Bitches Brew

33⅓ Main Series #110

by George Grella Jr.

It was 1969, and Miles Davis, prince of cool, was on the edge of being left behind by a dynamic generation of young musicians, an important handful of whom had been in his band. Rock music was flying off in every direction, just as America itself seemed about to split at its seams. Following the circumscribed grooves and ambiance of In A Silent Way ; coming off a tour with a burning new quintet-called 'The Lost Band'-with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette; he went into the studio with musicians like frighteningly talented guitarist John McLaughlin, and soulful Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul. Working with his essential producer, Teo Macero, Miles set a cauldron of ideas loose while the tapes rolled. At the end, there was the newly minted Prince of Darkness, a completely new way forward for jazz and rock, and the endless brilliance and depth of Bitches Brew .

Bitches Brew is still one of the most astonishing albums ever made in either jazz or rock. Seeming to fuse the two, it actually does something entirely more revolutionary and blending the most avant-garde aspects of Western music with deep grooves, the album rejects both jazz and rock for an entirely different idea of how music can be made.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Jazz

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2015

About the author

George Grella, Jr. is a composer, critic, and independent scholar. He has played jazz, classical, and improvised music from CBGB to Carnegie Hall, and makes acoustic and electronic music in the Western classical tradition. He has lived in Rochester, San Francisco, and Brooklyn, and has written about music and culture for almost thirty years. He is Music Editor at The Brooklyn Rail, publishes the Big City blog, and freelances, internationally, for numerous music publications.

Reviews

[George Jr.]

I wrote it, so I think it's great!

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miles and Miles to Go
Review of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 and 1/3 paperback (October 22, 2015), released simultaneously with the eBook.


The full gate-fold cover for the original double LP edition of Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew.” Painting by Mati Klarwein. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

it will never be the same again now, after in a silent way and after BITCHES BREW. listen to this. how can it ever be the same? i don't mean you can't listen to ben. how silly. we can always listen to ben play funny valentine, until the end of the world it will be beautiful and how can anything be more beautiful than hodges playing passion flower? he never made a mistake in 40 years. it's not more beautiful, just different. a new beauty. a different beauty. the other beauty is still beauty. this is new and right now it has the edge of newness and that snapping fire you sense when you go out there from the spaceship where nobody has ever been before. - excerpted from Ralph J. Gleason’s liner notes* for the original double LP edition of Bitches Brew. These were intentionally written in lower case letters.

With its rather stunning album cover, compelling liner notes and its mysterious, sometimes abstract sometimes funky music driving it along, the Bitches Brew album was a complete immersion into the future worlds of ambient and fusion music that were yet to come after its release in 1970.

George Grella Jr. provides a complete background to the assembly of the musicians by Miles Davis, the recording process in the studio and a track-by-track examination of the results. The value added element is the analysis of the amount of post-recording production work that was done by Teo Macero in piecing together huge amounts of the recording out of spliced fragments and edits. The opening track Pharoah's Dance has 19 edits for instance, something which I was completely oblivious to when I first heard it, imagining it as being played live in the studio as were most jazz albums back in the day.

Almost all of the musicians from this recording would go on to lead their own prominent jazz-rock or improv jazz ensembles: Wayne Shorter and Joe Zaminul with Weather Report, Chick Corea with Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock with the Headhunters, John McLaughlin with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Keith Jarrett with his solo concerts & the European Quartet & Standards Trio, Dave Holland and his various Quartets & Quintets, etc. But Miles had them all first together in the studio in August 1969 where magic was born.

Footnote
* Read the complete original liner notes by Ralph J. Gleason and the additional liner notes by Bob Belden for The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions at Album Liner Notes.com.

Soundtrack
Listen to the expanded (1 hour 45:54 minutes) Sony Columbia Legacy Edition 7-track edition (which includes 1 bonus track) of the Bitches Brew album on YouTube here or on Spotify here.

Listen to the 21-track edition of The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (4 hours 24 minutes) at a YouTube playlist which begins here or on Spotify here.

