The Complete On the Corner Sessions

The Complete On the Corner Sessions is a posthumous box set by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released in the US on September 25, 2007 by Columbia Records and in the UK on September 29 on Legacy Recordings.[5] Like other Davis box sets, the included material is taken from a wider chronology of sessions than the dates which actually produced the titular album. The Complete On the Corner Sessions compiles material from 1972 through 1975 which, due to lineup changes Davis made throughout the era, features over two dozen musicians.

The Complete On the Corner Sessions
Box set by
Miles Davis
ReleasedSeptember 25, 2007 (2007-09-25)
RecordedJune 1972 – May 1975; March 9, 1972; June 1, 1972; June 6, 1972; June 12, 1972; August 23, 1972; September 6, 1972; December 8, 1972; January 4, 1973; July 26, 1973; September 17, 1973; September 18, 1973; June 19, 1974; October 7, 1974; November 6, 1974; May 5, 1975
StudioColumbia Studio E and B, New York City
GenreJazz-funk, jazz fusion, Jam band, Ambient music, Experimental music
Length407:13
LabelColumbia, Legacy
ProducerTeo Macero
The Miles Davis Series chronology
(Box 7)
The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions
(2003)		 The Complete On the Corner Sessions
(2007)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]
BBC(favorable)[2]
Music Box[3]
Pitchfork Media(9.2/10)[4]
PopMatters8/10[5]
Rolling Stone[6]

Columbia has released a series of eight box sets containing studio recordings from the 1950s to the 1970s. These contain material not available on other Columbia albums. Following The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions, The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, and The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, this release includes the experimental jazz-funk album On the Corner. Davis' band was made up of musicians trained not only in the basics of improvisation and jazz, but on the newer sounds of African-American funk, blues-rock and soul music too, pioneered by popular figures such as James Brown, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin. In parallel, Miles Davis was pioneering the concept of world music during that era, by incorporating elements of traditional African, Latino, Indian and Japanese melodies or instruments in his studio and live jam sessions.

The box set includes more than six hours of music. Twelve of the tracks included are previously unissued. Another five tracks are previously unissued in full. They cover sixteen sessions from On the Corner, Big Fun, and Get Up With It until Davis's mid-seventies retirement. The 6-CD deluxe edition also contains a 120-page full-color booklet with liner notes and essays by producer Bob Belden, journalist Tom Terrell and arranger/composer Paul Buckmaster as well as rare photographs and new illustrations by Corky McCoy, the original designer of the On the Corner, In Concert, Big Fun and Water Babies cover art.[7]

Recording history

As with many of the Miles Davis boxed sets, the overall title is misleading, as the On the Corner boxset covers over three years of studio sessions, from March 1972 to May 1975, and contains improvised music with different styles, concepts, approaches and personnel.

Similarly, The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions includes all of the sessions Davis recorded between August 1969 and February 1970, although the actual Bitches Brew sessions took place over just three days in August 1969.

The sessions for the 1972 album On the Corner were recorded in June and September 1972. On the Corner was scorned by established jazz critics at the time of its release and was one of Davis' worst-selling recordings. Its critical standing has improved with the passage of time; today, it is seen as a strong forerunner of the musical techniques of hip hop, drum and bass, and electronic music.

Davis claimed that On the Corner was an attempt to connect with a young black audience which had largely forsaken jazz for rock and funk. While there is a discernible rock and funk influence in the timbres of the instruments employed and the overall rhythms, the album was also a culmination of sorts of the musique concrète approach that Davis and producer Teo Macero started using in the late 1960s (Macero had studied with Otto Luening at Columbia University's Computer Music Center).

Both sides of the original album On the Corner were based around simple, repetitive drum and bass grooves (the track delineations on the original album were arbitrary). Melodic parts, such as from trumpet, saxophone, guitar and keyboards, were often selectively snipped from hours of improvised jam sessions and overlaid atop the rhythms in the editing process by Miles Davis and Ted Macero. These techniques were developed in the 1940s and 1950s by avant-grade composers but were uncommon in 1970s jazz and pop. Now, refined via the use of computers and digital audio equipment, such recording and editing methods are standard amongst producers of electronically-based music.

Davis also cited as inspirations during this era the contemporary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (who was later falsely rumored to have recorded with the trumpeter in the late 1970s) and Paul Buckmaster (who played electric cello on the album and contributed some arrangements).

