Great Art

Commercial Success
&
A conversation exploring the Kind of Blue,
Love Supreme, and Köln Concert phenomena

Richie Beirach
Michael Lake
 Copyright © 2021 by Richie Beirach and Michael Lake
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not
be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the
express written permission of the publisher except for the use
of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-7365210-2-1

Cover design and layout by Michael Lake

Edited by Rina Kleege
All photographs licensed by Michael Lake

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2021

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 Introduction.......................................... 5
Kind of Blue............................................ 9
A Love Supreme................................ 15
The Köln Concert............................. 19
A universal emotional
message ................................................. 25
Artistic compromise...................... 31

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 For Christian Scheuber

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By Michael Lake

Great art does not necessarily lead to great

commercial success. Exceptional skill in
sports regularly leads to fame and fortune.
So do innovative technological advances
and inventions in business. The inability to
connect great skill and accomplishment to
commercial reward may be unique to art.
What is it about great art that often resists rewarding innovation
and grand vision? Is it because of its conceptual basis and, therefore,
the greater effort and understanding required for its appreciation?
Seeing a football quarterback throw a 60 yard pinpoint pass for
a last second touchdown is much easier for the cheering masses
to appreciate than a brand new contemporary string quartet
performed by world-class musicians in Carnegie Hall.

It is this question of the relationship between great art and

great commercial success that Richie Beirach and I will examine
throughout this piece.

The conflict between art and money goes back hundreds of years.
One notable example was the beliefs and lifestyle of the Bohemians,
a group of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers,
journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities in the
mid 19th century.

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 The modern variant is the “starving artist” syndrome. Unfortunate-
ly, history as well as modern times are both filled with individuals
who struggle to earn a living from their artistic passion and gift.

Even more unfortunate, however, is the popular ideal that authentic

and noble artists must suffer in order for their art to be “worthy.” In
this view, becoming popular and earning a good living are seen as a
compromise to their art that de-legitimizes their efforts as “true” artists.

This view reverses cause and effect. Money is an effect derived from
a cause. It is not earned money that characterizes the illegitimacy of
an artwork. Popularity in itself is not a sign of compromised artistic
values. Instead, the real compromise is the act of manipulating one’s
artistic endeavors to gain popularity and wealth. In modern terms,
we call that a “sell-out.”

But, again, we must be careful not to label an album or another

work of art a “sell-out” simply because it is popular. There is often a
very thin line between artistic success and failure. Without Sylvester
Stallone’s dogged pursuit to sell his script and his role for Rocky, his
work might have languished as an unfulfilled script on a shelf in the
closet of an unknown actor with a dream to create a boxing movie.

Despite failure after failure, though, Stallone didn’t decide one day
to rewrite his script as a cartoon about a cute poodle who dreams
of someday becoming a tough junkyard dog. He was clear on his
authentic vision and maintained it until someone finally said yes.

Jazz is particularly prone to artistic compromise because of the

relatively narrow community of jazz fans. Jazz, by its nature, is not a
popular art form. So the temptation can be strong to tweak this or
add that for the sole purpose of attracting more people to the music.

Compromise in jazz often occurs when the defining elements of the

music are eliminated such as authentic improvisation or live human
interaction.

Given that jazz albums rarely sell millions of copies, what is it about

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the very few that do? What characterizes those rare jazz albums that
capture the attention and dollars of a large music-buying public–
without any hint of compromise?

To answer that, let’s look at three top-selling jazz albums from three
very different musicians at three very different circumstances and
stages of their careers.
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert

In our opinion, Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme are essential,

iconic works of art for the ages. The Köln Concert is also iconic in
its own way, but as good as The Köln Concert is as a work of art,
it does not attain the same level of spiritual and musical depth of
expression as the other two as we will explain.

These three albums represent the art of Miles, Trane, and Keith.
They reflect the particular psychological context and social
situations of the time in which they were recorded.

So Richie and I want to explore what gives these three amazing

recordings such a successful life of their own.

Consider the popularity of these three albums. Kind of Blue has

been the best selling jazz record of all time since its release in 1959.
It has sold over 5 million copies so far and it continues to sell
hundreds of copies every week.

To date,The Köln Concert, a double album, has sold 3.5 million

units. It is a solo piano improvisation, which is astounding. In
comparison, A Love Supreme has sold at least 1 million copies,
making it enormously popular for its time especially considering
the artistic weight of that recording.

Let’s begin by analyzing these three great works of art.

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Compare Kind of Blue to Miles Davis’s records that came before it,
like Milestones and ‘Round Midnight. Those were very good sellers,
due in part to Miles’s first quintet with the great John Coltrane,
Cannonball Adderley, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe
Jones.

