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Miles Davis at Fillmore

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Miles Davis at Fillmore
Live album by
ReleasedOctober 28, 1970
RecordedJune 17–20, 1970
VenueFillmore East in New York City
GenreJazz-rock[1]
Length101:26
LabelColumbia
ProducerTeo Macero
Miles Davis chronology
Bitches Brew
(1970)
Miles Davis at Fillmore
(1970)
Jack Johnson
(1971)
Miles Davis live chronology
Black Beauty: Miles Davis at Fillmore West
(1970)
Miles Davis at Fillmore
(1970)
Miles at the Fillmore – Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3
(1970)

Miles Davis at Fillmore is a 1970 live album by the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and band, recorded at the Fillmore East, New York City on four consecutive days, June 17 through June 20, 1970, originally released as a double vinyl LP. The performances featured the double keyboard set-up Davis toured with for a few months, with Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea playing electronic organ and Fender Rhodes electric piano, respectively. The group opened for Laura Nyro at these performances.[2]

Compositions include, besides the standard "I Fall in Love Too Easily", tracks from his fusion studio albums Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way. The live performances were heavily edited by producer Teo Macero, and the results were named for the day of the week the band performed; only on the 1997 Columbia CD reissue were the compositions and composers identified and indexed. Promotional LP copies divided the sides into short individually titled pieces, but still did not identify the original compositions and composers.[3]

On March 25, 2014, the full recordings of the performances were issued as Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3.

Release history

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Miles Davis at Fillmore was released on vinyl as a double album, with liner notes written by Morgan Ames of High Fidelity, and Mort Goode. It was released on CD in Japan in 1987, but not made available on CD in the States until 1997, when Columbia released it as one of five live albums from the same period (the others being Live-Evil, In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall, Dark Magus, and Black Beauty: Live at the Fillmore West). This reissue featured additional liner notes by drummer Jack DeJohnette. Columbia aimed the release for the jazz market but also for college and alternative radio stations.[4]

Marguerite Eskridge, Davis' girlfriend at the time, appeared in the album cover's photo collage.[5]

Critical reception

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Professional ratings
Retrospective reviews
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[6]
Christgau's Record GuideB[7]
Down Beat[8]
Entertainment WeeklyB−[9]
Los Angeles Times[10]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[11]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings [12]
Tom Hull – on the WebB+[13]

In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau found Miles Davis at Fillmore to be less focused than Bitches Brew because the music meandered "unforgivably", particularly Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett's keyboard playing on "Wednesday". He said the tracks should have been edited down together to highlight the "treasures" they each offer, including "the cool atmospherics that lead off Wednesday, the hard bop in extremis toward the end of Thursday, the way Miles blows sharply lyrical over Jack DeJohnette's rock march and Airto Moreira's jungle sci-fi for the last few minutes of Friday, all the activity surrounding Steve Grossman's solo on Saturday".[7] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), J. D. Considine said At Fillmore abandoned the more lyrical music of Black Beauty in favor of "a frenzied, clangorous approach".[14]

Track listing

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1970 double LP

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Columbia – G 30038, C 30241, C 30242:[15]

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Recording sessionLength
1."Wednesday Miles"Miles DavisJune 17, 197024:14
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Recording sessionLength
1."Thursday Miles"Miles DavisJune 18, 197026:55
Side three
No.TitleWriter(s)Recording sessionLength
1."Friday Miles"Miles DavisJune 19, 197027:57
Side four
No.TitleWriter(s)Recording sessionLength
1."Saturday Miles"Miles DavisJune 20, 197022:20
Total length:101:26

1997 CD Reissue

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Columbia – C2K 65139:[16]

Disc one
Wednesday Miles (June 17, 1970)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Directions"Joe Zawinul2:29
2."Bitches Brew"Miles Davis0:53
3."The Mask"Miles Davis1:35
4."It's About That Time"Miles Davis8:12
5."Bitches Brew/The Theme"Miles Davis10:55
Thursday Miles (June 18, 1970)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
6."Directions"Joe Zawinul5:35
7."The Mask"Miles Davis9:50
8."It's About That Time"Miles Davis11:22
Total length:50:51
Disc two
Friday Miles (June 19, 1970)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."It's About That Time"Miles Davis9:01
2."I Fall in Love Too Easily"Jule Styne & Sammy Cahn2:00
3."Sanctuary"Wayne Shorter3:44
4."Bitches Brew/The Theme"Miles Davis13:09
Saturday Miles (June 20, 1970)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
5."It's About That Time"Miles Davis3:43
6."I Fall in Love Too Easily"Jule Styne & Sammy Cahn0:54
7."Sanctuary"Wayne Shorter2:49
8."Bitches Brew"Miles Davis6:57
9."Willie Nelson/The Theme"Miles Davis7:57
Total length:50:14

Personnel

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Musicians

Production

  • Teo Macero – producer
  • Stan Tonkel – recording engineer
  • Russ Payne – mixing engineer
  • Nick Fasciano – original cover design
  • Jim Marshall – cover photography
  • Don Hunstein – original liner photography

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Ruhlmann, William. "Miles Davis". Allmusic. Retrieved June 5, 2013. ...Davis turned more overtly to a jazz-rock style...He followed it with such similar efforts as Miles Davis at Fillmore East
  2. ^ Losin, Peter. "Miles Ahead". Retrieved May 21, 2016.
  3. ^ "Discogs". Discogs. Retrieved May 21, 2016.
  4. ^ Macnie, Jim (June 7, 1997). "Columbia/Legacy to Present Miles Davis 'Live & Electric!'". Billboard. pp. 9, 88. Archived from the original on March 30, 2014. Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  5. ^ Matthew Whitaker Ph, D. (March 9, 2011). GoogleBooks Preview. ISBN 9780313376436. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  6. ^ Allmusic review
  7. ^ a b Christgau 1981, p. 101.
  8. ^ "Review: Miles Davis At Fillmore". Down Beat: 65. July 1997.
  9. ^ Sinclair, Tom (August 1, 1997). Review: Miles Davis live albums . Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on February 26, 2011.
  10. ^ Heckman, Don (July 27, 1997). "Unleashing More of the Davis Legacy : MILES DAVIS". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  11. ^ Considine et al. 2004, p. 215.
  12. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 349. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
  13. ^ Hull, Tom (n.d.). "Grade List: Miles Davis". Tom Hull – on the Web. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  14. ^ Considine et al. 2004, p. 219.
  15. ^ "Miles Davis at Fillmore (LP)". Discogs. Retrieved October 29, 2016.
  16. ^ "Miles Davis at Fillmore (CD)". Discogs. Retrieved October 29, 2016.

Bibliography

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