A rare appearance with bassist Richard Davis
May 21, 1966
Oriental Theatre
828 SE Grand Street
Portland, Oregon
MILES DAVIS QUINTET
Miles Davis- trumpet
Wayne Shorter- tenor saxophone
Herbie Hancock- piano
Richard Davis- bass
Tony Williams- drums
introduction 0:00
Autumn Leaves (Prevert-Mercer-Kosma) 0:40
No Blues (aka Pfrancing) [incomplete] (Davis) 10:37
Agitation [incomplete] (Davis) 20:15
Stella by Starlight (Washington-Young) 29:39
Gingerbread Boy [incomplete] (Heath) 40:16
My Funny Valentine (Rodgers-Hart) 52:06
All Blues (Davis) 1:03:50
Who Can I Turn To? (When Nobody Needs Me) (Bricusse-Newley) 1:13:55
So What (Davis) 1:23:12/
The Theme (Davis) 1:32:27
closing titles 1:32:45
Soundboard recording
1966 is a sparsely documented year in the Miles Davis discography. After recording his _E.S.P._ album in January the previous year, Miles went in for hip replacement surgery. Recovering from that he broke his leg while playing with his sons and the hip replacement had to be redone. A string of dates in the summer and autumn had to be cancelled. Davis's luck didn't improve in the new year; in January he was hospitalised with a liver condition and again spent several months recuperating.
The members of the Second Great Quintet were in demand, though, and kept themselves busy in the Blue Note studios during Miles's layoffs. Shorter recorded his albums _Adam's Apple, The Collector_ and _Et Cetera_ for the label, all with Hancock on piano, _The All Seeing Eye_ with Hancock and Carter, and _The Soothsayer_ with Tony Williams; Shorter and Hancock appeared on Williams' album _Spring,_ while Hancock used the whole Davis rhythm section for _Maiden Voyage._ Various members of the quintet also played on albums under the leadership of Lee Morgan, Sam Rivers, Bobby Hutcherson, Bobby Timmons, and Freddie Hubbard. Bassist Ron Carter was much in demand and consequently missed many of the quintet's live appearances, being depped by Gary Peacock, Reggie Workman, and, on a tour in the spring of 1966, Richard Davis.
Davis (no releation), born in Chicago in 1930, was an excellent player, equally at home with jazz and classical, and was also much in demand, playing with Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Booker Ervin, Charles Lloyd, Joe Henderson, and Jaki Byard. This unofficial recording from Portland is the only known documentation of his appearances with Miles's quintet.
Portland's Tebbets' Oriental Theatre was a 2,038 seat movie palace built in 1927. The exterior was designed in the Italian Renaissance style but the interior was inspired by promoter Walter Tebbetts travels to the East Indies and was designed to resemble an Indian temple, with Hindu deities and dragons in the lobby, and columns modelled on the Temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. By the late 1950s the theatre's extravagant opulence was at odds with the era's sleek minimalism and the venue was struggling financially. It was eventually demolished in 1970 to make way for a parking lot.
There are a couple of notable inclusions in the setlist- this is the first recording by Miles of Jimmy Heath's tune Gingerbread Boy. The original was recorded by the composer on his album _On The Trail_ (Riverside) in spring 1964 with Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers in the personnel. Miles would record the piece in October 1966 for _Miles Smiles_ (Columbia) but this version more closely resembles the original, with the melody in the turnaround not yet replaced by the series of ascending smears familiar from the studio recording. Incidentally, Richard Davis would record the tune in August under the leadership of vibraphonist Milt Jackson for his album _Jazz 'n' Samba_ (Impulse).
This is also the only appearance of the song Who Can I Turn To in Miles's discography. The tune was written by English songwriters Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley in 1964 for a stage show, _The Roar of the Greasepaint- The Smell of the Crowd,_ sung by the character Cocky, played in the UK production by comedic actor Norman Wisdom. The tour was a failure but was picked up for a US production, eventually running for 231 Broadway performances with Newley himself playing Cocky. The song was covered by Tony Bennett, who had a #33 pop hit with it, followed by Astrud Gilberto and Dionne Warwick.
It's interesting to hear Richard Davis with the quintet (when he can be heard through the recording's sonic murk). He has a tendency to play more abstractly than Carter and the band sound less grounded than usual- hear, for instance, how the familiar ostinato of All Blues is abandoned to very different effect than usual. I've attempted to clean up the sound somewhat, but Tony Williams' drums are very prominent- the closing So What sees the drummer unleash an onslaught of rhythmic intensity that threatens to engulf the other instruments. Still, this is a valuable document with the quintet's Newport appearance and the studio sessions for _Miles Smiles_ being the only other recordings of 1966.
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