by S. Victor Aaron
Like many of the greatest American musicians, Miles Davis has had a comeback—he’s had four or five of them, actually—but only one where he came back from not playing at all. It was also his least successful one in the short run. The 1975-1981 retirement was a period where Miles watched a lot of TV, and just not being very productive. The years of touring, recording, drug abuse and the whole music business thing finally wore him down by the end of the summer in 1975, and a couple of studio sessions over the next four years proved to be false starts. But by the end of 1980, he was committed to making music again.
These comeback sessions, stretched out over the first five months of 1981 plus a single studio date from May, 1980, weren’t Miles’ best moments in terms of both music and performance. His trumpet sounded feeble and unsure much of the time as he was finding his legs. The two tunes he recorded with nephew Vincent Wilburn’s band were disposable r&b that quickly dated itself. However, for the rest of the songs, Miles’ extraordinary gift for finding supporting talent mostly out of obscurity hadn’t left him.
In March of 1981, Miles went into the studio with Bill Evans on soprano sax (no, not THAT Bill Evans), Mike Stern on electric guitar, Marcus Miller on electric bass, Sammy Figueroa on percussion and the lone holdover from his pre-retirement 70s band, Al Foster on drums, to lay down just one of those tracks for what eventually became The Man With The Horn released later that year. This track became known as “Fat Time.”
Starting with a funky, almost plodding, strut, the song largely picks up where Miles left off in 1975: a circular, dense bass-heavy groove, a loosely defined song structure that’s more like variations on a riff than an actual melody, and a hard-edged guitar. Miles’ playing here is sharper and more focused than elsewhere on the album, and he leads the parades of soloists with a muted horn, while Evans follows. And then it becomes the Mike Stern Show.
Several guitarists (McLaughlin, Scofield, Ford) made their names primarily from their stints with Miles; Stern did so right from this very first track he recorded for the trumpeter. It’s here where Stern shows off his trademark solo style; starting slow and foreboding, unleashing the fury and then bringing it back down to a nice, tidy landing, showing swagger and syncopation the whole way through. He’s killin’ it so bad, you can hear Miller and Foster ratcheting up their own game to keep up, playing harder in sync with Stern. There might be better overall guitarists out there, but I don’t think anyone can modulate a rock guitar solo as perfectly as Mike does, and this one is the jewel on the crown as far as his studio showcases goes.
Miles comes back playing meeker than before, probably having gotten scared poopless by Stern’s guitar. But he soon regroups and takes off the mute in time to let out a song ending exclamatory blurt of the horn. And then in a barely-audible rasp he softly utters “try that.”
A couple of minutes earlier, Stern was saying something else through his guitar. It was, “try topping that.”
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I feel Miles in the air. Thanks!
I had the privilege of producing a record around 1978 for a Boston composer/guitarist Randy Roos. Mike Stern played on it. I've never been much into jazz, and felt quite out of my depth. My sole contribution was telling Mike to turn it up. He did and he rocked even more.
Actually the only jazz guitar player who ever really rocked in my book.