Before Miles Davis Went Electric, He Went Ambient

1969's "Filles de Kilimanjaro" set the stage for Davis's most controversial work.

Much has been made about Miles Davis’s “electric period,” when, between 1969 and 1975, he eschewed straight-ahead jazz for an amorphous mix of funk and psych-rock tailored for bigger crowds in larger venues. Though Miles was considered the foremost jazz star in the world, he felt contained by the tenets of the genre, and by conservative listeners who never wanted the music to evolve beyond the 1930s and ‘40s.

Not to be confined by arbitrary restrictions, Davis’s ambition in the late ‘60s signaled a new direction for jazz, which led his peers to take similar approaches in their music. Surely, jazz albums were still viable, but by the time Davis stopped making them (or at least the types of LPs that purists appreciated), the best records were coming from underground labels like Strata-East and Black Jazz. It seemed everyday consumers weren’t so into experimental music; instead, they wanted something with a clear groove and a pocket.

But you don’t get Miles Davis of the early ‘70s without first getting his work from the mid to late ‘60s. As leader of his Second Great Quintet, he pushed the boundaries of rhythm beyond what he’d done to that point. While it scanned as jazz, it bordered on something else.

Publicly, Davis’s In a Silent Way was considered the first of his electric records. Featuring Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone; Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock on electric piano; Joe Zawinul on organ; John McLaughlin on electric guitar; Dave Holland on double bass; and Tony Williams on drums, its hybrid of acoustic and electronic sound led to something gorgeous and ambient, active yet serene. While In a Silent Way gets rightful acclaim as a cornerstone album in Davis’s discography, not enough attention has been paid to its predecessor, 1969’s Filles de Kilimanjaro, for paving the way towards his most polarizing era. The last album recorded by Davis’s Second Great Quintet, Filles was a last stand for Davis and his supergroup of players: Hancock; Shorter; Williams; and Ron Carter on bass — perhaps the greatest band ever of any genre.

Even before Filles, I could hear Davis nudging towards electronic music on 1968’s Miles In The Sky, which, alongside the quintet, featured George Benson on electric guitar, playing the riff on the Shorter composition “Paraphernalia.” It was the first time Davis incorporated the instrument in his work, a sound that remained for the rest of his career. My ear never latched onto that album, though: To me, the compositions feel too loungy and not adequately fleshed out. There are highlights, sure, but Miles In The Sky always felt like cutting room floor material en route to more realized work, and albums like Filles de Kilimanjaro.

For a group that originated in Davis’s basement in 1963, toured extensively, and put out such landmark work as Nefertiti, Sorcerer, and The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel, Filles best represented Davis’s personal and creative transitions, which found the trumpeter wrestling with a sense of place. Then 42, he was inspired by his new wife, the 23-year-old model and musician Betty Mabry (who recorded under the name Betty Davis in the ‘70s), to not be so stuffy. He ditched the loafers and Italian suits for big glasses, high-heeled boots and scarves, and started listening to Sly and The Family Stone, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. In turn, Filles was Davis’s first realized foray into contemporary music, with subtle drums, light key chords and meditative bass loops that spoke allegiances to ambient, R&B and romantic soul.

Davis’s band also deserves credit for pushing the legend to tenuous places. Leading up to the group’s famed 1965 gig at the Plugged Nickel nightclub in Chicago, Tony Williams said it was getting too easy for the members to play together. “We got to do something to get out of that, to make it a challenge again,” Hancock told me Williams said. To make it fun, the drummer vowed to “start playing anti-music,” which excited Hancock, Shorter and Carter, even if the thrill dissipated when they walked into the club and saw label reps with tape recorders.

Williams didn’t relent, though. “We wanted to do the opposite of what someone would expect,” Hancock remembered. “We'd build up something ‘til the end of eight bars. And then on a ninth bar, you might crash into the first beat. But Tony didn't crash; he would build it up and not hit the bass drum — maybe just hit the symbol in a different place. So it gave it a whole different sound. We stuck to our guns.”

Over the next three years, Davis’s Quintet lived on the edge of what was accepted and what was taboo. By 1968, with jazz on its way out as a popular form of music, Davis started looking towards the future. And it wasn’t in some nondescript club with just a few people watching; it was in large stadiums typically reserved for rock-n-roll acts.

Filles de Kilimanjaro was the result of Davis listening to tighter song forms and clearer melodies, while keeping with the acoustic-electric setup he introduced on Miles In The Sky. Where that album mixed rock and the blues, Filles centered ambience and repetition as a way to sustain peace. On In a Silent Way, on “Shhh/Peaceful,” in particular, producer Teo Macero did this by looping the composition, a practice that the bandleader Makaya McCraven would employ effectively across his own catalog. On Filles, via the song “Tout de Suite,” the interplay suggests an adherence to rock, through a loose arrangement that allowed the players to shine without barriers.

My favorite song is “Petits Machins (Little Stuff).” I like controlled chaos in jazz; here, Hancock’s muted keys and Carter’s walking bassline sounded grand atop Williams’s delicate drum taps. Throughout the song and album, I can hear the band breaking away from old ways to explore new terrain. I can almost hear Williams — by far the group’s youngest member — urging the crew to revel in the unknown. That’s where greatness resides. It isn’t in the same ol’ same or in the fear of being misunderstood. It’s in the thing that scares you, that nagging idea you’ve had for a while but somehow talked yourself out of.

Davis was already a legend, and his bandmates would soon achieve the same status. So they could’ve easily gone along as they had and earned the same level of caché. But where’s the fun in that? Are we talking about the Second Great Quintet as the greatest band ever without such creative risks? Davis always encouraged his bandmates to tinker outside the margins, so you don’t get Filles, In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew by playing it safe. More than 50 years on, it’s time to reexamine Filles de Kilimanjaro with the same verve with which we examine his other work. It’s the true gateway to Davis’s most experimental — and controversial — stage.