Trivia and Links
Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew is part of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 1/3 series of books surveying significant record albums, primarily in the rock and pop genres with a few that are jazz and classical related. The GR Listopia for the 33 1/3 series is incomplete with only 38 books listed as of May 2024. For an up-to-date list see Bloomsbury Publishing with 193 books listed as of May 2024.

Bonus Tracks
I don't think this is a story from the Bitches Brew sessions, but pianist Keith Jarrett tells a funny story and performs an excellent mimic of Miles Davis' raspy voice in Miles Davis and the Very Slow Beat.

Wayne Shorter talks about first performing and then recording with Miles Davis on the "E.S.P." album , again imitating Miles' voice at Wayne Shorter recalls recording with Miles Davis.

John McLaughlin talks about recording the album "In A Silent Way" and tells the now infamous story of Miles telling him to play as if "he doesn't know how to play the guitar" at Miles and In A Silent Way.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you listen to Bitches Brew for the first time, be warned: it is a heady mass of new sounds and weird time signatures it's disorientating and yet, it is an intelligent album that is momentous and is unforgettable. Despite the avant garde clothing, the more you listen, the more it makes sense.

Now I know practically nothing when it comes to jazz and I'm glad that Grella does as well. This volume in the series focuses on Miles' role in the jazz scene, his evolution and love for pop music and his attempt to combine both jazz and rock in order to create Bitches Brew, the end result being a totally unique style of fusion.

Grella then dedicates a part of the book on the actual recording, which is fascinating and then the influence of Bitches Brew on non jazz musicians, namely Radiohead's Thom Yorke.

This volume is another worthy addition to the superb 33 1/3 canon ( this last batch have been nothing short of excellent) and, at least, it helped me understand the importance of Davis outside of Bitches Brew.

[Kai Perrignon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Bitches Brew and now I know more about it. Thats the power of reading.

[Djll · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few blemishes don't ruin the overall impact of this slight volume. (Some editorial lapses, and, at times, an over-reliance on strings of superlatives that verge on nonsensical.) The big point of the book is made well, with plenty of evidence for anybody with ears and a critical musical mind: that Miles Davis knew exactly what we was doing during the creation of this crucial document, and in no way was it a "sell out." Composition doesn't have to stay imprisoned in the lines on a page. Nor do big sales equate to a vacuous product. (The irony in the non-ability of critics like Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray to appreciate Miles' deep Afrological approach to making art – employing superpolyphony (maybe I mean METApolyphony?!), the oral transmission of ideas and a 'storyline,' and a HUGE emphasis on community-based improvisatory music-making – this irony would be tragic if not for the lingering belligerence and success of Crouch, et al to score their points in the critical discourse of the last 40 years.) As any book of this kind should, it drove me straight back into listening, with new ears.

[Matt Knox]

Part of me thinks that Bitches Brew doesn't need the kind of spirited defense offered here - it's a stone-cold classic, respected today by all but a few pedestrian dorks (name-checked here as Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis (and perhaps by extension, Ken Burns?)), even by those who don't much enjoy this extremely difficult, boundary-smashing work of art. The dust of the fusion wars has settled, and the fusionists have won. The bittersweetness of that fact is that the era of fusion also marks the end of jazz's golden age and mainstream appeal. Fusion, if anything, prolonged its life as it dwindled into the domain of aficionados. But while the controversy over fusion may seem antiquated, it speaks to jazz's underlying relevance in new forms, not jazz-as-jazz but jazz-in and as-popular music - adapting to the times, new styles and sounds like a chameleon, emerging originally AS a popular fusion music and surviving today in hip-hop, electronic, and more. The decline of jazz-as-jazz has as much to do with broader socioeconomic trends as changing tastes, and that's far beyond the bounds of music criticism. Sadly, I don't think today's jazz/fusion artists really stack up to the classics, but I'm biased. Still, Bitches Brew and its contemporaries are as timeless as ever, and remain innovative even in the light of 50+ years of music. Bitches Brew in particular is an album one can get lost in, explore for hours and keep finding something new - it remains a puzzle, maybe for everyone except Miles Davis and a few trusted collaborators. This slim volume may help guide you along.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't get enough of the 33 1/3 series. If yer interested in the story of how some famous albums where recorded, then these are the books for you. I thought Mr. Grella went on maybe a little too long about how much he knew about Miles Davis, but once he finally got around to telling the story of making the album, it all fit together nicely. And he did have some very interesting insights into Miles music, and career, and his impact on our culture.

