Black Is The Color

Joe Henderson is remembered as a master tenor and composer. Yet bassist Ron Carter says he never once turned up with enough material — always two songs, ten minutes short — and would ask the band to compose on the spot: 'We're making an LP here, come on, Joe.'

Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette first played together at a 1967 jam session in London, where Holland says it felt complete from the very first beat. Three years later both names sit in the credits of Bitches Brew (1970). The pairing was not assembled in a New York studio; it had already clicked on the other side of the Atlantic.

Drummer Jack DeJohnette, who played in Miles Davis's early-1970s electric bands alongside Chick Corea and Dave Holland, once said their improvising would go to "totally ecstatic" places — until Miles stepped back in and pulled everything back to a single center. The band's apparent freedom, in other words, actually orbited Miles himself.

Don Alias was brought to Bitches Brew (1970) as a percussionist, but on "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" he is the one at the drum kit — the New Orleans-flavored beat was his idea, and the leader told him to play it himself.