Miles Davis reinvented jazz through studio technology and electric instrumentation

Evidence

The same season, Miles Davis coolly pulled off his own, more successful radical reinvention. As presaged by his 1969 album In a Silent Way and his new double LP, Bitches Brew, as well as successive gigs at the Fillmore East, the jazz master went electric—in a big way. Recorded at Columbia’s Studio B during the Woodstock summer of 1969, Bitches Brew incorporated electric piano as well as electric guitar. A greatly expanded rhythm section contributed to the blues backbeat while Davis made extensive use of sound editing and studio technology. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1576

Categorization

• XREF: Davis’s electric turn is a contrasting case to the collapses of Dylan and Ochs: a successful reinvention in a moment that destroyed other icons — useful comparison for the conditions-of-invention argument.