TT 520: Miles Davis and John Lewis, "Three Little Feelings"

birthday post

At the dawn of the LP era, the jazz greats were bewilderingly prolific. It’s nearly impossible to listen to it all, for those treasures from the ‘50s and ‘60s stack up like Smaug’s hoard.

Miles Davis was born 99 years ago today. One of his jewels is still all but unknown, a 1956 three movement suite by John Lewis called “Three Little Feelings” for brass ensemble, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson. J.J. Johnson also gets a solo during the third movement.

It comes out of the later experimental side of the big band era: Kenton, Thornhill, George Russell's charts for Dizzy, then the smaller-group (but still heavily arranged) Russell things and “Birth of the Cool.”

Miles Davis’s most famous collaborator in this idiom was Gil Evans. “Three Little Feelings” is by John Lewis, and embraces lean baroque counterpoint. The first movement is my favorite, but the other movements are good too: the second is a jazz ballad with impressionistic effects, the last starts as a French horn herald before moving at tempo. (Miles sits this out, letting J.J. take the solo space.)

Gunther Schuller named the genre “Third Stream” and, at least in the beginning, there was tremendous energy around this idea of combining jazz and classical music. Schuller produced this record, and he was also almost certainly the commissioner.

Of the many John Lewis formal works I’ve heard, “Three Little Feelings” is the best.

There’s no weight of thought when Miles Davis plays the trumpet. It exists: it is very strong: it is also just there. Each moment is exactly that moment. Perhaps more than any other soloist in history, Miles is a chemical agent that instantly transforms the surrounding sounds.