Miles Davis “Jack Johnson”
It’s alleged, and often repeated, that Atlantic Records’ founder, Ahmet Ertegun, who in the 1970s passed on signing the band Television, once described their music as “not Earth music.” Whether or not the quote is real, it’s a great and apt description. “Marquee Moon,” the debut that Television would eventually make still sounds like an album with no future, no past, no discernible language or location. I think it would perhaps be even more accurate to suggest that, if “Marquee Moon” came from another planet, that Miles Davis’ 1971 album, “Jack Johnson,” came from another dimension.
Since I’m neither a musician or a musicologist, it is impossible for me to write about “Jack Johnson” in technical terms. I understand the difference between Bebop and Modal Jazz. But any deeper than that and I start treading water. I’ve listened to enough 60s Miles, Coltrane and Ornette to appreciate the form. In many ways, though, there is barely a through line from those late 50s and 60s iconic Jazz albums to “Jack Johnson.” To get from “Kind of Blue” to “Jack Johnson,” you’d have to make a quantum leap.
Recorded less than six months after “Bitches Brew,” “Jack Johnson” is as much a tribute to Betty Mabry, Davis’ former wife and muse, as it is to the titular heavyweight champ. Mabry was a Free Funk pioneer, and friend of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. So, with his increased interest in her, came Miles’ increased interest in electric instruments, in general, and distortion and Funk, in particular. Mabry also brought Miles closer to the context, if not the politics, of the Black Power movement. Experimental Rock music and progressive, disruptive politics, however, represent roughly half of the ingredients in “Jack Johnson’s” potion.
The other half of the magic came from a mix of the sweat of legendary boxers and, of course, cocaine. Miles was an avowed boxing fan since the early 50s, when he befriended welterweight champ, Honey Boy Bratton. Miles was himself frequently in the ring, training, to both stay in shape but also to better understand the sport that bewitched him. “Jack Johnson” was in some ways an accident. It was made as a score for a documentary about the legendary boxing champ who defied convention and battled institutional repression his whole life. Musically, “Jack Johnson” is the opposite of repression. And, in that sound, very few people in 1971 were prepared for it. Confused by both its form and function, Columbia Records did not promote its release. In their modest defense, they were uncertain whether it was a proper album, a soundtrack, or just something else in between “Bitches Brew” and whatever came next. Similarly, the Jazz cognoscenti largely wrote it off at the time, painting it as more of an experiment and a cinematic piece rather than an actual Jazz album. There were certainly prescient acolytes, but to say that “Jack Johnson” was effectively understood in 1971 would be gross hyperbole. It’s likely not fully understood today, even with the benefit of five decades passed and over six hours of session recordings available to pore over.
What is knowable about “Jack Johnson” is that, when Miles conceived the album, he wanted to assemble the world’s greatest Rock band. By Rock, he seemed to have meant something in the universes of “psychedelic Rock” and “space Funk.” And that “band” ended up as mostly a six piece featuring Miles on trumpet, John McLaughlin on guitar, Michael Henderson on bass, Billy Cobham on drums, Herbie Hancock on organ and Steve Grossman on soprano saxophone.
Track one of “Jack Johnson,” “Right Off,” is the sound — and more importantly the feel — of prize fighting. This might sound obvious given the album’s title and its function as a score for a boxing documentary. Similarly, many of the original tracks laid down in the “Jack Johnson” sessions are named for boxers (“Sugar Ray,” “Duran,” “Ali,” etc.). But, even sonically, you can clearly hear the flurries, the jabs, the circling, the thrills and the exhaustion in many of the modes on the first half of the album.
“Jack Johnson” is two tracks, each more than twenty-five minutes long. Though featuring mostly the same players (about nine minutes of the second track, “Yesternow,” feature a different line-up), the tracks could not be more different. “Right Off” opens up in the ring. It is generally ferocious, brilliant, scorching and violent. It sounds coke-addled. It shape-shifts but it is relentless. It is prime. “Yesternow” is the hangover after the fight. After the binge. After the prime. The former loosely appropriates a Sly Stone riff. The latter directly borrows a James Brown bass line (from “Say It Loud”).
