‘Running The Voodoo Down’

The Electric Miles Davis

Davis in his New York City home, c. 1955–56; photograph by Tom Palumbo — (Creative Commons License)

“Everyone has their own Miles,” music critic Philip Freeman writes at the beginning of his 2006 book, Running Voodoo Down: The Electric Music of Miles Davis.

Word is bond.

My Miles wasn’t Miles Davis of Sketches of Spain, Kind of Blue, or Porgy and Bess; that was the Miles Davis of my parents. My Miles Davis, in the beginning, was that hard to figure horn player on one of his so called “comeback” electric albums, 1980’s The Man With the Horn.

I was a teenager and the electric sound that Miles had dared to embrace was beautiful and compelling all at once. Relentless, soulful, and liberating, The Man With the Horn wasn’t post-war blues orchestration; it was modern.

Freeman also wrote that “Fat Time,” as a song that has “nothing to do with jazz.” This is fine; in 1980, it was to me. And Miles’ electric period will always be amazing to me no matter what people want to call it. I didn’t love the very early stuff but I liked it. I loved his evolution in it as well.

The Miles acoustic period was 1945–1967; the electric period many don’t realize is just as long. From 1969–1991 when Miles dies. Phillip Freeman noted in his book that Miles spent half of his career “playing electric music.” Even Wayne Shorter, a frequent player in the Miles’…