“The greatest jazz album ever made”, according to John Densmore
The Doors never seemed to fit into any one genre throughout their career. They were a rock band at the end of the day, but there were always elements of everything from old blues covers to even strange theatrical pieces spread throughout their album, whether that was the a cappella ‘My Wild Love’ or their cover of the show tune ‘Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)’. For John Densmore, though, everything came back to jazz, and when he started cutting his teeth as a drummer, it all came back to Miles Davis on Kind of Blue.
While it’s a little bit easy to single out Davis these days as one of the greatest performers who ever lived, it’s not like that opinion doesn’t hold any water. He was always looking at the big picture whenever it came to great music, and even when he wasn’t the centre of attention, his proteges like John Coltrane managed to take the basis of what he did and put their spin on it on albums like A Love Supreme.
But the one reason Kind of Blue stands out is just how much of a game-changer it was for traditional jazz. There had been different forms of modal jazz up until that point, but this was one of the first to capture the masses, dropping in different themes and just seeing where the groove would take them throughout a piece.
Although a track like ‘So What’ is just based on two chords throughout the entire track, hearing Davis glide over the changes almost acts like a musical conversation between him and his fellow musicians. There might be a handful of parts that are thought out, but across the record, it’s as if they are communicating without using any words, with drummer Jimmy Cobb making the group jump at just the right time.
For Densmore, this kind of musical education also became the first bonding moment between him and Ray Manzarak, telling Ameoba, “[This is] the greatest jazz album ever made. When I first met Jim Morrison, I was at Ray Manzarak’s parents’ garage in Manhattan Beach, and Jim was so shy that he wouldn’t sing. I said to Ray, ‘You don’t know ‘All Blues’ by Miles Davis, do you?’, and he said, ‘Yeah’, and that’s the first song we ever played.”
Even though jazz and rock didn’t necessarily fit in all that well, there was still some opportunity to expand things. After all, Davis had started using rock-focused production on records like Bitches Brew, so why couldn’t The Doors use a more sophisticated jazz approach when making their own album?
Once they came out with The Soft Parade, songs like ‘Tell All the People’ benefited from having horns and strings layered on top of each other. Even though it’s far from the greatest Doors project, hearing the fantastic sax break at the end of ‘Touch Me’ is still one of the best moments in any Doors song.
It’s not like that love for jazz ever dulled for Densmore, with ‘Riders on the Storm’ getting its spooky atmosphere from Manzarak’s jazzy piano and the subtle swing coming from Densmore’s cymbal work. The Doors were always a rock band before anything, but having it in one’s DNA is something that will never go away.