But Kind of Blue went in a completely different direction. It was

mellow. It was not exclusively a ballad record, but it had only
medium tempo tunes and ballads–no up-tempo burners and no
Philly Joe Jones. Why did Miles create something so different from
his previous albums? He was a conceptual genius who knew exactly
where this new direction for his music was going, regardless of
trends. He knew the style and the personnel who would create the
unique sound he was looking for on this iconic album.

Miles brought Jimmy Cobb into the recording. He kept Paul

Chambers and used Wynton Kelly for only one blues tune,
“Freddie Freeloader.” And then in a stroke of genius, he hired Bill
Evans on piano for every other tune. In 1959 Bill was the only
piano player in the world who could give Miles what he wanted
and needed. I believe Miles wanted to sustain a certain mood
throughout the whole record, and that mood was lyrical beauty.

He wanted ballad-like lyricism and deep introspection. He wanted

something emotional but not overly sweet. And he also wanted
swinging, in tunes like “Freddie Freeloader”, the waltz “All Blues”,
and “So What.”

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 The general feeling of the record was not like the heavy, hard-bop
vibe from Philly Joe and Red Garland that Miles had created earlier.
That Miles period was a jazz machine. It was an amazing juggernaut
with Trane and Cannonball and Miles playing classic tunes with
fresh arrangements. But Miles wanted something different for Kind
of Blue.

Miles’s great artistic skill was his ability to evoke beautiful emotions
from himself and his musicians. For example, Coltrane’s tone on
“Blue in Green” is positively wistful. It’s not the hard, big, full-
throated Trane sound people were used to.

Usually mellower albums can get boring after a while. They can’t
sustain the energy throughout the album. The typical jazz of that
time had powerful drums that kicked ass with energy and fire,
but this record does not have that type of energy. The intensity
we hear in Kind of Blue comes from the inspired solos and fresh
tunes. Those tunes and the consistently inspired solos throughout
the album are what attract and hold the general public’s interest,
inspiring them to buy 5 million copies (and still counting) of a jazz
album from the 1950s.

Usually when people buy a record, they listen to it a few times. The
memory of the music eventually vanishes. But with Kind of Blue, you
return to it, and as you get older, you hear more things within it. I was
12 years old when I first heard the album. I loved the more energetic
tunes like “So What” and “Freddie Freeloader.” I thought “All Blues”,
“Flamenco Sketches”, and “Blue in Green” were just okay. But I was
only 12. What could I possibly hear in this music that I would hear
decades later?

Miles’s genius was knowing whom to choose for the recording and
how to bring out the best in them. Some accused Miles of sounding
like a racist from his own interviews, but in the end, his personnel
choices, which is what really count, had nothing to do with race.
Miles was smart. He intuitively hired the best people to help him
sound like he wanted to sound regardless of cultural norms.

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Bill Evans was an important ingredient in this recording. Miles
didn’t see color. He saw excellence. His best friend was Gil Evans,
an older, white, genius arranger. Even though those around him
were keenly aware of race, Miles wasn’t when it counted: for the
music.

Bill Evans reflected the sensibility and elegance of European

classical music through the beauty of Debussy, Ravel, and Scriabin.
They were important harmonic and melodic influences for him.
His beautiful touch on Kind of Blue emanated from playing those
classical composers of great piano music. Played through Bill, those
classical influences synthesized with his bebop background to give
the music its universal appeal.

Miles asked his piano players to bring him new music. Bill
introduced Miles to Khachaturian and Rachmaninoff. Chick
would play Stockhausen for him. Gil Evans played the Ravel Piano
Concerto for the Left Hand. Miles loved it.

Some accused Miles of sounding

like a racist from his own
interviews, but in the end, his
personnel choices, which is what
really count, had nothing to do
with race.
In the studio, Miles had a collaborative presence that enabled him
to get the best from his sidemen. Dave Liebman once told me that
Miles would walk around quietly whispering into cat’s ears saying
little cryptic little musical things, but without being authoritative.
Miles was being a real-time composer, producer, and instigator
throughout the session.

Kind of Blue was rich with elegance and grace–a certain style. Look
at the cover of the album. Miles is wearing an expensive suit with

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 a beautiful foulard tie. He once said “For me, music and life are all
about style.”

Playing into the harmon mute created an entire iconic sound

for Miles. This was new. After that, every trumpet player used
the harmon mute to be cool. Trumpet players had played with
a harmon before this, but Miles created an entire movement by
removing the stem to invent a different personality for the trumpet.
It projected intimacy, truth, and an elegant depth of expression. It
was just cooler without the stem, and it took Miles to show us.

One way Miles produced great music was through his selection
of great players. In the process, he created an atmosphere that
encouraged exploration and experimentation. He wasn’t trying
to attract more of an audience for himself. He already had a big
audience, for a jazz musician. So it’s unlikely that any producer ever
said to him, “Miles, you want to make some money with this?”

