10 Solos on Oleo by Miles Davis
working it out
“I have an almost perfect sense of melodic order.” - Miles Davis, from his autobiography
This is about 10 trumpet solos on 10 versions of Oleo played by Miles Davis. There are recurring elements that appear in many of the solos. They resemble both improvisations and compositions.
Many people have compared Alexander Calder’s mobiles to works by Feldman, Cage or Earle Brown, which will sound different at each performance. The position of the mobile is determined partly by someone setting it in motion, but ultimately by gravity. The ordering of elements in works by the New York School of indeterminists might be determined by whims of conductors, rolls of dice, or astronomical charts.
The ordering and content of a Miles Davis solo on Oleo is his own. It is a spontaneously ordered set of quasi-worked out elements specific to this tune and these changes. It resembles a Calder mobile that Miles designed in a universe where Miles can not only reshape the elements, but he has control over gravity and wind. Viewed together the solos are like a story repeatedly told from memory over many years. The details are different but the gist is the same. Comparing them feels a bit like a rabbi comparing ancient manuscripts to determine the true version of the Torah.
“Worked out” solos were not new in the 50s. In the swing era, after a soloist laid something down on a hit record, they were expected to repeat it, with minor variations, in performance. Sometimes somebody else had to play it. Sometimes people worked out the beginnings of their solos, or even most of them, for record dates. I can’t think of a single jazz musician who does this (or admits to doing this?) currently.
Oleo dates from the 1954 session Miles and Sonny Rollins. Sonny reportedly wrote the tune just before the session. From Miles’s autobiography:
We’d go into a studio and I’d ask Sonny, “Where’s the tune?” And he’d say “I didn’t write it yet” …One tune he wrote like that was “Oleo”...I used a mute and we left out the bass line; Horace would come in on piano when we stopped playing. That’s what made that tune unique.
Paradoxically, the arrangement which Miles refers to (“we left out the bass line”) is not really fully formed on this version. Harmon muted trumpet is there, but bass and sax are still playing in the first chorus. Piano takes the bridge. The tempo is relaxed and the mood is cool. There is one hallmark that Miles plays which will recur in later versions, a lovely diatonic melody that outlines Dmin7 and Cmin7 chords.
The nature of rhythm changes lends itself to expression in many styles of jazz. Because the A section does not stray far harmonically from the tonic, Bb, the tune can be played in a diatonic style, in a way that almost presages Miles’s modal music. Note how often Miles plays Eb’s (Berklee’s infamous “avoid notes”) over the A sections. It also is suited for sing songy, folksy, almost Ornette-style playing. It could be a vehicle for a bluesy head or bluesy solos, like Miles’s 1956 recordings of the medium tempo “The Theme”. However the A sections have enough harmonic interest, through the 2/5s and the final walk up of the bass movement, to be played by a bebopper, delineating every change. In the later post-Coltrane era the A sections would be used for all manner of chord substitutions; a blank canvas for harmonic splatter.
The bridge is also simple - a somewhat distant key which eventually leads back closer and slower to the tonic, 2 bars at a time. If you played the A sections diatonically, you can be more chromatic or dissonant on the bridge. This is basically the platonic ideal of A section to bridge relationship and AABA form, which itself is a condensation of sonata form. You are in one place for a while. You briefly go somewhere else, not too far, and make your way back. Then you are home once again. This would be further distilled by “So What” - minimalist AABA at its extreme. In Oleo Miles makes use of these formal features.
The 1956 Relaxin’ version premieres “the arrangement”, and previews the gradual creep up in tempo which will mark subsequent versions. Harmon-muted trumpet plays the first A section unaccompanied (“we left out the bass line”). Second A adds everyone but drums. Drums come in on the bridge, which is at first piano comping, in later versions an improvised piano solo. Drums out on the last A. Piano clave/clock chimes. It is slick, modern, and a little bit cute. It owes something to Ahmad Jamal’s arrangements. A live version from 1957 in St Louis is mostly the same arrangement with the addition of hi hat hemiolas in the A sections of the second solo chorus.
These are some of the elements of Miles’s Oleo solos, the bits of sculpture that hang from his mobile wires. Not all solos have all the elements.
1. a long, dramatic, impressive, beboppy line towards the beginning of the solo. It ends with Miles’s signature chromatic pattern, a downward series of “a whole step down/half step up”. I call this Miles’s Epic Oleo Lick (MEOL).
2. Lovely diatonic melody outlining the chords Dmin7 and Cmin7, going down.
3. Another beboppy lick that ends the bridge, over C7 to F7
4. Bridge with false fingering tremolos/bisbigliando, rising chromatically from E up
5. Triumphant bugley Bb triadic arpeggio going up from F, holding a high A
6. G7 altered sounds over the G7 chord of the bridge, particularly emphasizing Eb Db Cb.
7. rhythmic and melodic phrase ending with syncopation, triggering the drummer to play along or answer
8. false fingering tremolos/bisbigliando on Bb triads.
9. Another diatonic, sing songy melody in the A sections, starting on Eb, reminiscent of “Pomp and Circumstance” (is this a quote?)
10. Ending with false fingering tremolos/bisbigliando on a descending Bb scale, settling on a low A which is sustained through until the bridge
To understand how some of the elements were used in each version, I made these loosely rendered charts.
Here are the “MEOL”’s from Oleo, in chronological order. He doesn’t play it on the 1954 Miles and Sonny Rollins version. He doesn’t really play it on the 1965 plugged nickel version, but I included a fragment of the similar drum triggering lick. Sometimes he plays fragments, or starts it and flubs it. It always ends differently.
How much of this stuff is worked out and how much is just the sound of Miles playing on uptempo rhythm changes? There are some elements which appear in other rhythm changes solos prior to 1956. The sing-songy Bb arpeggiated traidic melody seems to appear in the more moderately tempoed “The Theme” from the Miles: New Miles Davis Quintet, rec 1955. You can also hear some similarities in the beboppy lines when Miles plays an uptempo blues in Bb, like on “Wee Dot” from this 1955 bootleg.
But this collection of sounds does seem to belong mostly to Oleo.
By 1965, the final version, at the Plugged Nickel, the legendary anti-jazz gig, the arrangement is just barely there. Unlike Red Garland, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, or even 1964 Herbie, 1965 Herbie plays chords during the head, ominously see-sawing between two ambiguous sounds. Miles now takes the bridges in the head, not the piano. It’s seemingly too fast for Miles to play his signature licks, although he gets in a little trigger lick which Tony answers. The rising chromatic false fingerings are still there. His solo ends with a bit of metric modulation with Ron, part of the new freedom that band was pioneering, and a sign of what was to come.
What the hell happens on the first head from the Plugged Nickel? Miles lays out for the last five bars of the second A; is where he comes in for the bridge really where it starts, and is where he ends really at bar 8 (of the same tempo)!?
Fantastic post