I can't find any information on this so I'm resorting to this forum. Miles Davis Electric Period : I know it's highly controversial in Miles' career ; the electric instruments, the allegations of selling out, the loud fast loose jams that desacrilize everything the genre stood for at the time. I shaging love it, if you ask me.
What's perplexing me, and has been a recurrent thing for me, is Michael Henderson's bassline on the song "Turnaroundphrase" that the group played in Eb minor live from 1970 until 1975-ish. More specifically, the lowest note in that bassline starts off being a low open D, like you would expect it in drop D tuning - uncommon in jazz but not impossible.
What bothers me is that a few minutes in to the song, he moves the lowest string up to an Eb. Not only is the groove too fast to retune a string, even by a half step, but it also changes his note placement, on a bassline that hovers around the same notes.
This is breaking my brain, especially that he does this on two separate live shows that are separated by two full years : the 1973 live in vienna concert and on the first track, Zimbabwe, from the 1976 Pangaea live album recorded in Japan. Not to mention that the solos are all in Eb, making it an Eb minor / D funk jam ?! Makes absolutely zero sense.
Not only can you clearly hear him play this low open string, but you can visibly see him do it on the 1973 live concert recording since we have footage closeup of Michael Henderson playing it. At 6:43 :
Pangaea, Zimbabwe (1976) :
As a bassist and student of jazz and music, this seems very important to me, and would highly appreciate any opinion on this.
What's perplexing me, and has been a recurrent thing for me, is Michael Henderson's bassline on the song "Turnaroundphrase" that the group played in Eb minor live from 1970 until 1975-ish. More specifically, the lowest note in that bassline starts off being a low open D, like you would expect it in drop D tuning - uncommon in jazz but not impossible.
What bothers me is that a few minutes in to the song, he moves the lowest string up to an Eb. Not only is the groove too fast to retune a string, even by a half step, but it also changes his note placement, on a bassline that hovers around the same notes.
This is breaking my brain, especially that he does this on two separate live shows that are separated by two full years : the 1973 live in vienna concert and on the first track, Zimbabwe, from the 1976 Pangaea live album recorded in Japan. Not to mention that the solos are all in Eb, making it an Eb minor / D funk jam ?! Makes absolutely zero sense.
Not only can you clearly hear him play this low open string, but you can visibly see him do it on the 1973 live concert recording since we have footage closeup of Michael Henderson playing it. At 6:43 :
Pangaea, Zimbabwe (1976) :
As a bassist and student of jazz and music, this seems very important to me, and would highly appreciate any opinion on this.