Another reason this recording attracted an audience beyond the

hard-core jazz fans was that it doesn’t have loud, crashing drums
or endlessly long solos. Those elements were in Miles’s previous
records Milestones and ‘Round Midnight, which were too complex
for the non-jazz music-loving fan. Energetic jazz in general is too
intense and demands too much attention for average listeners. They
don’t hear the intricacies. To them, the drums are intimidating.
They don’t appreciate the fire and energy and joy. They ask, “Why
do the musicians have to play so loud?” These listeners only want to
hear beautiful piano, bass, and trumpet.

Kind of Blue sold big and continues to sell to this day because of
its reach beyond the typical jazz audience. Consider the year 1959
in which it was recorded and released. World War II had ended
over 10 years before, and we were living in the country’s most
prosperous time. There was a big middle class that was going to
college, and because there was no more war, there was leisure time
in which the culture could evolve. Jazz was popular. It was hip to
like jazz. The word “cool” became into vogue.

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Miles was a visionary, not an intellectual. He was street smart,
intelligent, and most important, he had his finger on the pulse of the
trends of his day. He paid attention to TV and to newspapers. He
was interested in the world. He came from an upper-middle-class St.
Louis family. His father was a dentist; Miles didn’t come from the
ghetto.

Miles had great taste but more important than having great taste,
he had the courage to manifest it and carry out his vision. That was
remarkable and people loved him for it.

Kind of Blue became a template for many great recordings that

followed, and to this day its influence permeates the jazz-music-
buying public as well as musicians.

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John Coltrane was well known in the 1960s. He had a hit with
his My Favorite Things album, using the popular theme from the
musical The Sound of Music. In Trane’s brilliant but very humble
vision, he heard the potential in that tune. Same with Chim Chim
Cheree from the film Mary Poppins. Trane the visionary knew what
he could accomplish with those simple melodies.

Trane created a pedal point harmony that made the tunes sound
modern and fresh. His brilliance was to superimpose the original
melody over the pedal point and to put some of the movement of
the chords over the pedal. Perhaps learning from Miles how to find
the right players to bring out the best, Trane knew that McCoy was
the only piano player in the world at that time who could create with
him that foundational pedal point approach.

This pedal point harmonic approach set the template for everything
to come, including an album Trane would record in 1964 called
A Love Supreme. A Love Supreme was not a popular song like My
Favorite Things or Chim Chim Cheree. It is an original composition
that is actually a four-part suite.

A Love Supreme is about love, and that object of love for Trane
was God. Trane recognized his addictions and escaped from them
through his relationship with God. He was grateful to be free of
those demons and wanted to celebrate that gratitude in his music.
It was a beautiful way for him to reflect on his recovery without
the music being overly sugary-sweet sentimental or mournfully

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 therapeutic. You don’t have to know anything about Trane to
respond to his soul in A Love Supreme.

The album was recorded in 1964 and released in 1965. For over
50 years, it has never been equaled. There’s something special
about A Love Supreme because of that classic John Coltrane quartet
with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin
Jones on drums. The music itself was an extension of what they
had been previously playing. They were leading the music into a
new direction, and Trane found a way to capture his very personal
journey on that vinyl disk. It was an authentic artistic statement
from these four jazz geniuses.

The music was also unique in another way. Earlier jazz forms had
used short tunes for solo vehicles. They employed specific formats
that allowed for the solos. Each musician played the melody,
followed by a series of solos, then traded with the drummer, then
they all took the melody out. A Love Supreme was a four-part suite
of music based around a simple motivic idea that was pentatonic,
modal, and chromatic. And within the suite were also tunes
structured around traditional jazz formats.

A Love Supreme is about

love, and that object of love
for Trane was God. Trane
recognized his addictions
and escaped from them
through his relationship
with God.
Consider the religiously-based titles of the suite. “Acknowledgment”,
“Resolution”, “Pursuance”, and “Psalm.” The power of the music
and the potent spirituality that you feel when you sit down and listen
to A Love Supreme takes you to a new place beyond words. It hits the
listener on a deep emotional level, which is exactly what it did to the

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jazz-buying public when it was first released.

Typically this kind of jazz doesn’t sell more than twenty or thirty
thousand copies, especially without the commercial familiarity people
can hold on to, like with My Favorite Things and Chim Chim Cheree.

Kind of Blue sold 5 million albums; The Köln Concert, which we’ll
talk about next, sold 3.5 million. In comparison, A Love Supreme
sold only 1 million copies, but selling 1 million at this level of
artistic music is astonishing. It sold a hundred times more than
would have been expected.

When you listen to A Love Supreme, it hits you in both your heart and
your head. It’s stirring. It projects a feeling of hope. It is a testament to
the fact that Man can really produce greatness. It’s life-giving. It goes
well beyond what everyone thought of as a jazz quartet.

