Album By Album
MILES DAVIS
LIVE-EVIL COLUMBIA, 1971
In a turbulent period for Davis’s band, Bartz finds himself in the hotseat as the majority of this fiery hybrid album is captured at The Cellar Door, Washington DC
I was working with McCoy Tyner and Miles came to listen. I guess he liked what he heard, because he called me the next week and asked me if I would be interested in joining the band. I thought it was one of my friends, because we used to call each other and imitate Miles’s voice. So I’m saying, “Who is this? Is this Jack? Stop foolin’!” He was gettin’ a little irritated, which is when I realised it really was Miles! Bitches Brew had just come out, so I knew he was playing that electronic music. I was a little bit disappointed because I knew all the music from when John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley were in the band – that’s the music I wanted to play. But I gave myself a couple of weeks, because I’m not gonna turn Miles Davis down.
I just kept playing what I was playing, because that’s what Miles did – he didn’t change. The rhythm section changed, the instruments changed, but as far as what we were doing, we composed our solos as we always did, we just had different rhythms to compose them over.
Miles was the greatest bandleader I ever worked for – he and Max Roach. If you were in his band you were in his family, you could do no wrong.
The beginning of the week [at the Cellar Door] was the regular band, and at the weekend Miles surprised us and John McLaughlin came. So that was special. I guess it was his way of shaking things up, because all of a sudden having a guitar in the band changed the dynamics of everything. But it wasn’t difficult, it was exciting. I guess that’s what Miles was looking for, another sound.