Due to the lack of commercial success On the Corner had when it was first released, Davis started to focus more and more on live sessions (due to the spontaneous nature of the setting, which helped musicians to improvise their playing) and recorded haphazardly at the Columbia Studio B and E of New-York City between late 1972 and 1975.

Some of these recording sessions were eventually compiled as a double-length LP, Get Up With It, released in November 1974.

This particular album includes two half an hour long tracks, that respectively starts the side 1 and side 3 of the packaging : the first one being a brooding ambient dirge to the then-recently deceased African-American jazz bandleader Duke Ellington, titled "He Loved Him Madly". The second one is a chaotic progressive-jazz track titled "Calypso Frelimo", which should be interpreted as a celebration of the victory of the Mozambican Marxist-Leninist guerilla FRELIMO over the Portuguese colonizer (by pure coincidence, one of Michael Henderson's basslines on this track predicted the "Underground Theme" of Japanese composer Koji Kondo, used for the 1985 NES and Famicom Super Mario Bros. video game).[8]

The production techniques used for this LP were the same than for On the Corner and previous Miles Davis studio albums (In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute To Jack Johnson and Live-Evil). However, unlike the psychedelic jazz-funk and Afro-futurist style Davis was getting familiar with, the songs included on Get Up With It have an uneasy, dissonant, dense and more claustrophobic sound attached to them (i.e : "Rated X" uses short and neurotic outbursts of Davis' organ drones in order to provoke tension for the listener, "Maiysha" who starts as a melancholic bossa-nova jam before ending with freakish Hendrix-like blues electric guitar solos, courtesy of Dominique Gaumont, Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, etc.).

During his semi-retirement, Miles Davis also recorded some tunes between 1976 and 1978 with fellow jazz guitarist Larry Coryell, before his eventual comback in 1981 with the release of the more commercial and R&B sounding The Man with The Horn.[9] Since then, none of the said tracks have been officially released by Columbia and Sony Music.

Content

The box set contains over three hours of previously unreleased material. On the November 6, 1974 date, guitarist Pete Cosey replaced Al Foster on drums on "Hip-Skip." Later that day, he returned to guitar for an improvisied vitriolic jam, "What They Do", playing alongside Dominique Gaumont and Reggie Lucas.

"Minnie" is based on the Minnie Ripperton song "Lovin' You", and is considered to have an almost commercial easy listening and smooth jazz sound. It is the most mainstream-sounding track of the collection.

The Complete On the Corner Sessions also contains seven of the eight tracks that made up the 1974 double album Get Up With It. (The other track, "Honky Tonk", appears in unedited form on The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions.)

Not included in the set is the "Molester" 7" single (a different mix of "Black Satin"), although the record label is included in the booklet.

Track listing

This list is the same as the provisional one that was published in early 2007, but the CD order was swapped, some of the previously unreleased tracks were edited, and titles were given by Vince Wilburn, Davis' nephew, and Erin Davis, Miles' youngest son.

Disc one
No.TitleRecording dateLength
1."On the Corner (Unedited Master)"June 1, 197219:25
2."On the Corner (Take 4)"June 1, 19725:15
3."One and One (Unedited Master)"June 6, 197217:55
4."Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X (Unedited Master)"June 6, 197223:37
5."Jabali"June 12, 197211:04

Sections of track 3 have been previously released on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974 as "What If".

Tracks 1-5 remixed by Richard King and Bob Belden in 2007.

Disc two
No.TitleRecording dateLength
1."Ife"June 12, 197221:33
2."Chieftain"August 23, 197214:37
3."Rated X"September 6, 19726:50
4."Turnaround"November 29, 197217:16
5."U-Turnaround"November 29, 19728:27

Track 1 taken from Big Fun. Track 3 taken from Get Up With It and previously remixed on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974.

Tracks 4 and 5 are outtakes from the same track, sections of which were previously released on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974 as "Agharta Prelude Dub".

Tracks 2, 4 & 5 remixed by Richard King and Bob Belden in 2007.

Disc three
No.TitleRecording dateLength
1."Billy Preston"December 8, 197212:33
2."The Hen"January 4–5, 197312:55
3."Big Fun/Holly-wuud (Take 2)"July 26, 19736:32
4."Big Fun/Holly-wuud (Take 3)"July 26, 19737:07
5."Peace"July 26, 19737:01
6."Mr. Foster"September 17, 197315:14

Track 1 taken from Get Up With It and previously remixed on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974.

