Bloomsbury is extremely proud to announce the sixth of fourteen new 33 1/3 volumes…coming to a bookstore (and kindle/iPad) near you in: Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016 and Fall 2016. It was extremely difficult to select these titles from a pool of over 400 brilliant proposals so we hope you enjoy! To highlight each new title and the author behind it, we’ll announce one book each day over the next two weeks.
Bitches Brew – Miles Davis
By George Grella
Coming April 2016!
It was 1969, and Miles Davis, prince of cool, was on the edge of being left behind by a dynamic generation of young musicians, an important handful of whom had been in his band. Rock music was flying off in every direction, just as America itself seemed about to split at its seams. Following the circumscribed grooves and ambiance of In A Silent Way; coming off a tour with a burning new quintet—called ‘The Lost Band’—with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette; he went into the studio with musicians like frighteningly talented guitarist John McLaughlin, and soulful Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul. Working with his essential producer, Teo Macero, Miles set a cauldron of ideas loose while the tapes rolled. At the end, there was the newly minted Prince of Darkness, a completely new way forward for jazz and rock, and the endless brilliance and depth of Bitches Brew.
Bitches Brew is still one of the most astonishing albums ever made in either jazz or rock. Seeming to fuse the two, it actually does something entirely more revolutionary and open-ended: blending the most avant-garde aspects of Western music with deep grooves, the album rejects both jazz and rock for an entirely different idea of how music can be made. Hugely controversial, enduringly influential, utterly unforgettable: Bitches Brew.
A bit about the author: George Grella is a composer, independent scholar, and writer. He has studied composition, jazz and improvisation, and electronic music, and has performed—and had his music played—at Weill Recital Hall, CBGB, the Knitting Factory, the Henry Street Settlement, Cafe du Nord, and elsewhere. He has written for the Grove Dictionary of American Music, Signal to Noise, the New York Classical Review, and currently is the music editor for the Brooklyn Rail.
You can find George on Twitter here and at his blog The Big City.
[…] excited to be able to announce that Bloomsbury and 33 1/3 Books have accepted my proposal for a book in their series on Miles Davis’ essential and enduring […]
This is an exciting new direction for the series. Looking forward with bated breath.