Musicians’ stories of what it was like to work with Miles
If you’ve been reading this series, who know these interviews were done not long after Miles died in 1991, and they appeared in Musician magazine. I interviewed six musicians. Here’s what bassist Buster Williams had to say:
“The first night I worked with him, Miles called ‘So What’. During those days he was playing really fast; it was right after he made E.S.P. I was nervous, my hands were sweating, and I muffed the line. Miles, like a truly compassionate parent, turned around to me, and while holding his horn in one hand, ran his hand down the strings of my bass with the other, and said, ‘Try it again.’ Then he stomped it off at the same tempo and I played the shit out of it. I felt like a cat purring when you rub its neck. Like this was my mentor. And when I asked him after the gig, ‘Miles, what am I supposed to be doing up there?’ He said, ‘When they play fast, you play slow. When they play slow, you play fast.’”
Gary Bartz speaks here:
“For me, the first person to transcend the decades was Coleman Hawkins, but the difference between him and Miles was that Coleman’s sound retained the older style. Whereas Miles’ sound was always up to date. And for me, there will never, ever be a better bandleader on earth, because he knew how to be a bandleader yet be one of the members of the band at the same time. He could hang just like a sideman.
I remember coming to a concert where they had a big catered meal set out for everyone, the musicians, roadies, sound men. This may have been at Lincoln Center. I went in there and I got all excited, and I said, “Miles, man, you gotta see all this food they got here.” And Miles said, “I didn’t come here to eat.”
Karen Bennett ©️1991, 2023