Part of this music’s appeal is the sincerity of Trane’s writing and

playing, especially his tone on the tenor saxophone. His deeply
personal sound on the tenor is what brought so many people
outside of the jazz audience to this music. You didn’t need to be
a jazz fan to hear the sincerity of Trane’s sound. This accounts for
much of its popularity.

There is also an honesty that appealed to an audience who didn’t

know about pedal points, chromaticism, or even the tenor
saxophone. They just heard the sound of Trane as an authentic
combination of humanity, of lament, and of joy.

Trane was authentically humble. Dave Liebman tells of being

introduced to Trane by Pharaoh Sanders at a club. Lieb asked,
“How’s it going, man?” Trane’s honest response was, “It goes
better at home.” Trane’s pursuit of the truth extended to his own
evaluation of his playing. The universal appeal of Trane’s humility
is present in his sound, just as it was with his and Miles’s sound in
Kind of Blue.

A Love Supreme is time capsule material, along with The Goldberg

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 Variations and Kind of Blue. It attained the highest of the highs
within all the arts because it has such grand emotion coupled
with an intellectual element. It has the intuition and it has the
knowledge. It has the cry and it has the swing. It has power, beauty,
and grace. It also has something that you can’t explain, of course,
something that is unspoken and inexplicable: the mystery.

The album became successful within Trane’s lifetime. He did not

have to wait fifty to a hundred years to experience success. Trane
recorded the album with no expectation of commercial success. He
was simply expressing himself.

People wanted his saxophone sound in their living rooms and in

their lives. This is an authentic example of true admiration by the
audience leading to great commercial success. It cannot be faked
or synthesized and thankfully, young musicians and many others
continually discover the joys and rewards of this monumental
recording.

The depth of A Love Supreme allows the listener to discover

something new within each hearing. The music itself doesn’t
change; the listener changes. The great works of art stay the same
as we grow more mature. We just become able to hear more of our
own lives within them.

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Keith Jarrett sat down at the piano on stage at the Köln Opera
House late one night in 1975, and improvised for 67 minutes. That
performance was recorded and would be released by ECM as an
album simply called simply The Köln Concert. ECM would go on
to sell 3.5 million units of this double solo piano recording that
contained no original compositions or standard tunes. Just one
guy improvising the entire concert and singing to himself like a
madman.

Why was it so commercially successful? I think because Keith struck

a chord in people outside of the traditional jazz audience.

Prior to The Köln Concert, Keith had released a beautiful solo piano
recording of improvisations on ECM in 1972 called Facing You. It
got some attention but sales were limited because at that time ECM
was a small unknown European record label with no American
distribution.

The attention to Keith’s music started out as a kind of underground

thing. Then, all of a sudden, Keith appeared on the world stage.
He’d been around before, of course, with Miles Davis, Charles
Lloyd, and before that with Art Blakey as well as on his own
recordings. But ECM was championing the acoustic piano, and my
friend Manfred Eicher was producing the music. ECM stands for
Editions of Contemporary Music. Think Deutsche Grammophon
but with better sound and jazz content.

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 The improvisations throughout The Köln Concert are just remarkable
because of their combination of great musical ideas, extensive
development of those ideas, a remarkable sense of harmony, and
an extraordinary technical command. This music came from deep
within Keith’s heart. It seems like he could have gone on for another
three hours.

The concert easily might not have happened, due to Keith’s health
at that time and the fact that the wrong piano had been delivered
for Keith. He wanted to cancel the concert, but Manfred spoke to
the engineer, and they convinced Keith to perform and decided
that they would record the performance.

Thankfully they did, because something astonishing happened that

night.

With no prearranged musical ideas, Keith stepped onto the stage

with only his ear, his heart, and a Bösendorfer piano. He had the
courage to create something brand new in front of 4,000 people
at 11:30 at night. I always admired Keith’s incredible courage and
integrity, and his Köln concert performance demonstrated both.

You must remember that this was a time when most of the biggest
names in jazz piano were starting to perform on electric pianos and
synthesizers. But Keith went against the trend, and Manfred was
there to support him and facilitate Keith’s musical statement. The
electric keyboards would not have worked for Keith’s style, and they
knew that. His left hand was too complex and orchestral.

Being an orchestral player with a strong left hand, Keith created

some fantastic moods spontaneously composed in front of an
audience through long intricately fashioned improvisations. He
took his time developing his themes just like a composer, creating
the music in front of the audience but with no paper or pencil. Just
improvisation. I’ve seen transcriptions of The Köln Concert. It looks
like a great classical piece of music.

One of Keith’s personal characteristics is that he expresses himself

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freely by moving around the keyboard and vocalizing as he plays.
I think casual listeners think that this is really something special
because they can see how totally Keith is into the moment. Keith is
singing and at times even yelling. It’s almost like he’s in the audience
cheering himself on.

