Miles Davis
A Tribute to Jack Johnson

LA RECENSIONE

Separate but equal.

You blacks eat down there at the back tables, sit down at the last rows of the bus, brawl like fighting cocks, while we wave our sweaty dollars at you and spit on you under the guise of encouraging you. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of Rosa Parks was yet to come, and African Americans could only box among themselves. It was the early 1900s and Jack Johnson was like that: a strong man, who hit hard and took punches well, so hard and so well that from segregated boxing he moved on to the actual championships, and he won them.

Miles hits hard too, but in a silent way. In his own way, he's a heavyweight, but of nastiness and flashes of genius. Ah, genius, what an overused and useless word, but here it fits perfectly. And this album from '71 is tough and hot, raw, awkward, and frayed, like a long electric sweat, a distillation of that overflowing damned Bitches brew. With that riff at the beginning, those syncopations, those guitar licks and spatters, it’s a mix of blood and shit that, by sweating it out, becomes gold.