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| On the Corner | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | October 11, 1972 | |||
| Recorded | June 1, June 6 and July 7, 1972 | |||
| Studio | Columbia 52nd Street (New York City) | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 54:41 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Teo Macero | |||
| Miles Davis chronology | ||||
| ||||
On the Corner is a studio album by the American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composerMiles Davis. It was recorded in June and July 1972 and released on October 11 of that year byColumbia Records. The album continued Davis' exploration ofjazz fusion, and explicitly drew on thefunk ofSly Stone andJames Brown, theexperimental music ofKarlheinz Stockhausen, thefree jazz ofOrnette Coleman, and the work of collaboratorPaul Buckmaster.[1]
Recording sessions for the album featured a changing lineup of musicians including bassistMichael Henderson, guitaristJohn McLaughlin, and keyboardistsChick Corea andHerbie Hancock, with Davis playing his trumpet through awah-wah pedal.[2] Davis and producerTeo Macero thenspliced and edited various takes into compositions. The album's packaging did not credit any musicians, in an attempt to make the instruments less discernible to critics. Its artwork featuresCorky McCoy's cartoon designs of urbanAfrican-American characters.
On the Corner was in part an effort by Davis to reach a younger African-American audience who had largely left jazz for funk and rock music; instead, due to Columbia's lack oftarget marketing, it was one of Davis' worst-selling albums, and was scorned by jazz critics and many of Davis' contemporaries at the time of its release.[3][4] It would be Davis's last studio album of the 1970s conceived as a complete work; subsequently, he recorded haphazardly and focused on live performance before temporarily retiring in 1975.[5]
Critical and popular reception ofOn the Corner has improved dramatically with the passage of time.[6] Many outside the jazz community have since called it an innovative musical statement anticipating subsequent developments in styles including funk, jazz,post-punk,electronica, andhip-hop. In 2007,On the Corner was reissued as part of the six-disc box setThe Complete On the Corner Sessions.
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Following his turn tojazz fusion in the late 1960s and the release of rock- and funk-influenced albums such asBitches Brew (1970) andJack Johnson (1971), Miles Davis received backlash from the jazz community.[7][8] Critics accused him of abandoning his talents and pandering to commercial trends, though his recent albums had been commercially unsuccessful by his standards. Other jazz contemporaries, such asHerbie Hancock,Cecil Taylor, andGil Evans, defended Davis; the latter stated that "jazz has always used the rhythm of the time, whatever people danced to". In early 1972, Davis began conceivingOn the Corner as an attempt to reconnect with a youngAfrican-American audience which had largely forsaken jazz for thefunk of artists such asSly and the Family Stone andJames Brown.[8] In an interview withMelody Maker, Davis stated:
"I don't care who buys the record so long as they get to the black people so I will be remembered when I die. I'm not playing for any white people, man. I wanna hear a black guy say 'Yeah, I dig Miles Davis.'"[8]
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Davis also cited German experimental composerKarlheinz Stockhausen as an influence, in particular his forays intoelectronic music and tape manipulation.[9][10] Davis was first introduced to Stockhausen's work in 1972 by collaboratorPaul Buckmaster, and the trumpeter reportedly kept a cassette recording of Stockhausen's electroacoustic compositionHymnen (1966–67) in hisLamborghini Miura.[10][11] The electronic sound processing found inHymnen andTelemusik (1966) and the development of musical structures by expanding and minimizingprocesses based on preconceived principles, as featured inPlus-Minus and other Stockhausen works from the 1960s and early 1970s, appealed to Davis.[12] Davis began to apply these ideas to his music by adding and taking away instrumentalists and other aural elements throughout a recording to create a progressively changing soundscape.[12] He later wrote in his autobiography:
I had always written in a circular way and through Stockhausen I could see that I didn't want to ever play again from eight bars to eight bars, because I never end songs: they just keep going on. Through Stockhausen I understood music as a process of elimination and addition.[13]
The work of Buckmaster, who playedelectric cello on the album and contributed some arrangements, and theharmolodic theory of avant-garde jazz saxophonistOrnette Coleman, whom Davis had previously disparaged,[14] would also influence the album; Davis later describedOn the Corner as "Stockhausen plus funk plus Ornette Coleman."[15] Using this conceptual framework, Davis reconciled ideas fromcontemporary classical music, jazz, and rhythm-baseddance music.[12]
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Recording sessions forOn the Corner began in June 1972. Both sides of the record consisted of repetitive drum and bass grooves based around a one-chordmodal approach,[7][16] with the final cut edited down from hours of jams featuring changing lineups underpinned by bassistMichael Henderson.[8] Other musicians involved in the recording included guitaristJohn McLaughlin, drummersJack DeJohnette andBilly Hart, and keyboardists Herbie Hancock andChick Corea.[17]On the Corner utilized three keyboardists, as onBitches Brew, while pairing Hart—who had also played in Hancock'sMwandishi-era band—with DeJohnette and two percussionists.Bennie Maupin, Hancock's woodwind player at the time, playedbass clarinet, andDave Liebman was recruited as saxophonist.[12] Jazz historianRobert Gluck later discussed the performances:
