Inside Miles Davis' Groove

FARAI CHIDEYA, Host:

The father of cool is himself about to be reborn. Jazz icon, Miles Davis kept some of his classics remixed on a new CD titled "Evolution of the Groove."

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The EP features rap star Nas and guitar great Carlos Santana performing over Davis' songs remade with a strong electronic sound.

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CHIDEYA: Davis' nephew, Vince Wilburn Jr, co-produced the new disk and he joins me here at our NPR West Studios. Also with us here in the studio is Miles' son, Erin. Welcome to both of you.

Mr. VINCE WILBURN (Co-producer, "Evolution of the Groove"): Thank you.

Mr. ERIN DAVIS (Co-producer, "Evolution of the Groove"): Thank you.

CHIDEYA: So Miles is often someone who was fought over by different music lovers, purists liked to claim him, folks in experimental music say he's theirs, even hip-hop artists hold on to Miles as a musician and a kind of rebel music icon. So when you remix his music and blend some of the old with the new…

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CHIDEYA: Now, Vince…

Mr. WILBURN: Mm-hmm.

CHIDEYA: …so many jazz musicians have recorded good music, but only a few of them - Coltrane, Munk and Miles, among them - have managed to transcend the music to pop icon status. So what is it about your uncle that made him someone who is, not just a musician, but also a touchstone of his generation?

Mr. WILBURN: Playing with him and being around him, I always picked up that he was just never complacent, you know, just forging ahead.

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Mr. WILBURN: I mean, he just, he changed the course of music, like, what, four, five different decades. So, I mean, just a step ahead of the game, you know, in life.

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CHIDEYA: And, Erin, we just talked with Femi Kuti the son of Fela Kuti.

Mr. DAVIS: Mm-hmm.

CHIDEYA: It's not always easy, I suspect, I don't know from experience, to be someone who is the son of, the daughter of. What kind of - how do you deal when people come up to you and say, oh, I thought your dad was blank? Or I think your dad's music - the earlier music is better than the later music. Or, you know, any kind of critique.

Mr. DAVIS: Well, one thing you have to understand is that a lot of times there are people who are - will come up to me and talk to me about it and I felt, and their way is the only chance that they'll ever get to even come close to talking to him, since he's not even here anymore.

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Mr. DAVIS: So I have to kind of just, take a step back, listen to what they're saying, and don't really take it personal one way or the other, you know what I mean? Most of the time it's always like, oh, your dad, I loved him, and he's great, and this, and that. I saw him play at this band in '86. Or I saw him in - so, I mean, it's somewhat their way of sharing it with me, which is really actually very nice, you know? I appreciate it. I don't find it to be a burden or anything like that.

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CHIDEYA: What's your favorite personal moment in terms of watching him play or collaborating with him, anything like that?

Mr. DAVIS: Well, one of my favorite personal moments is the first time he invited me when I was 14 to go on the road with him in - during my school summer break. We - Vince was in the band and, like, he flew me up to Berkeley. I got to open, because when we drove to Berkeley and it was their first show that I was going to be on with them. I mean, not on, but I was going to be with them. And I remember the first few notes of Vince playing the drums, the opening number, and I was, like, my eyes just kind of like were the size of saucers. And, I was like, well, now, I know what I want to do for a living. I want to be a drummer.

CHIDEYA: How do you, and I'm going to ask this of both of you, process Miles Davis' move into more experimental electronic territory? Why do you think he did that? I don't know if he ever talked about it personally to either of you.

Mr. DAVIS: I think it's just a natural evolution. I mean, if you understand where he comes from musically, playing with the same band and never - that never works for very long. There's always changes in the instrumentation and the personnel. And what you see over time is a huge list of all-star musicians that came out of his bands.

But eventually, I think he wanted to try different sounds, different textures, electric guitar, even playing his trumpet to electric equipment.

Just because it's - you can't just lay back and do the same thing over and over again and expect to have a fulfilling career. You can't be dealing with the same things for 50 years and expect to be - feel like you've - you haven't done anything. You just repeated yourself. So you might - you've got to try different things, different percussion, different musicians. You can't play with the same guy. That's why no band stays together.

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CHIDEYA: Yeah.

Mr. DAVIS: I mean, even the Rolling Stones don't have every one from their original line-up. You know, it just doesn't work that way, I mean, you know?

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CHIDEYA: Well, what about you, guys? I'm just curious, you know, the cousin thing is interesting. Do you have - do you guys ever scrap with each other over the direction of the work you do?

Mr. DAVIS: No.

Mr. WILBURN: No.

Mr. DAVIS: No, no, no. Because we have a pretty unified position.

Mr. WILBURN: We'd call each other and say well, Erin, what's - you know, like, Tuesdays are release record day. So, I say, Erin, what did you download today, you know what I mean?

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Mr. WILBURN: You know? I mean, no, no, no, no. Not at all.

Mr. DAVIS: No, we were pretty unified with that.

CHIDEYA: Erin, if you had to say what you father's greatest contribution to music was what would you say?

Mr. DAVIS: Just having a level of excellence, I think. Always representing, you know, always expecting the best out of musicians - whether people knew where they were or weren't, he always knew that they had something in them that would bring something to his music. And getting it out of them, I thought, was an art form.

I always thought his bands and the way he selected his players, that was one of his - I mean, of course, you could go and cite, you know, "So What," "Blue in Green," "Freddie Freeloader." You know, you can go down the list of all those great tracks, but I always thought just the way he selected his musicians, hired them, and then got what he got out of them what they didn't even know they could do sometimes. I thought that was one of his best qualities.

CHIDEYA: Do each of you think that his biographers got him right in terms of painting a picture of his life?

Mr. DAVIS: Well, as his own biographer, I think he got himself right. That's the book I would refer to.

Mr. WILBURN: I think we never knew. You know what I mean? Erin, you know, I live with Erin in Morocco and Malibu. And when he would wake up in the morning, we didn't know he's (unintelligible) or not. So we didn't - we just, you know, you just stop yourself and got ready for the day. You know what I mean?

Mr. DAVID: Yeah.

Mr. WILBURN: Because you didn't know. But he was always, like, you'd never knew where he was coming from. And he was always a step ahead of us - me, personally. And I'm sure Erin can say that, too. But, you know…

Mr. DAVIS: Absolutely.

Mr. WILBURN: …he was the man.

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CHIDEYA: Well, on that note, Erin and Vince, thank you so much.

Mr. DAVIS: Thank you very much.

Mr. WILBURN: Thank you.

CHIDEYA: Erin Davis and Vince Wilburn Jr are respectively the son and nephew of jazz legend Miles Davis. Their album is "Evolution of the Groove."

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CHIDEYA: That's our show for today. Thanks for sharing your time with us. To listen to this show or subscribe to our pod cast, visit our Web site nprnews¬es.org. No spaces, just nprnewsandnotes.org. To join the conversation or sign up for our newsletter, go to our blog at nprnewsandviews.org.

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Tomorrow, revisiting New Orleans two years after the floods.

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CHIDEYA: I'm Farai Chideya. This is NEWS & NOTES.

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