Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). From the album Miles Smiles (1967).
Davis left the bebop style influenced by pianist Ahmad Jamal and in the following years recorded Blue Haze, Bags’ Grove, Walking and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, where he used a Harmon mute. He was a pioneer of hard bop, which was more relaxed than bebop and with simpler harmonies and melodies. Davis frequently used popular music and American standards as a basis for improvisation, that was more spacious.
Ahmad Jamal
Hard bop was also different from cool jazz for its more impulsive rhythm and its proximity to blues, gospel and rhythm and blues. Miles Davis became cold, distant and easily irritable. He despised the critics, the audience and the other musicians. In 1955 he had an operation to remove polyps from his larynx. Although after the intervention the doctors told him to keep silent, he had a discussion that permanently damaged his vocal cords causing him a rough voice for the rest of his life, so he was called “Prince of darkness”.
The theme is fast and direct, and Davis makes a powerful and forceful solo supported by Williams in an energetic and impetuous way. His hasty phrases follow one another at great speed. Shorter then enters playing in an accelerated and chilling way with a discourse full of solid and changing motifs. Next Hancock comes in with an incisive and fast-paced melodic line demonstrating his imagination and dexterity. To finish, the group re-exposes the theme, although Carter and Williams continue to play for a while longer.
© Columbia Records