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A History of the Newport Jazz Festival – Chapter VI: Electric Aquidneck Experiment, 1969

At the time of the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, there were two primary ways to enter the city on Aquidneck Island. From the North, travelers would cross the Mount Hope Bridge. But most traffic came from the West, where one would invariably need to take a ferry or other watercraft ashore. While there […]

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew 50th Anniversary Celebration- Part Four: “Non-Jazz”

This is the final segment of our four-part series celebrating the legacy of the landmark Bitches Brew on its Fiftieth Anniversary. Our prior pieces emphasized the album’s compositions, production techniques, and recent “jazz” albums it influenced. Each adopts the list format and follows two general guidelines: that the artist presented still performs today, and that […]

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew 50th Anniversary Celebration- Part Three: “Jazz”

This is the penultimate chapter of our four-part series celebrating the legacy of the landmark Bitches Brew on its Fiftieth Anniversary. Our first piece focused on the album’s compositions, the second on production techniques, and our forthcoming final feature will emphasize its influence on  “non-jazz” artists. Each adopts the list format and follows two general […]

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew 50th Anniversary Celebration- Part Two: Production

This is the second of our four-part series of lists celebrating the legacy of the landmark Bitches Brew on its Fiftieth Anniversary. Our first piece focused on the compositions while forthcoming ones will emphasize the album’s influence on subsequent “jazz” and “non-jazz” artists.  Each list follows two general guidelines: that the artist presented still performs today, […]

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew 50th Anniversary Celebration- Part One: The Compositions

On March 30, 1970, Miles Davis shocked the world with his groundbreaking Bitches Brew (Columbia Records, 1970). Although the trumpeter had been increasingly trending towards merging jazz with rock since at least Miles in The Sky (Columbia Records, 1968), Brew destroyed any divide between the two. At the time, some close-minded critics accused him of […]