown made an industry out of it. The Isleys beach blanket buddies "Art" as put forth by BM is a good example. Mindbogglingly that one even made it to the CD age...

    https://www.discogs.com/The-Isley-Brothers-This-Old-Heart-Of-Mine/release/3691303

    Even considering those without ANY humans depicted, The Artist(s) or not (as NOT seen, not NOWHERE on the album, front or rear), there were multitudes of 'em in the '60s. Black faces matter, unless it's on our LP and single covers...?

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