I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but I feel like I’m taking crazy-pills every time I poke around online and see that virtually no one else seems interested in the fact that Miles Davis directly samples the opening track of his ground-breaking album In a Silent Way on Side B of his equally classic album A Tribute to Jack Johnson.

Let me explain why this bit of esoterica matters–or at least why I think it should.

The skinny of it is that in the late-’60s/early-’70s, Jazz legend Miles Davis took an if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em approach to the ascendancy of Rock ‘n Roll, and recorded a tetralogy of studio albums that are now considered all-time classics of Jazz-Rock Fusion. They are:

–In a Silent Way (1969), an ethereal, proto-ambient, sui generis of a record that is somehow simultaneously anxious and relaxing, unnerving and calming. The entire album is excellent, but opener “Shhh/Peaceful” especially has a way of getting under your skin immediately.

–Bitches Brew (1970), Davis’s second-most famous album (after 1959’s Kind of Blue), a Platinum-selling, Free Jazz-dabbling, two-disc behemoth that is regularly cited as one of the most ambitious, innovative, and important recordings of the 20th century.^[1]Pitchfork once called it Jazz’s “extinction event.”

–A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971), a surprisingly straight-forward Blues-Rock record. It was originally the soundtrack for a 1970 documentary on the famed boxer Jack Johnson, who in 1908 became the first Black Heavy-weight champion of the world^[2]At a time when Black people in America had precious little else to celebrate. On paper, a Blues-Rock album that features an extended solo on trumpet instead of electric-guitar sounds like the dorkiest thing ever–save that it turns out to be some of the most athletic and impressive soloing of Davis’s career. The entire LP is composed of only two, 20-minute jams: the more swaggering “Right Off” on Side A, and the more brooding “Yesternow” on Side B.

–On the Corner (1972), a straight-up Funk record, inspired by James Brown. A commercial bomb at the time of its release^[3]Columbia marketed it as a Jazz album, despite Davis’s insistence it be advertised as Pop, it has since become regarded as a ground-breaking influence upon multiple genres of House and Dance.^[4]Irrespective of influence, On the Corner is also just genuinely fun. The last time I was in New York, I listened to it on my earbuds while strolling the streets; and though I’m sure I was the … Continue reading

Shortly after recording these four masterpieces, Davis got in a car accident, developed chronic pain, relapsed into heroin and coke addiction, got divorced a second time, alienated the Jazz community, started releasing a series of increasingly avant-garde and difficult live albums^[5]Dark Magus is my personal favorite from this period., and finally retired from all touring and recording in 1975. He would later un-retire in 1980 after an intervention from friends, and embarked on a come-back tour to great acclaim. He then, however, spent the final 11 years of his life recording a series of embarrassing albums that were as commercially thirsty as they were creatively barren, the less said of which the better^[6]Let’s just say his synth-heavy cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” adds nothing new to the original.. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Anyways, given the high reputation that this tetralogy now enjoys among music critics, you’d think would be just a tad more attention to how these LPs also converse with each other. Maybe it’s just that each of these four LPs differ so radically in genre and style that it’s easy to compartmentalize them, as though they didn’t even exist within the same universe–let alone within the same four years, let alone within the same artist.

Yet it is also impossible to ignore the fact that, on Jack Johnson‘s “Yesternow”, right around the 13-minute mark, the unmistakable opener to “Shhh/Peaceful” from In a Silent Way suddenly pops up. And I demand to know why!

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the song–on the contrary! It feels like a fun call-back, a clever little easter-egg, something that ties together all of his wild experiments from his earliest electric period. These albums are not so distinct from each other, he seems to be saying! In spite of their incredible diversity, they are all on a continuum together.

And at the risk of reaching, it feels like there’s a gospel principle at play here–because humanity itself, in all of our staggering diversity and differences, is also on a massive continuum, ultimately. Despite our distinctions to the point of almost feeling like different species, we are all nevertheless children of the same God, and expressions of the same common divinity. Eternity is not static or uniform, but dynamic, wild, ever-churning, ever-creating, as wide-ranging and explosive as the planet and the universe and the Big Bang that created both.

For your average Jazz musician or hippie or stoner or whatever, these are of course not novel thoughts–cliches even. But like all cliches, they have a great and terrible truth undergirding them. Because, not to put too fine a point on it, we really are a conformist heavy religion. Ye oulde And I’m a Mormon ad campaigns to the contrary, I don’t think it controversial to state we overall do a pretty poor job of celebrating the incredible diversity in our midst–let alone attracting even greater diversity to our ranks. Our men are all clean-shaven in suits; our women are all in knee-shorts and single-pair earrings; and even when we’re not, we’re still just ironically affirming our dress-and-grooming standards when we rebel against them.

This is a tragedy for numerous reasons, not least of which is the fact that if we were to take our own theology seriously, we would remember that we are supposed to be creating entire planets and universes of our own one day in the distant eternities. Do we honestly think those planets will all look the same? Or that it will be peopled by divine beings who all look similar to us? I mean, that’s not even what our current planet looks like–and we’re just one tiny speck in the nigh-infinite cosmos, worlds without number!

Miles Davis, as he hit middle-age–the same age when most men ossify into settled habits and narrowed opinions–was instead getting even bolder in how he created whole new worlds that had never been heard before^[7]Though again, the less said of what he turned into in the ’80s, the better.. And again, those four albums were recorded within only four years of each other! If he could’ve maintained that trajectory for another four years, how much more sonic territory could he have explored? Or forty years? Or a hundred? Or a thousand? How much could we create and explore during the Millennium? And what of the endless eternities beyond that?

And if you protest that you have no intention of pushing the boundaries and limits of creation throughout eternity, well then, what are you even doing here? Is that not literally the definition of damnation?