Miles Plays Miles

Dingo is a little Australian-French film released in 1991 that would probably be lost in obscurity except for one fact - it stars Miles Davis. In the first image of the film, we see John “Dingo” Anderson (played by Colin Friels) playing his trumpet in the Australian outback, which sets up the tension between his life in the middle of nowhere and his dreams of playing jazz. We then see a flashback to John’s childhood in 1969, when a plane carrying legendary trumpeter Billy Cross (played by Davis) lands on a nearby runway and he gets to hear an impromptu jazz concert. John is mesmerized by what he hears and, after he approaches Cross after the concert, Billy tells him to “look me up” if he ever gets to Paris.

Two-thirds of the film is then taken up with John’s current life, twenty years later. He scratches out an existence hunting wild dogs and taking odd jobs to support his wife and two daughters. John also plays the trumpet and leads a band - “Dingo and the Dusters” - that plays a mix of jazz, country, and blues. But Dingo is still not satisfied with his life and he still dreams of going to Paris and playing with his idol, Billy Cross. He has been periodically writing to Cross over the years and sending him tapes of the music he’s playing in Australia. His dissatisfaction with his current life builds - spurred by the visit of a childhood friend who has gone on to financial success in Perth and starts hitting on Dingo’s wife - and he uses money he’s been saving up to fly to Paris.

After initially having trouble locating Cross, and ending up in jail, Dingo finally meets his musical hero. He ends up staying at his house and playing at a small jazz club with Cross, who has essentially retired but is coaxed back on stage. Dingo is a hit and he returns to Australia knowing that he has the musical chops to make it if he wants to.

The story is a little too good to be believed - it's every jazz musician's aboriginal fantasy, to be acknowledged by a master, come true - and the strange mix of hardscrabble outback struggles and big city jazz dreams is jarring to say the least. The real interest is Davis, who basically is playing himself. His character, Billy Cross, is a reticent and world-weary recluse. But when he is on screen, you can’t take your eyes off of Davis. The atmospheric music - by Davis and Michel Legrand - is quite good throughout: more late 1950s Miles than what he was playing at the time the film was made. The playing in the climactic club scene shows that Miles still had it. (Dingo’s playing was overdubbed by trumpeter Chuck Findley, who has played with Buddy Rich’s band, among others.) Miles died the year the film was released.

Aural History

For fans of Miles Davis’s legendary 1959 record, and for jazz fans in general, Ashley Kahn’s Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece is a compelling read. It’s an insider’s look at people involved in the recording of this most popular of jazz records, including never-before-seen session photos. Kahn provides some historical context on Miles Davis’s development as a trumpet player from the tentative late 1940s dates with Charlie Parker, through finding his own sound in the mid-1950s with his classic quintet, and on to the development of modal jazz that blossoms forth on Kind of Blue. The book also covers the two recording sessions that produced the record, song by song, discussing the false starts, the studio conversations, and the final song versions. One really gets a vivid sense of the personalities involved - in addition to Davis, that includes John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, and Paul Chambers. There’s also coverage of Columbia Records’ marketing of the record and a look at its lasting legacy in the jazz world. This “recordography” of Kind of Blue will have you listening to this LP with renewed appreciation for the artistry behind it.

A Haunting Miles Davis Film Score

Louis Malle’s 1958 film Ascenseur pour l’échafraud (Elevator to the Gallows) is legendary for a number of reasons. It helped usher in the French New Wave film movement, it made Jeanne Moreau a star, and it has a haunting score by Miles Davis.

     The film is a crime drama about two lovers, Florence (Moreau) and Julien (Maurice Ronet), who plot to murder her husband and run off together. After killing the husband, Julien becomes trapped in the building’s elevator, leaving Florence to wander the streets of Paris wondering what happened. Meanwhile, a young couple steal Julien’s car and go on a joyride ending in another murder, for which, because of the car, the trapped Julien becomes the prime suspect. After various plot twists and turns, all guilty parties are inevitably caught.

     It is a remarkably assured Hitchcockian thriller from the 24-year-old first-time feature director. One sees elements of the New Wave in the seeming offhandedness of the younger couple on their crime spree and in the “natural” nighttime cinematography shot on the streets of Paris. Jeanne Moreau was nearly 30 when the film was made, but this was the first time the camera, and audience, got a chance to fall in love with her expressive face, sad eyes, and pouting lips - a love affair that was to continue through her long career.

     But it is the soundtrack that makes the film most memorable for me. Although it plays during less than twenty minutes of the film, the impact of the moody music is tremendous. Even Malle said, “I strongly believe that without Miles Davis’s score the film would not have had the critical and public response that it had.” Davis just happened to be in Paris in December 1957 as Malle was finishing the film. After agreeing to do the score, he was shown the film a couple of times and then recorded the entire soundtrack over the course of one night, with a band that included musicians that he hadn’t worked with before that trip to Europe (although they toured together at that time).

     This soundtrack represents early inklings of the modal style that Davis was to make such a splash with fifteen months later when he recorded the seminal Kind of Blue. He does away with chord changes and plays the slow and triste melodies (in the key of D minor) over the rhythm section. It was Davis’s first attempt at scoring a film and largely improvised on the spot.

     The impact on the film is felt immediately. It opens with an extreme close-up of Moreau’s face as she talks on the phone with Julien, pledging her love to him as they plan the murder. As the credits role, the quiet wail of Miles on trumpet sets the stage for the star-crossed lovers to fall. A variation on this title tune is played later in the film as Florence wanders at night on the Champs-Élysées. Other times, Miles just uses drums or drums/bass to help build suspense. Finally, when the gig is up at the end of the film, another tragic and moody melody takes us to “Fin.”

     I can’t recommend this atmospheric film highly enough. It is like a fresh baguette slathered in brie and downed with a glass of fine French red, all while contemplating the futility of human existence and love's culpability. For me, and I imagine for all jazz lovers, the soundtrack (available on CD) is what I wait for when watching Elevator. Rather than being truly melancholy, it is exciting to see the mesmerizing images and hear the doleful melodies fit together so perfectly.

     The scene that embodies all the innovative elements of Elevator is the one of Florence wandering the streets at night. They were using a newly available fast black-and-white film, which allowed them to get good exposures at night. Apparently, the cinematographer, Henri Decaë, was pushed along in a wheelchair as he filmed. With the Miles Davis soundtrack and Moreau the very picture of tortured heartbreak, the result is magical.

Teo

“Teo” is a song from Someday My Prince Will Come, a little-known Miles Davis album from 1961. The entire album was recorded in just three days. “Teo” is one of two songs on which John Coltrane makes an appearance. It begins with a kind of clapping rhythm (Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on bass), with a Middle-Eastern flavor, then Miles comes in and has some playful interaction with Wynton Kelly plunking on the piano. He then soars off into high modal territory, both playful and plaintive at the same time.
     Just before the four-minute mark, Coltrane comes in and from the first note he asserts his authority. This is the mature Coltrane who at this point in his career has found his full sound. He makes Miles sound almost delicate in comparison to his strong, emotive, and longing tone. Coltrane also explores the upper registers, combining brief spurts of fast notes with long, high tones, a sound that evokes in me something of a bird call, perhaps a great gull soaring along a fog-bound coast. But then I live in San Francisco.
     Many people have remarked over the years about how Coltrane’s sound, particularly in the latter stages of his career, seemed to come from deep within him and resonated for them in a personal way, a way that was often only possible to express in quasi-religious terms. One feels that here in the searching quality of his solo.
     Coltrane goes deeper into the song, where Miles seems to float within it. Miles returns to restate the theme, but it almost feels as if Coltrane’s solo is still echoing until the end.