Miles Davis

LP version. Released by Columbia in April 1974, Big Fun collects four long pieces that Miles Davis recorded between November 1969 and June 1972 and then left in the vaults. Each one fills a whole side, so the double album reads as a map of how fast his electric music moved in the years around Bitches Brew. Two sides come from the large ensembles of late 1969 and early 1970, where electric sitar, tambura and Indian percussion meet electric pianos and two basses. A third side is a lean quintet date from March 1970, and the fourth looks ahead to On the Corner. The album appeared while Davis was touring with a much harder funk band. Its slow, drone-based music sounded out of step with that moment, and it reached only number 179 on the Billboard album chart. Davis, on trumpet, is the only musician heard on all four sides, and Corky McCoy, who also painted the On the Corner sleeve, drew the cover.

Great Expectations was taped at Columbia's Studio E in New York on 19 November 1969. Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock play electric pianos and John McLaughlin guitar, with Bennie Maupin's bass clarinet and two players on sitar and tambura. Producer Teo Macero later edited and rebuilt Go Ahead John, a March 1970 session with McLaughlin, Steve Grossman, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette that runs for nearly half an hour. Lonely Fire brings in Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul alongside sitar and Indian instruments, over twenty minutes of slow, unhurried music. Ife, from June 1972, rests on Michael Henderson's electric bass, two drummers, tabla and hand percussion. Flutes, soprano saxophones and clarinet drift over that groove. In Rolling Stone in 1974 Bob Palmer called it the most consistently appealing, varied and adventurous Miles Davis album since Live/Evil. In his 1981 Record Guide Robert Christgau found it uncommonly beautiful stuff, and it gets better.

This Music On Vinyl edition (MOVLP1514) presses the four sides on two 180 gram LPs in a gatefold sleeve, with lined paper inner sleeves.