The contemporary jazz audience loved The Köln Concert because

Keith is a great jazz piano player. He didn’t play bebop or tunes.
He used the entire reservoir of classical music, from Bach on
through Stockhausen. He used those textures and sounds and that
vocabulary in his improvisations to tell his fantastic stories.

Keith had the technique of a great classical pianist. He had complete

control over the instrument including the pedals and his many
varieties of touch. These are aspects of Keith’s playing that the
average listener won’t hear but they will sense that that instrument
was being played by a master.

With no prearranged musical

ideas, Keith stepped onto
the stage with only his ear,
his heart, and a Bösendorfer
piano.
When you play a song like Thelonious Monk’s ‘“Round Midnight”
or you play a blues, you’re improvising using the jazz language
within a very specific structure. Keith was not playing tunes or the
blues. He was creating the entire structure or form as he went along.
He was creating the template. When one has a clear mind while
performing under pressure, one can play completely in and of the
moment.

When improvising over a long stretch of time, it is difficult to keep

a consistent musical flow without meandering or playing disjointed
or irrelevant phrases. Keith could maintain that creative musical
flow for hours. This is one of Keith’s great skills. And fortunately we

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 have the recorded evidence that he did it consistently for decades.

The popularity and success that came from The Köln Concert put
ECM on the map and enabled Manfred to support many other solo
piano recordings. Keith broke the sound barrier and opened up
opportunities for me and others. On ECM, Chick Corea recorded
two solo piano albums; Paul Bley recorded a great solo piano record
called Open To Love; Steve Kuhn recorded Ecstasy in 1974; and I
recorded my solo piano album Hubris in 1977. I am honored to
have been part of that solo piano movement started by Keith.

Why was the time right for Keith and The Köln Concert? I believe it was
because people seemed ready for something new. Some of the non-jazz
listeners were put off by the volume of traditional jazz recordings of the
time, and jazz fusion was not universally appreciated by traditional jazz
fans. Keith gave them something to listen to that they could understand
and absorb. People could easily follow his musical flow, and they could
identify with it.

Put another way, people went on a journey with Keith as they

followed the motifs and the rhythms of his masterful performances.
This audience did not put down good money just to appear cool
while attending a jazz concert. Keith’s previous music meant
something deeply personal to them. As well-known as Keith was at
that time, the Köln Opera House was not sold out. But after The
Köln Concert, Keith sold out Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and
the 15,000-seat Budokan in Tokyo sold out within an hour. You can’t
manufacture love. Keith had die-hard fans after The Köln Concert.

A fan of The Köln Concert could be someone who likes Simon and
Garfunkel or a little bit of light classical music, maybe Gershwin or
Muddy Waters or some other authentic blues. The Köln Concert was
inviting them into Keith’s world. You didn’t have to follow all the
technical musical elements or understand the enormity of Keith’s
prowess up there onstage. You didn’t need to be a musician or a jazz
connoisseur. You just needed to resonate with the music’s emotions.

Audiences loved the authenticity of Keith’s performance. It doesn’t

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get more authentic than to go onstage by yourself and create
inspired music on the spot for more than 60 minutes. And going
on a 30-city tour improvising each entire concert put Keith in an
elite artistic class.

The Köln Concert catapulted Keith’s career which would last through
the rest of his performing life. It was no one-trick pony. Keith
followed it up with an enormous number of brilliant solo concert
recordings made all over the world and throughout his career.

ECM garnered lots of attention and financial rewards with Keith’s

once-in-a-generation success. To his credit, Manfred put much
of the profit back into the company so he could attract fantastic
distribution deals from the likes of Polydor, Warner, and Universal
for many other artists like me. Keith and Manfred made ECM a
worldwide artistic phenomenon that began with The Köln Concert.

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Is there a universal emotional message in certain music that
transcends cultural differences? Is there an emotional connection
to the world that these three jazz albums attracted? What exactly is
it, and most importantly, how does it manifest itself on these three
great albums that became commercial hits? And what can we learn
from them for the development of our own music?

Music elicits certain emotions. A UC Berkley study uncovered 13

specific emotions brought about by listening to music. They are:
amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess,
triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling
pumped up. The specific emotions people feel from listening to
music are also based on their culture, background, and world view.

One type of music that brings about strong emotions in the listener
is national anthems. If you listen to the national anthem of another
country, you might simply think it’s interesting. Say you’re an
American listening to the Russian national anthem. You listen and
intellectually, you think that it is a nice piece of music. But if you’re
Russian listening to the Russian national anthem–and I’ve been
with Russian people listening to their anthem–they start to cry, and
it makes them miss their homeland. They’re stirred by the emotion
and the grandeur of the music and want to stand up. When I hear
the “The Star-Spangled Banner” or “America the Beautiful”, it
definitely stirs emotions within me.