"The recording functions on two layers: a relatively static, dense thicket of rhythmic pulse provided by McLaughlin's percussive guitar attack, the multiple percussionists, and Henderson's funky bass lines, plus keyboard swirls on which the horn players solo. Segments oftabla andsitar provide a change of mood and pace. Aside from 'Black Satin,' most of the material consists of intensevamps and rhythmic layering."[12]
Compared to Davis' previous recordings,On the Corner found him playing the trumpet scarcely.[18][8] The album also saw his producer,Teo Macero, employ tape editing procedures which he had first used on Davis' 1969 albumIn a Silent Way to combine various takes into a single cohesive work.[16][19] Macero's tape editing technique was informed by his experiences with New York-based avant-garde and electronic composers such asEdgard Varèse andVladimir Ussachevsky in the 1950s and 1960s.[20][21] The tape editing process also allowed Macero and Davis to overdub and add effects after the sessions.[16] Some of the musicians expressed misgivings about the unconventional musical direction of the sessions; Liebman opined that "the music appeared to be pretty chaotic and disorganized,"[7] while Buckmaster called it his "least favorite Miles album."[16]
The album cover featured an illustration by cartoonistCorky McCoy depictingghetto caricatures.[8] The packaging only featured one stylized photograph of Davis, and was originally released with no musician credits, leading to ongoing confusion about which musicians appeared on the album. Davis later admitted to doing this intentionally:[22] "I didn't put those names onOn the Corner specially for that reason, so now the critics have to say, 'What's this instrument, and what's this?' ... I'm not even gonna put my picture on albums anymore. Pictures are dead, man. You close your eyes and you're there."[8]
On the Corner was panned by most critics and jazz musicians; according to Davis biographerPaul Tingen, it became "the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz" soon after its release.[16] SaxophonistStan Getz proclaimed: "That music is worthless. It means nothing; there is no form, no content, and it barelyswings."[8]Jazz Journal critic Jon Brown wrote that "it sounds merely as if the band had selected a chord and decided to worry hell out of it for three-quarters of an hour,"[8] concluding that "I'd like to think that nobody could be so easily pleased as to dig this record to any extent."[7]Eugene Chadbourne, writing for jazz magazineCoda, describedOn the Corner as "pure arrogance."[7] In his 1974 biography of Davis, critic Bill Coleman described the album as "an insult to the intellect of the people."[8]
Rock journalistRobert Christgau later suggested that jazz critics were not receptive toOn the Corner "because the improvisations are rhythmic rather than melodic" and Davis played the organ more than his trumpet. Regarding the appeal it held for rock critics, he praised "Black Satin" but expressed reservations about the absence of a "good" beat elsewhere on the album.[2] Ian MacDonald of theNME declared the album "monumentally boring".[23] In a positive review forRolling Stone,Ralph J. Gleason found the music very "lyrical and rhythmic" while praising the dynamic stereo recording and calling Davis "a magician". He concluded by saying that "the impact of the whole is greater than the sum of any part."[18]
The album's commercial performance was as limited as that of Davis's albums sinceBitches Brew, topping theBillboard jazz chart but only peaking at No. 156 in the more heterogeneousBillboard 200. Tingen wrote that "predictably, this impenetrable and almost tuneless concoction of avant-garde classical,free jazz,African,Indian and acid funk bombed spectacularly, leading to decades in the wilderness. As far as the jazzers were concerned, it completed Davis's journey from icon to fallen idol."[16]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  [24] |
| Alternative Press | 4/5[25] |
| Christgau's Record Guide | B+[2] |
| DownBeat | [26] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  [27] |
| MusicHound Jazz | [28] |
| The Penguin Guide to Jazz |  [29] |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [30] |
| The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide | [31] |
Despite remaining outside the purview of the mainstream jazz community,On the Corner has undergone a positive critical reassessment in subsequent decades; according to Tingen, many critics outside jazz have characterized it as "a visionary musical statement that was way ahead of its time".[16] In 2014,Stereogum hailed it as "one of the greatest records of the 20th Century, and easily one of Miles Davis' most astonishing achievements," noting its mix of "funk guitars, Indian percussion,dub production techniques, [and]loops that predicthip hop."[19] According toAlternative Press,On the Corner is an "essential masterpiece" that envisioned much of modern popular music, "representing the high water mark of [Davis'] experiments in the fusion of rock, funk,electronica and jazz".[25]Fact characterized the album as "a frenetic and punky record, radical in its use of studio technology," adding that "the debt that the modern dance floor owes the pounding abstractions ofOn the Corner has yet to be fully understood."[32] Writing forThe Vinyl Factory, Anton Spice described it as "the great great grandfather of hip-hop,IDM,jungle,post-rock and other styles drawing meaning from repetition."[33]
