The Revivalist

Drummer Lenny White recalls the Legendary Jam that was Bitches Brew

As the Miles Davis estate celebrates the 40th anniversary of the release of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, I had a conversation with drummer Lenny White and attempted to pick his brain about his experiences in making this album. As goes with many of the interviews I’ve done in the past, this lead to some interesting dialogue about some of the stories behind the album as well as White’s thoughts on music’s influence on culture, as seen in jazz during the Bitches Brew period, as well as hip-hop today.

For those of you not too familiar with the work of Lenny White, he has performed with virtually everyone in jazz. His command of the drums and his work with Chick Corea’s Return to Forever put him in a category all his own. Aside from Panamanian great Billy Cobham, few drummers possess the control, approach and cohesiveness that White brings to the drum kit.

Bitches Brew was an album that was ahead of its time in regards to the approaches that went into the recording, assembling, mixing and mastering of the music. Aside from the brilliant engineering work of Teo Marcero, the majority of the album was mostly unrehearsed and unscripted (both “Pharaoh’s Dance”and “Sanctuary“ were written out, by Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter respectively), a process which Miles was known to employ during the latter part of his recording career. Given the historical significance of all the musicians involved in the recording (keyboardist/pianist Joe Zawinul, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Chick Corea, guitarist John McLaughlin, drummer Jack DeJohnette, percussionist/drummer Don Alias, saxophonist Bennie Maupin and organist Larry Young), there is no doubt as to why the album still sounds fresh today, with its brash aggressiveness and subtle moments of transition and development.

All of the musicians involved in the recording eventually branched out to form the seeds of what became known as jazz-rock, jazz-funk and jazz-fusion. Lenny told me that, “It wasn’t called jazz fusion, it was called jazz-rock because that’s essentially what it was. I mean, it was jazz musicians playing their prospective of the rock and roll attitude, and that’s what it became, that’s what it was. When you think of the six seminal bands, you think about Miles’ band, you think about Lifetime with John McLaughlin, Tony Williams, and Larry Young. Return to Forever, you think about Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, and Headhunters.

There was at least one representative of each of those bands on those recordings. When I asked Lenny about the creative process behind the album he said, “Miles just got everybody into a room, and he started a groove and he pointed to Wayne Shorter. Wayne Shorter played. Then he stopped the band and we started up the groove again and he pointed to John McLaughlin. You know he did that, and we were in kind of a semi-circle and that’s how it happened. It was like this big jam. Everybody played, and it worked out like that as opposed to it actually being like a defined thing of, “you do this, you do that.” Everybody was given the opportunity to be able to do what they heard with the music.” In researching certain stories and specific details behind this album, I came across several interviews with the late Don Alias in which he discussed his role as the drummer on “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.” As is the case with musicians, there are always two sides to every story. Here is how Lenny remembers it, “There were actually two other takes of “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” where like Jack and I were playing more progressive type stuff. You know, it wasn’t funky, but it was more like the stuff that’s on Bitches Brew. Miles came over to me and his phrase was, “you ain’t getting the chicken,” meaning that it wasn’t funky; but Jack wasn’t funky either. So Alias says, “Hey Miles, I got this beat,” and he came up with this really simple beat and Miles liked it. So I wound up playing percussion on the track. It doesn’t have me listed, but I’m playing percussion on there.”

Even though the vast portion of our short interview revolved around Bitches Brew, I asked Mr. White what he thought about when he heard the word hip-hop. His response was, “Well hip-hop is an experience. It’s not a kind of music. The hip-hop experience deals with graffiti, break dancing, music, and fashion, the clothes that they wear. It’s not just a style of music. Hip-hop is no longer what it was. Now it’s a top style of music. For me, jazz is not a style of music either. Because of how marketing is used to show things. You coin a word or phrase; a word like jazz or a word like hip-hop, and you try to sell the music like that. But both of those experiences are not just related just to music, they’re related to lifestyles. So, there’s a big difference in the hip-hop when it started back in the ‘80’s and what’s known as hip-hop today.”

Words by Jared Pauley

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 3:59 pm. It is filed under Features, Interviews and tagged with Bennie Maupin, Billy Cobham, Don Alias, Jack DeJohnette, Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Larry Young, Lenny White, Miles Davis, Teo Marcero, Wayne Shorter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.