Black Cat Bone

vs.




2 giants of music - but which one floats your boat the most? Use any measure you wish to separate them.

Who has the strongest or most appealing catalogue to you? Who was the better player or writer? Who dressed the best?

I tried for 10 minutes to make an argument for Coltrane before I finally admitted to myself that the answer just has to be Miles. He went everywhere musically.

I probably love Coltrane’s best more. But not by enough to ignore the sheer scope of Mile’s work (Coltrane was no slouch either in the “scope” dept. - but nobody beats Miles on that score).

Coltrane all day every day.

Also worth noting, I don’t like trumpets in jazz.

LeBaron wrote:Also worth noting, I don’t like trumpets in jazz.

What do you like trumpet in then?

LeBaron wrote:Also worth noting, I don’t like trumpets in jazz.

Man. To each his own, but---Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Miles, Louis Armstrong...it's hard for me to fathom liking jazz at all and not liking trumpets in it.

There are simply more great Miles Davis albums than Coltrane ones. Plus, the best Coltrane albums aren't quite as good as the best Davis ones.

I'd take Ascension above almost any jazz album. I'm not sure I need to limit it that strictly to jazz, either.

LeBaron wrote:Also worth noting, I don’t like trumpets in jazz.

Freak!

Davis for me. I can enjoy pretty much every period and I find more in his work than any other jazz artist ( and almost any other artist full stop actually).

Darkness_Fish wrote:I'd take Ascension above almost any jazz album.

Too squawky.

Coltrane is squawky!

He is on Ascension..have a listen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-81AEUqHPzU&t=1862s

Matt Wilson wrote:There are simply more great Miles Davis albums than Coltrane ones. Plus, the best Coltrane albums aren't quite as good as the best Davis ones.

This is about the strength of it really.

Big fan of both, but Davis had many line-ups, many styles, covered a lot of ground.
Coltrane was always evolving, but was maybe evolving into something quite challenging go listen to. It took Miles another couple of decades to reach that point...

Coltrane for me, as someone who isn't really a jazz fan, and who prefers horns with reeds to trumpets (and indeed cornets and bugles) in virtually all contexts.
Plus Coltrane died before he could get sucked into all that Bitches Brew-style nonsense.

Coltrane.

I’d never do Miles down, Bitches Brew was my gateway into jazz and ...Silent Way is still a desert island disc but his greatest talent (on some of his best records he hardly plays*) was putting fabulous groups together.


*ish (fucking Yoda)

I like quite a few Davis albums (yes, the obvious ones).

I dislike nearly everything I've heard of Coltrane.

can't split them.

George P. Smackers wrote:

LeBaron wrote:Also worth noting, I don’t like trumpets in jazz.

Man. To each his own, but---Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Miles, Louis Armstrong...it's hard for me to fathom liking jazz at all and not liking trumpets in it.

I like Louis Armstrong—he had a nicer, more buttery tone. Chet Baker also sounds good, but his playing is often more mellow. I like Miles when he is playing with a mute (or whatever you call it) and I like Electric Miles A LOT, but as a lead instrument on a lot of those hard bop/Blue Note records that BCB loves, there’s too much, I don’t know, clipped attack. I’m not into it.

Anyway, I’m a Coltrane True Believer, so I can decide it even without ruling out maybe a third of Miles’s records that I’ll never love.

The Modernist wrote:

Darkness_Fish wrote:I'd take Ascension above almost any jazz album.

Too squawky.

The only recording I've got where he's properly squawky is Interstellar Space, it's an album where I genuinely struggle to understand what the music is trying to achieve. There doesn't appear much connection between the drums and sax, imo.

Coltrane, for substance.

: p