Two years after Miles released On The Corner came his album Get Up With It (1974) on Columbia Records, marking the end of a seven year period of electric jazz experimentation. This was a compilation album of songs Davis recorded between 1970 and 1974, many of which were part of the sessions for his earlier albums Jack Johnson (1971) and On The Corner (1972).
Get Up With It is an underrated oddity in the Miles Davis discography. Similar to the Teo Macero produced sound of Bitches’ Brew and On The Corner, the music is hard to classify. Put simply, it is jazz fusion of the highest calibre, a melting pot of funk, rock, psychedelic soul, electronic and ambient influences. It’s hardly surprising the Guardian included it in its list of the 101 strangest records on Spotify. The album begins with the incredible ‘He Loved Him Madly’, a 32 minute-long ambient tribute to the mighty Duke Ellington who had recently died when the album was being made. From the latin grooves of ‘Maiysha’ and then to the funky blues of ‘Honky Tonk’, the first side closes with the intense cacophony of ‘Rated X’.
Recorded soon after the release of On The Corner, ‘Rated X’ sounds like an outtake from the album. The lineup is diverse: Cedric Lawson on electric piano, Reggie Lucas on electric guitar, Khalil Balakrishna on electric sitar, Michael Henderson on bass guitar, Al Foster on drums, James Mtume on percussion, Badal Roy on tabla and Miles Davis on the tru– wait, organ? Bizarre as that may sound, this was the first time in his career Miles had appeared on another instrument other than the trumpet or flugelhorn.
From the ominous opening organ chords coupled with a skull-crushing breakbeat, the track hurtles forward, a barrage of sound which gradually builds in intensity. Miles plays sustained chords on the organ whilst the rhythm section drops in and out like somebody is momentarily muting the channel on a mixing desk. Melody and harmony are discarded, instead with an emphasis on rhythm, atmosphere and texture, an approach fusion contemporary Ian Carr would have no doubt found ‘too groove-centric’. It sounds like some sort of demented church service where the organist has become possessed by an evil spirit and worshippers have fallen into a trance. The frenetic drumming and tabla playing from Mtume and Roy evoke ideas of tribal rites and spiritual ceremonies and gives a global quality to the music, bringing together influences from East and West.
Like the rest of the album, ‘Rated X’ is a track which resists classification. Much like Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rain Dance’, the soundscape Miles and his group conjure up is one that sounds remarkably contemporary. Like his similar composition ‘Black Satin’, ‘Rated X’ could be described as proto hip hop, recorded about 15 years before the breakbeat sound of late 80s and early 90s hip hop. As Miles Davis biographer Quincy Troupe wrote of Miles’ 1970 fusion classic Bitches Brew, ‘it sounded like the future’. The music on Get Up With It is an extension of this ‘future music’ and 50 years later, musicians today are still playing musical catch up.
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