“Right Off” is a frenetic, electric, breathless high. “Yesternow” is a stoned, spaced out, funeral day after. On the opener, the band is following the modes set by its leads, alternately McLaughlin and Miles. On the closer, it is almost as the band is mourning in separate corners, with Michael Henderson, on bass, standing alone in a corner, meditating on James Brown, while Herbie Hancock tries to tend to an organ that is clearly short circuiting. Meanwhile, Miles barely has the energy to play a full line, after the fight from the night before. And McLaughlin, on guitar, and Cobham, on drums, sound fried, but also confused, as though nobody told them that the first song (fight) was over
When people speak breathlessly about “Jack Johnson,” they are often talking about track one, “Right Off.” The track is an earthquake. It’s the first round of young Mike Tyson, extended for twenty-five minutes. It is violent. It is exhilarating. It is exhausting. It is many things. But it is, most of all, John McLaughlin’s moment. The best recorded minutes from Hendrix or Jeff Beck or Jimmy Page are not as interesting as the most boring parts McLaughlin plays on “Right Off.” There are moments where Miles comes in to take lead and give the guitar a breather, but they are rare. “Right Off” is not a horn song. It is a guitar song. There are shards of deconstructed riffs that presage Robert Quine. There are funky lines that Nile Rodgers could not touch. There are very brief solos exploding everywhere. So high is the level of guitar playing that Herbie Hancock practically gives up on organ, trying briefly to match the fire before resorting to experimental bleats and drones.
“Right Off” has turns. It downshifts. It doesn’t win all fifteen rounds. But, at the end, Miles and McLaughlin’s hands are raised in victory and everything else is tired and bloody. If one considers the track a “Rock song,” which I think by most measures would be justified, I would suggest that it is the greatest long (ten minutes or longer) Rock song ever made. In my mind, the contenders for this title include:
“Sister Ray” by The Velvet Underground
“Marquee Moon” by Television
“Almost Independence Day” by Van Morrison
“Helleluhwah” by Can
The “honorable mentions” include:
“Love to Love You” by Donna Summer
“Desolation Row” by Bob Dylan
“Yr City’s a Sucker” by LCD Soundsystem (falls just short of ten minutes)
While writing this essay, I listened to each of the above tracks back to back and considered them on the basis of immediate, visceral impact and enjoyment of revisit. Every one of these songs is astounding. But, on account of the sheer force, revelation, range of dynamics and enjoyment, “Right Off” is the champ. “Helleluwah,” surprisingly, was the runner up. That’s how astounding “Jack Johnson” is at its best. It makes “Sister Ray” and “Marquee Moon” sound almost ordinary.
It would be impossible to follow-up “Right Off” and “Yesternow” doesn’t even try. The track is a dirge, filled with ominous, smoke-filled. The bassist stays fixated on the “Say It Loud” bass line for nearly twenty-six minutes while McLaughlin withdraws into more distortion, muted hooks and wah wah. Miles himself sounds exhausted, picking up the Harmon mute to match the guitarist’s aching sadness. The song sort of floats on top of the players, like a storm front or a hangover. Whereas “Right Off” sounds like young Jack Johnson, traveling the world for a chance to defeat the white, heavyweight champion of the world, “Yesternow” sounds like the ex-champ, the morning after a late career defeat. He’s almost sixty. He’s still fighting but, now, he’s getting hit more. He’s losing now, to some nobody, thirty years his younger. He’s feeling the cumulative weight of everything. The pressure, the expectations, the belt, the punches, the money, the injustice, the hate, the time served, the loss, the racism.
As dark and sad as “Yesternow” might sound in words, it still excites the ear. It features the album’s “spaciest” moments and more traditional Bebop from the trumpeter. Further, there are embers and flickers at every turn. You never know when the champ is going to lace his shoes, stand up and throw an uppercut. Whereas the opener is a ferocious set of punches coming from all angles, the closer is mostly a meditation of that younger self. Miles gets his gloves on for a few flurries on “Yesternow,” just to see what it feels like. But, he gets his answer quickly. After nearly a half hour considering it all, the pain has subsided. The coke high is gone. The hangover is done. And the album leaves us with the deep voice of Brock Peters, who played Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird”,” saying, “I'm Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world. I'm black. They never let me forget it. I'm black all right. I'll never let them forget it.”
“Jack Johnson” is most certainly a magic potion — part Betty Mabry, Black power, modal Jazz, psychedelic Rock, space Funk, cocaine and pugilism. Miles was forty-four when he concocted it and seemed to have lost the ingredient list and proportions as soon as the sessions ended. Over the next two years, he rediscovered some for the druggy parts of “Live Evol” and some of the surplus Funk for “On the Corner.” But “Jack Johnson” would be the last time he conjured magic like the champion from another dimension.