Music evokes memories. So when people my age listen to Kind

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 of Blue, it’s not just musical notes. The music brings back the
memories and emotions of what their lives were like in 1959, when
Kind of Blue was released. I was 12 years old then, and everything
was big and scary and full of wonder; many things I couldn’t
completely comprehend. But at that young age, I was excited about
life. I was perpetually curious about the world, and it now feels
good to experience the emotion of that time through Miles.

When I hear that opening phrase from “So What” from Kind of
Blue, I don’t just hear the music. It brings back the memories and
the emotions of that time in my life when my brain was exploding
with sights and sounds. I was living at home with my parents, and
I remember watching something as innocuous as my father shaving
in the morning. I remember my fascination with him taking a razor
blade to his face and not cutting it to shreds! Memories of youth
like that are priceless, and they can be brought out decades later by
hearing certain music of that previous time.

And then you hold the Kind of Blue LP in your hand and look
at Miles in his beautiful suit and tie, and you read the poetic and
cryptic liner notes by Bill Evans, trying to think of how they did all
this? It was all so mysterious and beautiful.

Kind of Blue struck an

emotional chord in people. It
was not a typical Miles Davis
jazz record like his previous
albums Milestones and
‘Round Midnight.
When A Love Supreme was released in 1965, I was becoming a
man out in the world. The years 1964 and 1965 were the center
of a great jazz era with the Bill Evans Trio and Miles’s quintet with
albums like ESP and Miles Smiles. These are my own memories, but
for others, this music offers up their own special emotions.

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Music conjures up emotions for the listener that may not be the
intention of the artists when they created the music. For example,
researchers played A Love Supreme for a hundred American college
students and asked them to write down the emotions they felt.
Seventy Five percent of them wrote “anger.”

They heard the Coltrane sound as being angry, which was

completely the opposite of Trane’s original intention. Trane was
asked about this in an interview, and he replied, “No, I’m not angry.
I want people to love my music. I’m happy.” He cautioned not to
misinterpret strength for anger. That music represented power and
strength for Trane, not anger.

Going back to why these three albums became so successful: is there

some sort of universal reaction when people hear them? And is that
part of the reason these three great artistic accomplishments became
so successful? I think it is.

Kind of Blue struck an emotional chord in people. It was not a

typical Miles Davis jazz record like his previous albums Milestones
and ‘Round Midnight. He choose to record an entire album with
mostly slow tunes with one medium-tempo blues.

Its success has to do with more than the music. Going back to
considering the emotions it evoked, it had to do with an aesthetic
and an attitude of cool, but also with many warm, heartfelt
moments such as “Blue in Green” and “Flamenco Sketches.”

Owning and listening to the album brought about a sense of being

hip. Certain parts of society elevated jazz musicians in terms of their
ability to set various cultural norms. This was evidenced by the way
they spoke, the way they dressed, and their attitude, because they
were involved in a new and highly creative process.

Consider the feel of the music in two of these three albums.

Kind of Blue is a very easy record to listen to. It is not up-tempo,
complex, burnout jazz. The Köln Concert is predominantly mellow
solo piano improvisations, with no drums. Many non-jazz listeners

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27
 and even some jazz enthusiasts are afraid of the drums. They don’t
understand that the volume and intensity are a source of power,
joy, and expression. That’s not anger or just banging for the sake of
making noise.

The more mellow aspect of the music provides a hint to the

popularity of Kind of Blue and The Köln Concert, but A Love
Supreme is an anomaly because it does have loud drums. It’s
burning and complex, with all sorts of forceful, energetic moments.

But the reason A Love Supreme is so universal is due, in large part, to

the compelling nature of Trane’s tenor sound, especially in places like
the introduction, called “Acknowledgement.” This beautiful rubato
introduction has an element of universality, and I feel that the fact
that Trane begins the four-part suite with this very smooth, prayer-
like statement does much to invite the listener into the music. He
doesn’t immediately start with the burning, energetic pieces.

It’s almost like a chant. It’s like the drone quality in Indian music.
It also has characteristics of folk music and the blues. As a matter of
fact, one section of the four-part suite called “Pursuance” is actually
a 12-bar Bb minor blues.

Folk music takes people back to their roots, and there’s comfort
in revisiting one’s roots, as I said earlier about my 12-year-old self
listening to Kind of Blue and listening to national anthems.

The music on A Love Supreme grows harmonically complex and

rhythmically challenging, especially with Elvin Jones’s cross-
rhythms, McCoy’s syncopated chordal piano comping, and the
anchor of the bass line. For the time, there were components of A
Love Supreme that also appealed to a lot of world-music lovers.

Trane was very outspoken about his love for Indian and African
music. Consider his music on Africa Brass and the tune “India.” At
a very basic human level, those aspects of authenticity, honesty, and
sincerity reached out to a much broader audience and accounts for
its commercial success.

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28
There are also many moments of calm and a sense of peace on A
Love Supreme. The piano solos are not all thunderous burnouts,
like when they played live. Remember, A Love Supreme is a studio
recording and even though A Love Supreme has a high level of
intensity, their energy was even greater when they played live.

