Which is not to say, Relaxin'....nor with his quintet. On this day in 1969, Miles Davis released his first fusion album, In a Silent Way.  He'd started to go electric the previous year, on initially on Miles in the Sky and more so on Filles de Kilimanjaro. While it has some grooves and uptempo material, Silent Way is a fairly quiet album that doesn't feature any of the more jarring work that one finds on Bitches Brew , Live Evil , On the Corner or Get Up With It , nor does it rock like Jack Johnson . Today's playlist features the mellow cuts from Miles during 1969-1975 his early fusion period. The complete sessions boxed sets (Silent Way, BB, JJ, Corner) from allow for the undoing of some of Teo Macero's edits. For instance, "Orange Lady", with its sitars and tablas can be disaggregated from "Great Expectations" off of  Big Fun . Likewise, the blues vamp from the middle of "Go Ahead John" can stand on its own, although it s...

B.B. King once ranked him as his favorite of the British blues guitar players. An earlier post focused on some of his non-blues work from Then Pay On and the issued at around the same time. This one includes the rest of his compositions cut with the band as well as his signature solo track, "Supernatural."

Forty-five years ago this evening, Bob Marley and the Wailers played the second of two shows at the Lyceum in London. From that show came Live! ,  a scorcher,   a truly great live album. In fact, it may be the one Bob Marley album to have if you only have one Bob Marley album. Better than Legend  or Exodus ? Yep. Better than Rastaman Vibration ? Eh.....could be. And now, it's even better. The deluxe edition contains four more songs from that show, and ten songs from the previous night's show. Drawing from Natty Dread , Catch a Fire , Burnin' and an earlier Wailer's cut, each song...aside from, maybe, "Stir it Up", outshines its studio version. When played slow, they don't drag, they groove. When played faster, they don't sound rushed. Also included in the Deluxe Edition are ten of the songs played on the night of the 17th. It sounds just as good. Stir it Up might sound a bit rushed, hard to say. Below you'll find the studio versions o...

Early Fleetwood Mac. You probably know some of their songs through covers by Judas Preist, the Rezillos, and Santana. One of their earliest hits inspired the " Sun King " by the Beatles. You likely know some version of " Oh Well pt 1 ." You might know " pt 2 " ... a nice bit of spaghetti western soundtrackery which begins the playlist below. Most are familiar with at least one cut from the Bob Welch years. While the band was touring in support of Then Play On ,  Peter Green went to some commune on the outskirts of Munich where he took some really strong acid. Jeremy Spencer -guitar #2 - said that Danny Kirwan - guitar #3 -was there as well and that the acid caused both Peter's and Danny's faces to droop. The band's road manager says that only Green was there. Green remembers having a good time. Maybe it is like Woodstock. If you can remember who took the face-melting acid, you weren't there. In any event, Spencer said they were never th...

On this day in 1969, Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool. He'd been fired from the Rolling Stones, the band that he had founded and named, about a month earlier. While not an acid casualty, his drug abuse seemed to have played a role in his ouster. He wouldn't practice. He failed to show up in the studio. Sometimes the band would just unplug his amp when he did show up.... As the story goes, Brian had been dissatisfied with the commercial direction the band had been taking from, say, Satisfaction onward. He wanted the band to stay true to its R&B roots. Strange, that, as he was responsible for the marimba in "Under My Thumb," the sitar in "Paint it Black" and "Street Fighting Man." When the Stones return to their roots with Beggars Banquet he leaves most of the guitar playing to Keith. On Let it Bleed , he plays congas on one song, autoharp on another. On their least rootsy album, Their Satanic Majesties Request , he plays on e...