[Joe Lunday · Rating 3 out of 5]

Far too hyperbolic- Miles was the most _____, etc. - but this book does eventually settle in for some interesting analysis of the final cuts on the finished album, including the extensive use of edits to make the first two sides of the album.

[Erik Wallmark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bara en jävligt välskriven och läsvärd essä om denna vansinnigt intressanta skiva. Precis lagom mycket jazzteori och historielektion för att underhålla mig.

[Cameron U. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bitches Brew is one of those albums that stands out so definitively as a turning point in music history that any writing on it is inevitably going to get lost in the weeds a little, get a little pretentious, and perhaps a bit muddled. This book definitely suffers from some of that, as it spends a lot of time describing Miles Davis the icon, and the weight that the album holds, without really giving an emphatic why. The first two sections, in particular, suffer from this, I feel like points get repeated, and the true message gets muddled. But when actually discussing the album's minutia, it does an excellent job of detailing what everything in the album is (which, if you've ever heard it, you know is a very difficult task), what it represents, and what it all means put together. It's a great reminder of just how brilliant and forward-thinking Bitches Brew was, and still is, and how it represents a culmination of everything Miles was working towards throughout the 60s. A pretty good book for a fantastic album, and a great academic introduction to Miles, and what he would achieve during his electric period.

[Des Bladet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bitches Brew was my first encounter with Electric Miles, a very long time ago. This book is erudite, informative, short and correct about almost everything. Grella not only understands music as a musician, he also understands studio recording, editing and mixing - which is a vital part of this story - and he understands the cultural context and aesthetic stakes.

Sets the standard for what a book about a long-playing record can achieve while diligently pursuing a feud with Stanley Crouch.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…the music just stopped, it didn’t finish” (107).

I loved Bitches Brew the very first time I heard it. I had never heard anything like it. I’ve since listened the album a zillion times. I’ve never bothered to study the music or tried to figure out what in the world is going on. I’ve simply enjoyed the queer sounds, the thrilling movement, the images and shapes the music conjures. Reading Grella’s 33 1/3 entry on this album was enlightening and accessible. He does a remarkable job of explaining what the hell is going on on this album, and it adds to, rather than subtracts from, my enjoyment of it.

For me, one of the most helpful explanations Grella provides is a discussion of the album’s time, or more accurately, timelessness.

“But listening to the album creates expectations that are never fulfilled, because underneath what it seems to sound like, and how many units it moved, there’s so much more. The album regards the idea of musical resolution—reaching a final point—as irrelevant” (104).

“Miles was, among other things, specifically making funk: he wanted the rhythms to drive everything. The melodies and harmonies are not determined by rhythm, so much as rhythm is unusually prominent, while melody and harmony seem secondary—which is actually an illusion. Bitches Brew places everything on the same sonic level, and Western music of almost every kind, especially popular music, is made almost entirely with a hierarchy of values between soloist (or lead voice of some kind) and ensemble that came to be seen as a de facto requirement” (104).

“The rhythms also have no explicit relationship to African music: they are the sound of African-American rhythms mediated through history and geography by Cuba, the West Indies, New Orleans, the Midwest, and New York City. However, the group concept is closer to African music, with the rhythms built by adding beats on top of each other rather than subdividing in the Western manner.” What is more subtle, but profound, is that by using rhythm, pulse, and harmonies—and tape composition—that by design did not resolve, Miles was organizing time: and both form and time are conjoined in the music. Miles’ push to move form away from the demands of resolution and finality was a push into a different, and for American listeners, unfamiliar concept about time” (104-105).

