“The greatest”: Miles Davis’ attempt to create a rock supergroup
If Miles Davis says that he could “put together the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band you ever heard,” you’re best off not arguing with him. Regularly regarded as one of the all-time greats in the world of jazz, Davis’ ability to remould the genre beyond expectation time and time again was nothing short of astounding, and his jazz-fusion experiments towards the end of the 1960s and in the early ‘70s ought to be enough evidence that he was capable of rocking out just as much as the guitar heroes of the era.
When it came to assembling bands, Davis always knew the best musicians to accompany him, and having no shortage of accomplices to choose from when he roped in session players, every incarnation of his studio band was studded with greats in the world of jazz. He was so confident in the greatness of his ensembles that he even dubbed two bands of his, the First and Second Great Quintets, and he wasn’t wrong to do so either, considering both had no shortage of talent within them.
However, Davis was a notoriously hard man to please and set those around him near-impossible standards to live up to, meaning that everyone heard on his records was being pushed to their absolute limit. This revolving cast of supreme players always knew that they had to be at the top of their game for Davis and were acutely aware that he wouldn’t settle for anything less.
In 1967, Davis had developed something of an infatuation with the work of Jimi Hendrix, and while he wasn’t a jazz guitarist, the way he created such an otherworldly sound with just a trio of himself, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell in the Jimi Hendrix Experience inspired Davis to push his sound towards a fusion of jazz and rock music. The first album of his to really see this development take hold of his sound was 1968’s Miles in the Sky, which he recorded with his Second Great Quintet. However, more ambitious ventures would soon become his focus, and around the time he was quoted as having said he could assemble the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, he was hard at work attempting to prove that.
From November 1969 to June 1970, sessions were taking place for A Tribute to Jack Johnson; undoubtedly the closest Davis ever came to releasing an out-and-out rock album. Of course, there were plenty of jazz elements to the album, and the musicians he brought in for the extensive jam sessions were largely more informed by jazz than they were by rock. However, the resulting two tracks that made it onto the album, running at close to 27 and 26 minutes, respectively, see Davis and his band lose themselves in a world of guitar overdrive, wailing trumpets, and spaced-out synths.
Guitarist John McLaughlin was the closest thing to a rock musician present on the album, although he himself would go on to prove himself to be regarded as an equally important pioneer of jazz-rock for his work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra later in the 1970s. Playing off the more avant-garde stylings of fellow guitarist Sonny Sharrock, the wailing of their instruments characterises large amounts of the first song, ‘Right Off’, but the emphasis on rock is just as strong as it is on jazz.
The likes of Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Hermeto Pascoal can all be heard at various points during the complete sessions, though only 12 of the 20 contributors enlisted made it onto the final studio album, which was released in February 1971. Many of the songs that were recorded at the time of Jack Johnson’s recording would eventually find their way onto the live album Live-Evil and on other studio releases such as Big Fun and Get Up With It.
The full list of collaborators he worked with to create this hybrid masterpiece is remarkable, and while they’re not an ensemble cast of the greatest rock musicians of all time, in order to assemble the “greatest rock ‘n’ roll band you ever heard” he proved that he didn’t need rock musicians at all, as Jack Johnson and many of his subsequent albums in the early ‘70s took rock far further than any band in the genre dared to do at that time.
