When
Get Up with It
was released in 1974, critics -- let alone fans -- had a tough time with it. The package was a -- by then customary -- double LP, with sessions ranging from 1970-1974 and a large host of musicians who had indeed played on late-'60s and early-'70s recordings, including but not limited to
Al Foster
,
Airto
John McLaughlin
Reggie Lucas
Pete Cosey
Mtume
David Liebman
Billy Cobham
Michael Henderson
Herbie Hancock
Keith Jarrett
Sonny Fortune
Steve Grossman
, and others. The music felt, as was customary then, woven together from other sources by
Miles
and producer
Teo Macero
. However, these eight selections point in the direction of
saying goodbye, as he did for six years after this disc. This was a summation of all that
jazz
had been to
Davis
in the '70s and he was leaving it in yet another place altogether; check the opening track,
"He Loved Him Madly,"
with its gorgeous shimmering organ vamp (not even credited to
) and its elaborate, decidedly slow, ambient unfolding -- yet with pronounced
Ellingtonian
lyricism -- over 33 minutes. Given three guitar players, flute, trumpet, bass, drums, and percussion, its restraint is remarkable. When
engages the organ formally as he does on the funky groove that moves through
"Maiysha,"
with a shimmering grace that colors the proceedings impressionistically through
Lucas
Cosey
and guitarist
Dominique Gaumont
, it's positively shattering. This is
as he hadn't been heard since
In a Silent Way
, and definitely points the way to records like
Tutu
The Man with the Horn
, and even
Decoy
when he re-emerged.
That's not to say the harder edges are absent: far from it. There's the off-world
Latin
funk
of
"Calypso Frelimo"
from 1973, with
John Stubblefield
Liebman
, and
turning the rhythm section inside out as
sticks sharp knives of angular riffs and bleats into the middle of the mix, almost like a guitarist.
also moves the groove here with an organ and an electric piano to cover all the textural shapes. There's even a rather straight -- for
--
blues
jam in
"Red China Blues"
from 1972, featuring
Wally Chambers
on harmonica and
Cornell Dupree
on guitar with a full brass arrangement. The set closes with another 1972 session, the endearing
"Billy Preston,"
another of
' polyrhythmic
exercises where the drummers and percussionists --
Badal Roy
-- are up front with the trumpet, sax (
Carlos Garrett
), and keyboards (
Cedric Lawson
), while the strings --
Henderson
, and electric sitarist
Khalil Balakrishna
-- are shimmering, cooking, and painting the groove in the back.
Billy Preston
, the organist who the tune is named after, is nowhere present and neither is his instrument. It choogles along, shifting rhythms and meters while
tries like hell to slip another kind of groove through the band's armor, but it doesn't happen. The track fades, and then there is silence, a deafening silence that would not be filled until
' return six years later. This may be the most "commercial" sounding of all of
' electric records from the '70s, but it still sounds out there, alien, and futuristic in all the best ways, and
is perhaps just coming into its own here in the 21st century. ~ Thom Jurek