“Time does not fly off into the future: it marks cyclical events…Non-Western harmonies change through the duration of a piece of music, but they are not made to function as a device that gets the piece from the beginning to the end. Instead they stay steady—drone—or cycle until the event is finished… The experience of non-timeline music is that of timelessness. Time is passing, as always, but the music is not marking that passage. It moves in a circle, returning to the same point over and over again. There is no implicit logic that what you are hearing in the moment will, structurally and inevitably, lead to something else. The listener’s experience of passing time is separate from the music’s measured duration” (106-107).

[Swjohnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Miles Davis’ 1969 double album “Bitches Brew” is a personal favorite that made a startling first impression. Part of the surprise came from distorted expectations: I had read so much about the album before I heard it that my mind’s ear was anticipating a very different experience. Therein lies the danger of music criticism, which is no surrogate for sonic realities. I had been fooled, in conspiracy with my own imagination, by prose (mostly from the infamously slim Rolling Stone Jazz Guide) that attempted the impossible task of describing a sprawling jazz-rock album that sounds like neither genre, nor possibly anything else on earth.

If I had read George Grella, Jr’s book-length analysis of “Bitches Brew” before my initial listening, I would have been armed with more precise detail and expectations. But it’s debatable whether this worthy but often overheated study really exposes the dark heart of Davis’ highly unusual jazz milestone.

Grella’s volume is an entry in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series, which is mostly dedicated to a lineup of hipster music-head staples (Big Star, Radiohead, the Smiths, Velvet Underground), with an occasional entry (Celine Dion, Slayer) shoehorned into the program either by irony or the transforming power of academic theory. Grella has an alt-rock critic’s rabid eagerness to justify the greatness of his topic, favoring superlatives, generalities, and animated turns of phrase. A head-scratching introduction pummels the reader with a tribute to the (supposedly equal) achievements of Miles, Picasso and Stravinsky.

Fortunately, Grella gets down to more earthbound realities in the following pages, breaking down Davis’ dense music with admirable critical rigor. Of course, the album’s structure owes a great deal to the post-production of Teo Macero, who shaped a large group’s surging abstraction with almost symphonic logic, a fact that’s either a practical requirement of music production or a bombshell flash of post-modernism, depending on your perspective. As a critic with a literary bent, Grella opts for the latter.

In the end, this is a detailed critical study and a comprehensive survey of its topic. But are the 33 1/3 series’ lengthy tributes worthwhile? The long-form approach must pose critical challenges to even the most knowledgeable writer who, like Grella, is bound to feel compelled to layer theoretical flights of fancy upon more straightforward and useful analysis.

[Łukasz Langa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 33 1/3 book on “Bitches Brew” is quite a ride. It reads itself with its smart narrative, contemporary language, and in-depth subject matter. Very good book! I read quite a few books in the series, and this one is easily the most captivating.

Unsurprisingly, George is a huge fan of the record, and his book is singing praises of it, with descriptions like “carries astonishing force and weight of expression” or “Bitches Brew was unprecedented”. Really, unprecedented? Sun Ra and Carla Bley would like a word. Steve Reich would object as well, I believe.

Grella also calls “Bitches Brew” the first fusion album, to which I can only ask: what about Larry Coryell and his records with Gary Burton as well as with the Free Spirits? What of David Axelrod’s “Song of Innocence”, which inspired the term “jazz fusion” in the first place? In fact, in his footnotes, Grella contradicts himself by pointing at “Emergency!” as the generally accepted first fusion album.

As for the album itself, I'm not really a fan. I read the book partially in the hope that George will help me dig the record. He did all he could but I have to admit I'm still left untouched by the music in this case. I wrote more about it here:
https://lukasz.langa.pl/275c46e6-06bc...