A Love Supreme is a suite in four-parts that is held together in terms

of its intervallic and melodic relationships. It was conceived as one
piece of music, not just a variety of tunes. And I think the continuity
of it really appeals to the audience and inspires repeated listening.
Some people may have to listen to it three, four, or five times, like a
Beethoven symphony or string quartet. One might not get the full
impact of the music the first time; the music reflects the emotion of
geniuses, so we’ve got to catch up and give those emotions a chance to
sink in and resonate.

There are elements of The Köln Concert–I would say 25 to 30

percent–that are very much influenced by folk music played on
the piano. Keith is engaged with very simple rhythms with many
repetitions in both major and minor harmonies. Moments of static
thoughts–almost like treading water but with a forward motion–
are achieved with such great style that they sound like an organic,
natural element of the musical flow.

Some people love those parts of The Köln Concert the most. They
appeal to the folk and country music fans. You don’t sell 3.5 million
copies of an album just to hard-core jazz fans!

Some people may have to listen

to A Love Supreme three, four,
or five times, like a Beethoven
symphony or string quartet.

From traveling around the world playing with Lookout Farm in

India, all over Japan, and with Dave Liebman throughout Asia with
Quest, I learned that many people respond most to one element

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29
 of our performances: it’s when Dave takes out his little $2 wooden
flute that he bought a long time ago on the side of a road in
Morocco.

When he plays it on the haunting piece by Ornette Coleman,

“Lonely Woman”, the sound of that flute with the piano, bass, and
drums drives resonates emotionally with people. They love it. The
sound and feeling of that little wooden flute represents about half
of the world’s music–that’s music from India to Africa to Morocco–
and audiences relate to that because it’s much simpler than a lot of
jazz, like folk music and national anthems.

These three albums–A Love Supreme, The Köln Concert, and Kind of
Blue–bring about an emotional resonance that is clear and strong
and supersedes the complexity of the music. Perhaps the listener
feels that the music is speaking directly to them similar to how the
Mona Lisa appears to be looking straight at you with her almost
magical gaze.

A Love Supreme is the most complex of the three albums. And if

it weren’t for the pure, beautiful authenticity of the outpouring of
feeling, that music would be just another loud and complex jazz
album that wouldn’t sell nearly as much as it did.

Kind of Blue,The Köln Concert, and A Love Supreme all appeal to

a wider audience. They present a powerful personal and artistic
statement that doesn’t hold back or compromise on the raw
kinetic emotional energy, yet it appeals to people well beyond the
jazz audience, and to me that’s the remarkable, mysterious, and
inexplicable aspect of these great works.

Great Art
30
Neither Miles nor Trane nor Keith set out to make a hit with these
albums. Their focus was not on record sales or critical acclaim. It
was on the artistic statement that they were driven to create.

Like so many artistic aspects of life, chasing after fame and fortune
is a sure path to compromise and failure. It has to be, since your
priority is on the reward rather than the substance. This reversal of
artistic cause and effect has resulted in the mistaken belief that by
its very nature, material success is evidence of artistic compromise.
But it’s not.

As these three albums demonstrate, the product of one’s highest

and most authentic artistic achievement has the greatest chance
to result in a popular product. That is not to say that every great
piece of art is popular. Far from it. But what resonates more often
with listeners is a human statement of truth that is expressed with
extraordinary abilities.

The record label ECM is an example of the artistic statement being

the priority. I experienced this coming on the scene with ECM in
1972-73 with Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, Jack DeJohnette,
and Dave Holland. We were not yet well known, but Lieb was
playing with Miles, and the label’s founder, Manfred Eicher, liked
Dave. One of the great things about ECM, besides the identifiable
sound that they produce, is that they don’t try to cast stars in order to
sell records. Manfred looks for authentic art that resonates with him.
He doesn’t care if the musician is unknown; he just wants the best

Commercial Success
31
 from his artists. Remember, The Köln Concert was an ECM record.

Lieb got his first record date in 1973 for ECM with his band
Lookout Farm. I was on that record and on Dave’s other ECM
album Drum Ode. One year later, Manfred asked me to do my
own album, which became Eon. Following Eon, I recorded the
Hubris solo piano album in 1977, and in 1979 George Mraz, Jack
DeJohnette, and I recorded Elm.

But, unfortunately, not everyone in the music business thinks like

Manfred. In the earlier part of my career, American and European
booking agents and record company people would call me and
say, “Hey Richie, we need a young guy to play like Horace Silver
or Monk. Are you interested?” And I would reply, “Thank you for
the call. I’m honored, but I have my own music.” The agent would
typically answer, “Yeah, we know you have your own music, but do
you want to make some money?”