Tracks 2-6 remixed by Richard King and Bob Belden in 2007.

Disc four
No.TitleRecording dateLength
1."Calypso Frelimo"Sep 17, 197332:08
2."He Loved Him Madly"Jun 19, 197432:17

Both tracks taken from Get Up With It.

Track 2 has been previously remixed on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974.

Disc five
No.TitleRecording dateLength
1."Maiysha"October 7, 197414:51
2."Mtume"October 7, 197415:08
3."Mtume (Take 11)"October 7, 19746:51
4."Hip-Skip"November 6, 197418:59
5."What They Do"November 6, 197411:44
6."Minnie"May 5, 19753:53

Tracks 1 & 2 taken from Get Up With It.

Tracks 3-6 remixed by Richard King and Bob Belden in 2007.

Disc six
No.TitleRecording dateLength
1."Red China Blues"March 9, 19724:06
2."On the Corner/New York Girl/Thinkin' of One Thing and Doin' Another/Vote for Miles"June 1, 197219:54
3."Black Satin"June 6, 19725:15
4."One and One"June 6, 19726:09
5."Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X"June 6, 197223:14
6."Big Fun"July 26, 19732:32
7."Holly-wuud"July 26, 19732:54

Track 1 taken from Get Up With It. Tracks 2-5 taken from On The Corner.

Track 3 previously remixed on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974.

Tracks 6 & 7 are the masters for a 45 single, both are taken from "Big Fun/Holly-wuud (Take 3)" -track n°4 on Disc 3-.

Track notes

All tracks are credited to Miles Davis and produced by Teo Macero.

All tracks remixed by Richard King and Bob Belden are either previously unreleased or previously unreleased in full-length.

Before their official releases, the tracks "Mr. Foster" and "What They Do" were respectively referred to as "Wili (For Dave)" and "TDK Funk".[10]

Performers listed by song and recording date
"Red China Blues" (March 6, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"On The Corner" (June 1, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"Black Satin" / "One And One" / "Helen Butte - Mr. Freedom X" (June 6, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"Jabali" / "Ife" (June 12, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"Chieftain" (August 23, 1972 - Columbia Studio B)
"Rated X" (September 6, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"Turnaround" / "U-Turnaround" (November 29, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"Billy Preston" (December 8, 1972 - Columbia Studio E)
"The Hen" (January 4, 1973 - Columbia Studio B)
"Big Fun - Holy-wuud" / "Peace" (July 26, 1973 - Columbia Studio B)
"Calypso Frelimo" / "Mr. Foster" (September 17, 1973 - Columbia Studio B)

Whistles can be heard on the track "Calypso Frelimo", but the performer was unidentified.

"He Loved Him Madly" (June 19, 1974 - Columbia Studio B)
"Maiysha" / "Mtume" (October 7, 1974 - Columbia Studio)
"Hip-Skip" (November 6, 1974 - Columbia Studio E)
"What They Do" (November 6, 1974 - Columbia Studio E)
"Minnie" (May 5, 1975 - Columbia Studio B)

References
  1. Jurek, Thom (2011). "The Complete On the Corner Sessions - | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  2. Jones, Chris (2011). "BBC - Music - Review of Miles Davis - Complete On The Corner Sessions". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  3. Metzger, John (2011). "Miles Davis - The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Album / Boxed Set Review)". musicbox-online.com. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  4. Leone, Dominique (2011). "Pitchfork: Album Reviews: Miles Davis: The Complete On the Corner Sessions". pitchfork.com. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  5. Hart, Ron. "Miles Davis The Complete On the Corner Sessions". PopMatters. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
  6. Rolling Stone review
  7. http://www.miles-beyond.com/otcbox.htm
  8. "Miles Davis: Get Up With It". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2021-02-05.
  9. Grow, Kory; Grow, Kory (2017-02-21). "Larry Coryell, Pioneering Jazz Fusion Guitarist, Dead at 73". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2021-02-05.
  10. Tingen, Paul (2001). Miles beyond : the electric explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991. Internet Archive. New York : Billboard Books. ISBN 978-0-8230-8346-6.
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