Released October 28, 1970 Length 101:26 Artist Miles Davis Producer Teo Macero Genres Jazz, Jazz fusion | Recorded June 17–20, 1970 Miles Davis at Fillmore
(1970) Jack Johnson
(1971) Release date 28 October 1970 Label Columbia/Legacy | |
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Venue Fillmore East in New York Similar Miles Davis albums, Jazz albums | ||
Miles Davis at Fillmore is a 1970 live album by jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and band, recorded at the Fillmore East, New York City on four consecutive days, June 17 through June 20, 1970, originally released as a double vinyl LP. The performances featured the double keyboard set-up Davis toured with for a few months, with Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea playing electronic organ and Fender Rhodes, respectively. The group opened for Laura Nyro at these performances.
Contents
Compositions include, besides the standard "I Fall in Love Too Easily", tracks from his fusion studio albums Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way. The live performances were heavily edited by producer Teo Macero, and the results were named for the day of the week the band performed; only on the 1997 Columbia CD reissue were the compositions and composers identified and indexed. Promotional LP copies divided the sides into short individually titled pieces, but still did not identify the original compositions and composers.
On March 25, 2014, the full recordings of the performances were issued officially as Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3.
Release history
Miles Davis at Fillmore was released on vinyl as a double album, with liner notes written by Morgan Ames of High Fidelity, and Mort Goode. It was released on CD in Japan in 1987, but not made available on CD in the States until 1997, when Columbia released it as one of five live albums from the same period (the others being Live-Evil, In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall, Dark Magus, and Black Beauty: Live at the Fillmore West). This reissue featured additional liner notes by drummer Jack DeJohnette. Columbia aimed the release for the jazz market but also for college and alternative radio stations.
Marguerite Eskridge, Davis' girlfriend at the time, appeared in the album cover's photo collage.
Critical reception
In a retrospective review, Robert Christgau found Miles Davis at Fillmore to be less focused than Bitches Brew because the music meandered "unforgivably", particularly Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett's keyboard playing on "Wednesday". He said the tracks should have been edited down together to highlight the "treasures" they each offer, including "the cool atmospherics that lead off Wednesday, the hard bop in extremis toward the end of Thursday, the way Miles blows sharply lyrical over Jack DeJohnette's rock march and Airto Moreira's jungle sci-fi for the last few minutes of Friday, all the activity surrounding Steve Grossman's solo on Saturday". In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), J. D. Considine said At Fillmore abandoned the more lyrical music of Black Beauty in favor of "a frenzied, clangorous approach".
1970 double LP
Columbia – G 30038, C 30241, C 30242:
1997 CD Reissue
Columbia – C2K 65139:
Musicians
Production
Songs
Directions (Live Version)2:29
Bitches Brew (Live Version)0:53
The Mask (Live Version)1:36