While I don’t share his enthusiasm, I liked Grella’s other upbeat words of praise like:

> [Miles’ music] centered around one organizing idea that is open to a myriad valid interpretations.

or:

> “Bitches Brew” is deep thinking without high concept, high art with the low appeal of abstract funk, and it seals the artificial division between jazz as popular entertainment and jazz as art music, and makes an abstract art music with the sounds of the streets.

He also seems to agree with me on the entire “jazz-rock” misnomer:

> There is so little rock beat on the album that when it appears, it’s accidental.

[Casey Derringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore these 33 1/3 books. The previous ones I've read have been very well informed, well put together, and incredibly interesting. This one is absolutely no different, and this particular author might have been my favorite so far.

When I was younger I struggled to understand what made Bitches Brew so impactful and influential in the history of music. It had little sense of time, form, or popular appeal. But what this book has illuminated for me is that, in some odd sort of way, that is the point? Firstly, I assumed like many other people, I imagine, that these songs were performed and recorded with very little editing as I've been accustomed to in most other jazz. Coming to learn that this album was actually a product of extensive chopping and combining by Miles' producer, makes the way this album sounds make so so much more sense. There are distinct edits and cuts in the music, and even deliberate repeated tracks. Secondly, the lack of melody and abundance of space in the music didn't make much sense to me. But Grella is able to expertly trace the evolution of Miles' music that brought him to the recording of Bitches Brew that makes the listening experience so much more natural thanks to an understanding of the progression of his composition to this point. And the track by track breakdown of the album begs for a relisten because of the detail

These are really tight, really informative reads and I will absolutely be getting and reading more in the future.

[NY Sled · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gives a good summary of Miles Davis's career and its trajectory. It's a bit of the 20,000 foot view, but does a good job of summarizing and contextualizing him. I liked the comparison with him and Picasso and Stravinsky. However, there was a bit too much of fawning for the subject (a fault sometimes of this series generally). But on the plus sides (and there are many), the author elucidates this period of Davis's career well--what came close in time before and close after this recording. The track-by-track analysis was excellent, capturing Davis's and the group's contributions. The author's keen analysis of all of the splicing and cuts on these tracks worked really well. I found it interesting how the band recorded this music and what Davis and the musicians had been playing live before and after this recording (and how they had been playing it)! The author has a deep understanding of this music that really shines through for me. As an aside, he gave me a new appreciation for Davis's "Oleo" and some of Davis's other work from this same time. I felt like viscerally (probably the only way to really process this music), I felt and knew this recording well, but the book made me understand it better.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that explains the history of Miles Davis, his approach, and restless need to constantly innovate. There's a lot of good info about the earlier records before Grella gets to the electric period, Teo Macero, and the splicing that made Bitches Brew so damn unique. That context adds value to his other records too.

When he gets to the album itself he walks through every song moment by moment, and it's fascinating how he gives some form and insight into music that is formless, improvised, and spliced. That the musicians didn't know it was them playing when they first heard the record on the radio is mindboggling and shows how much Teo Macero added after Miles was done directing 3 days of sessions with musicians who had largely not played with one another.

It's also just magic in a bottle that can't be explained bc it's the output of incredible musicians coming up with ideas on the fly and playing off of each other in ways that might not be immediately apparent. Very cool insight into an album that seems to get better with each listen (although maybe nothing can top listening to Pharoah's Dance for the first time and having no idea what the fuck you're listening to).

[Kameron Smalls · Rating 1 out of 5]

Grella's unwillingness to tackle or even acknowledge race + racism in a book about Miles Davis renders his credibility null + void. i got less than a full chapter in + knew the author was a white man from the writing alone. couldn't confirm it immediately since i was on a plane w|o internet but, turns out Grella is exactly who i thought. which is a massive disappointment.

white Jazz fans want, so desperately, to erase + ignore Davis' race + refuse to contend w| just how much his Blackness + dark skin impacted his career + accomplishments. without that there's no honest context for this analysis.

this falls flat and hard. i couldn't even finish it. the way he danced around the issue while refusing to just name it is gross + infuriating.

he thinks he knows + understands more than he does. he thinks he gets it. he does not.

skip this one.