On the Corner was featured on the 2007 box setThe Complete On the Corner Sessions, alongside tracks from Davis' subsequent compilation albumsBig Fun andGet Up with It and previously unreleased recordings from the same period. Reviewing the box set inThe Wire, criticMark Fisher wrote that "[t]he passing of time often neutralises and naturalises sounds that were once experimental, but retrospection has not madeOn the Corner's febrile, bilious stew any easier to digest."[15]Stylus Magazine's Chris Smith wrote that the record anticipated musical principles that abandoned a focus on a single soloist in favor of collective playing: "At times harshly minimal, at others expansive and dense, it upset quite a few people. You could call itpunk."[34]On the Corner was cited bySF Weekly as prefiguring subsequent funk, jazz,post-punk, electronica, and hip hop.[35] According toAllMusic's Thom Jurek, "the music on the album itself influenced – either positively or negatively – every single thing that came after it in jazz, rock, soul, funk, hip-hop, electronic anddance music,ambient music, and even popularworld music, directly or indirectly."[36]BBC Music reviewer Chris Jones expressed the view that the music and production techniques ofOn the Corner "prefigured and in some cases gave birth tonu jazz,jazz-funk,experimental jazz, ambient and even world music."[37]Pitchfork described the album as "longing, passion and rage milked from the primal source and heading into the dark beyond."[38]
Fact namedOn the Corner the 11th best album of the 1970s,[32] whilePitchfork named the album the 30th best album of that decade.[38]The Wire namedOn the Corner one of its "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)".[39] According to the magazine'sDavid Stubbs,On the Corner was "Miles's most extreme foray into what was often pejoratively dismissed asjazz rock and is still regarded by many critics today as a grotesque, period aberration".[40]John F. Szwed also wrote of the album inThe Wire:
Jazz musicians hated it, critics bemoaned Miles's fall from grace, and since Columbia failed to market it as a pop record, it died in the racks. Even now, when Davis's jazz rock recordings are being reissued to great acclaim,On the Corner remains lost in time. Still, this record might well be the most radical break with the past of all of Davis's many breaks. Dense with rhythm and conceptually enriched with noises, his trumpet's role mixed down to that of a journeyman, the melody reduced to recycledMinimalist patterns, Davis broke every rule enforced by the jazz police. Yet today ... we hear that Davis was laying the foundations fordrum 'n' bass, [trip hop],Jungle, and all the other musics of repetition to come.[39]
Despite the record's influence on numerous artists outside of jazz, "the mainstream jazz community still won't touchOn the Corner with a barge pole", according to Tingen, "and whatever remains of jazz-rock continues to be too deeply in thrall of the pyrotechnics aspect of such 1970s bands asMahavishnu Orchestra to take any notice ofOn the Corner's repetitive funk, which was the antithesis of virtuosity."[16] For its fusion of jazz harmonies with funk rhythms and rock instrumentation,On the Corner was regarded by both Davis biographerJack Chambers[41] and music essayistSimon Reynolds[6] as exemplary of the trumpeter's jazz-rock music, andMick Wall viewed it as a "jazz-rock cornerstone".[42] According toNPR Music's Felix Contreras,On the Corner was among several albums from 1972 that "blurred the lines between rock and jazz", along withI Sing the Body Electric byWeather Report andSantana'sCaravanserai.[43] Jazz scholar Paul Lopes cited the album as an example ofjazz-funk,[44] and ethnomusicologistRob Bowman called it "a milestone" in the genre,[45] whileBarry Miles believed it was a jazz-funk album that also "qualifies asprog rock because no one at the time knew what to call it."[46]Pat Thomas fromJuxtapoz magazine wrote in retrospect that the record exploredpsychedelic funk.[47]On the Corner was also viewed by Dave Segal ofThe Stranger as a "landmark fusion album"[17] and byVice journalist Jeff Andrews as one of jazz fusion's two greatest albums alongsideBitches Brew.[48] While noting its inclusiveness and transcendence of a variety of musical genres,Howard Mandel regarded the album as both jazz and avant-garde music,[49] while Stubbs said "this riff beast is a hybrid of funk and rock but is more atavistic, more avant garde than anything conventionally dreamt of by either genre".[40]
All compositions written byMiles Davis.
| No. | Title | Recording date | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "On the Corner" "New York Girl" "Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another" "Vote for Miles" | June 1, 1972 | 2:58 1:27 6:40 8:49 |
| 2. | "Black Satin" | June 6, 1972 & July 7, 1972 | 5:16 |
| No. | Title | Recording date | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "One and One" | June 6, 1972 | 6:09 |
| 2. | "Helen Butte" "Mr. Freedom X" | June 6, 1972 | 16:07 7:13 |
| Total length: | 54:41 | ||
Notes:
| Chart | Peak position (1972) |
|---|---|
| USBillboard 200[54] | 156 |
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Miles Davis first heard Stockhausen's music in 1972, and its impact can be felt in Davis's 1972 recordingOn the Corner, in which cross-cultural elements are mixed with found elements.
