Free Collectible: 1964 Downbeat Featuring Miles Davis Blindfold Test
We’ve been looking through our collection for something interesting for our next give-away contest and this is what we’ve come up with: A copy of Downbeat Magazine from June 18, 1964, featuring a really interesting Blindfold Test with Miles Davis. I’ll give you a few teasers from the interview:
On Eric Dolphy, Mary Ann from Far Cry, New Jazz 8270: “That’s got to be Eric Dolpy — nobody else could sound that bad! The next time I see him I’m going to step on his foot. You print that. I think he’s ridiculous.” Sadly, Dolphy passed away just two months later.
On Cecil Taylor: “Take it off! That’s some sad shit, man.” (Although, of course, Downbeat did not print the word ‘shit’).
There was one track that Miles actually liked and rated with five stars. That was:
Desafinado by Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto. From Miles: “Stan plays good on that. I like Gilberto . . . he could read a newspaper and sound good. And I like Stan, because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies — other people can’t get nothing out of a song, but he can. Which takes a lot of imagination, that he has, that so many other people don’t have.”
So, we are making this cool collectible available FREE to one lucky reader of Jazz Collector. All you have to do is comment somewhere on the site during the next two weeks and you will be eligible to enter the contest. There is no charge at all — we even pay for the shipping. You can even just comment right here on this post, let us know what you think about Miles’ comments.
We’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Our goal in doing these contests is to encourage discussion on the Web site. We’re not trying to gather names for spam or any other nefarious action. We just want to encourage readers to comment on the site and talk to one another. And, thankfully, it seems to be working. Traffic on the site is up considerably in the past few weeks and so is the conversation. And now you can engage in the conversation and win a cool collectible as well. We’ll announce the contest winner two weeks from today, on April 15.
I suppose I can forgive him for dissing Dolphy… in a couple of short years he’d be making his own evil sounds (not that being MILES DAVIS isn’t enough!). If I remember correctly, he wasn’t too fond of Coltrane’s later playing either.It’s always interesting to hear what these guys think of each other.
Hmm…it took me a long, long while to get Dolphy’s music but the man had a voice unlike any other. Miles being brutally frank about his opinions as always. Whether you agreed or disagreed with him, the man always had something interesting to say.