+ for the love of god, get someone adequately + appropriately qualified to write a 33⅓ book on one of Davis' albums. he deserves better.

if you want an actually good 33⅓ book, go for The Velvet Rope x Ayanna Dozier.

[Patrick Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a perfect little encapsulation of music journalism, a critical analysis of the music in form and in context. Some standout work from the jump such as:
“Long before the rise of materialistic hipsterism (a faux-oppositional consumerist subculture that aspired to monetary enrichment through buying things with a culturally accepted brand) in the twenty-first century, Americans identified their socio-economic status and affiliations, racial and otherwise, by what they acquired-it's the American way. The tendency for those who find things they like in pop culture-James Bond movies, vintage lunch boxes, barware, vinyl, taxidermy—is to want to keep acquiring those things as long as they stay true to the same formula. Variation breeds contempt.”

I don’t know shit about music theory & terminology, really, but got plenty out of some of the “drier” sections as well.

[Georgette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an album that transcended everything that I had been introduced to in 2000 when I heard it for the first time. I thought it was only introduced to me as a seduction tool in my ex Scorpio's 10-year pursuit, but it was also brought to my attention chiefly as an album that everyone who loves music should listen to. I hadn't listened to it in a long time, but once I did, I had to dive into this book on it. Imagine my joy at finding it at Half Ass Books for $3. The joy was in rediscovering this masterpiece again and this look at its inception and long-lasting effect on the masses was perfect synchronicity. I dig. You'll dig it as well.

[Charles Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any book that can paint one of my favorite musical experiences in a new light is worth the price of admission alone. Particularly poignant is Grella Jr.'s ability to really place this enigma of a record within the context of its time. For me, Bitches Brew has always been an escapist fantasy, but this short and poignant book does a fantastic job of reconnecting the seminal album to its era in paradoxical fashion. Highly recommended for anyone who is a fan of electric era Davis, Bitches Brew or not.

[Cameron_Asao · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the book builds up Miles Davis as the voyager of Jazz and it tells the story well. But the climactic chapters later, the ones that go into a second-by-second analysis of Bitches Brew, just aren't rewarding. The book is a great medium for the story of Miles and Jazz, but not very good at playing a record.

I finished it feeling that I understand Miles Davis, Jazz, and this album's place in the histories of each, so I'm happy. But I think a documentary is a better way to get this kind of story across.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how these books should be written...at least for my two cents..brief commentary on historical meaning of album/artist, info on recording/history that led to recording, commentary on tracks and closing with a final statement. I appreciate the concept of Miles constantly evolving jazz on his own terms.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another fantastic entry in the 33 1/3 series. Bitches Brew isn't an easy album to write about, but I think Grella really did a nice job of covering both the album and the larger context of Davis' career.

[John Kilcar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite an academic study of the jazz masterpiece, interesting if a little over my head at times. Nonetheless it’s left me with future music to explore and a fascination for how the record was recorded and produced.

[Francesco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the series 33 1/3, this one is about the revolutionary album that Miles Davis recorded in 1969, using studio editing to recreate the tracks, in a way that produced music on the record that was actually never played live. Interesting.

[Paul Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally overstates the case, it's a great album, you don't need to compare it to Picasso or Stravinsky every other sentence. Philip Freeman's Running the Voodoo Down covers the whole "electric" period Bitches Brew is part of better.

[Donnie Burtless · Rating 2 out of 5]

You need to be a real music nerd for this one. The context and impact of this album for non jazz heads like myself was interesting. But otherwise an academic approach to the album that felt like work.

[Reeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good history and analysis of Bitches Brew. If anything I wish it was longer and went more into the production process. That being said I am ten times more knowledgeable about the album after reading.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very best I've read in this series; a terrific examination of a terrifying and brilliant album with all of the surrounding context as regards Miles' career and processes.