I would tell them, “No, not if I have to play like somebody else, as
great as they are. I’m sorry.” Or they would call and say, “Listen,
we’ve got an idea. We know you’re an acoustic piano player and
we know you’re an artiste, but how about an all-electric record
with congas and a horn section playing your music?” To which I
would tell them, “Only if I have complete control.” They would ask
“Complete control? Who do you think you are, Barbara Streisand?”

Like so many artistic aspects

of life, chasing after fame
and fortune is a sure path to
compromise and failure since
your priority is on the reward
rather than the substance.
It’s tough to maintain your identity! Some people holding the
purse strings want you to fit into their preconceived ideas because
they want to be able to sell you as something already known, like

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32
a sequel to a successful movie. So to be an innovator is not so
easy, and to stay on your path of discovering what you have to say
musically requires keen self-awareness and balls! The world is trying
to suck you into an established accepted mold because of how
rarely innovation sells big in its time.

Herbie is an interesting example. Herbie did not sell out with

Head Hunters, as many claimed at the time. The Head Hunters
album had an amazing arrangement of “Watermelon Man”,
which caught on like fire. It was Herbie’s original composition,
very carefully arranged by Harvey Mason. It’s basically a blues.
Within the arrangement there are sounds excerpted from Harvey’s
ethnomusical tapes of Mbuti Pygmies of Northeastern Zaire.

Herbie loved those tapes and used those excepts to complement the
electronic sounds of the piano and the funky bass and drums. No
one had ever heard this unique mix of modern synthesized sounds,
great writing, and improvisational genius that used electronic tools
to their full extent rather than as a gimmick.

The critics thought the album was a sell-out simply because of the
electronic sounds of the piano and the funky bass and drums. They
ignored the fact that there were long and terrific improvised solos on
the record. Just listen to Benny Maupin’s soprano solo on “Sly.”

It’s true that Herbie wanted to reach a larger audience. Before

Head Hunters, he had gone as far as he could with his sextet, which
was an incredible band with Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, Julian
Priester, Benny Maupin, and Buster Williams. They sold a lot of
records, but Herbie still wanted something more.

Head Hunters isn’t at the artistic level of Herbie’s Maiden Voyage

album, which he recorded with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet,
George Coleman on tenor saxophone, Ron Carter on bass, and
Tony Williams on drums. But Head Hunters is an example of
honest music played at a very high level at just the right time
period. It brought Herbie great commercial success and it
introduced him to a much larger audience.

Commercial Success
33
 To further demonstrate Herbie’s artistic integrity: after making a
lot of money with Head Hunters and two or three more records in
that genre, including the amazing video called “Rocket,” he went
back to playing acoustic jazz with VSOP, a group that was kind of a
reminiscence of Miles’s quintet of the 1960s.

VSOP was to have been a Very Special One-time Performance

affair with Freddy Hubbard playing Miles’s role along with Wayne
Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. They didn’t just rehash
Miles’s old stuff. The band was great and played a lot of new
material. VSOP was not a commercial sell-out. It was an enormous
success musically and financially. They played stadiums holding
30,000 screaming fans in Japan and all over the world.

Herbie always had two currents in him. He had his acoustic jazz
current and his more commercial, funky current, all of it with lots
of improvisation. After all, Herbie’s first Blue Note record, called
Takin’ Off, with Dexter Gordon and Freddie Hubbard, had an
arrangement of “Watermelon Man.”

I would go see Herbie anywhere, anytime. He never sold out his

artistic integrity. He had a talent for making things that happened to
have a broad commercial appeal, but without the primary intent of
making money. I think a big part of Herbie’s success was his drive to
embrace technological trends as another voice for his music.

Being an innovator requires being true to oneself, but a great deal of

integrity is required to hold on to one’s true artistic voice through the
pull of commercial success that challenges every innovative artist.

You have to fight to maintain and perform your authentic

artistic vision. Artists may be shy or too insecure to stand up for
themselves, or the pull of money may be too strong to resist. It’s a
choice every artist has the full right to make. But Kind of Blue, The
Köln Concert, and A Love Supreme were created by men who had
clear uncompromised visions of exactly what they wanted to say to
the world.

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34
What is it about Kind of Blue, A Love Supreme, and The Köln
Concert–three iconic and groundbreaking jazz albums–that
so captured the passion of the music-loving public that they
became the best selling jazz albums of all time?

Richie Beirach and Michael Lake expose the intricacies

of the music, personnel, emotion, and motivation behind
these three great works of musical art. By uncovering the
common elements of these albums they bring to light some
universal truths about the relationship between great art and
commercial success.

Other books from musicsavvy.com you might enjoy:

DAVE LIEBMAN
The Art of Skill
Establishing the Mindset For Unleashing the Music Inside You
The Art of Skill

Edited and Designed by Michael Lake

Foreword by Steve Swallow

$9.95
ISBN 978-1-7365210-2-1
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