It’s nearly impossible to call anything by Miles Davis under-appreciated or overlooked. A universally praised trumpet player, Davis created a catalogue that is long, storied and highly influential.
Miles is credited with bringing jazz into the fusion era when he started experimenting in the late 1960s with rock and funk influences as well as a number of players from various backgrounds and styles. He was a leader in the fusion movement, but he was also influenced by what was going on around him, as he had always been, while jazz and rock began to merge in various forms.
Bitches Brew (1969) is rightly chronicled as a seminal work and before it In A Silent Way (1969) and Filles De Kilimanjaro (1968) have received quite a bit of notoriety as the first steps that culminated in Brew. But truly the experiment started with Miles In The Sky in 1968, our fourth Hidden Treasure. This work with his classic quintet, augmented by George Benson on guitar for one track, really was the beginning of fusion for Miles.
Three important aspects of this project were the use of Hancock’s electric piano for the first time by the quintet, the sense of complete collaboration that would manifest more and more in Miles’ music in the coming years, and extended improvisation over one chord or a series of modal chords as opposed to the bebop tradition of seemingly never-ending changes, something he started as far back as Kind Of Blue (1959). Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 4
That was one of Ford’s earliest influences and he has kept that foundation of blues and blues-rock alive in his music, combining it with jazz sensibilities to form his own brand of fusion. Throughout his career, he’s played with many diverse, high-caliber musicians from Joni Mitchell to Miles Davis, and Ford’s varied skills have been consistently on display as a solo performer since the late 1980s.
It’s understandable of course. Both have had successful careers in their own right, particularly Raitt, whose career exploded in the late 1980s and early ’90s with not only chart success but also a plethora of somewhat unexpected Grammy Awards.
The group that came from the splintering of Buffalo Springfield, with singer/songwriter-guitarist Richie Furay and guitarist-producer Jim Messina from the Springfield joining with pedal steel player Rusty Young, drummer George Grantham and bassist Randy Meisner, produced some of the most pleasing harmonies, hottest picking and well-written songs in the early days of country-rock.
With Woodstock’s 40th anniversary coming up later this month, we came across the 
By Young’s account he drove into the ditch and stayed away from the mainstream. That might be a little overstated. He’s had artistic and commercial successes since during his long and buoyant career and some were planted firmly in the mainstream.
First to Roger McGuinn and David Crosby in The Byrds, then to Gram Parsons in the seminal country-rock band The Flying Burrito Brothers and to Stephen Stills in Manassas. Now he has his own sidekick. Or rather Hillman and Herb Pedersen are sidekicks for each other.
From the moment I walked in I was struck by the sound of a young woman’s voice. She was set up in the cafe playing solo, accompanying herself on a Yamaha electric piano. As I walked around I kept being drawn to the woman’s accomplished classical-leaning playing and her smooth, proficient and captivating vocals.