One of the sneaky pleasures of this “Brilliant Cover Songs” series for me is that I get to immerse—and perhaps give you a first listen or re-introduction to—not only the cover version but the original, as well. And when we’re talking about such powerhouse musical forces as jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) and the Spanish modern classical composer Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999), the pleasure is all the more enhanced and worthy of attention.
The last time Davis appeared in this space was in a post a bit over three years ago that explored the question of how transcendent, soul-satisfying art so often comes from terrible people. In it, I chose as the closing musical number Davis’s achingly beautiful solo rendition of the Cyndi Lauper pop classic “Time After Time” (co-written with Rob Hyman).
The first time I heard Davis cover it live back in 1988, the song had left me (and from what I could tell, the entire auditorium) spellbound and weepy as I made my way to the lobby of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco for intermission.
The ‘Adagio’ is a deeply moving meditation on grief that musicians and orchestras around the world began playing increasingly as stand-alone pieces after Davis released ‘Sketches of Spain’ some 20 years later.
Davis had ended his first set by dismissing his band and sitting down on the corner stage steps in a darkened hall, the sole spotlight on him and his gleaming trumpet.
He had stood with his back to the audience to that point, a typical stance of his in that era, which some cited as arrogant and dismissive, others as better positioning him to hear the various sonic elements and communicate more directly with his band. But now Davis allowed us to gaze upon him, or at the ceiling with eyes closed, the better to experience the kind of fugue state that such musical expression can engender.
The effect was hypnotic.
Whatever the dark currents that rippled through the man’s soul and undercut his human relationships during his life, it’s impossible to hear such music and deny that Davis knew what beauty was, and how to dig down to express and share it in his chosen artistic field.
I recently recalled that night when I came across another long-familiar Davis cover: Rodrigo’s 1939 composition, “Concierto de Aranjuez,” which I had never heard before coming across it years after Davis included it in his 1960 album, “Sketches of Spain.”
I also recalled how it electrified me just as much upon a first listen as “Time After Time” had, even though it was from a vinyl LP rather than a live concert hall.
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Aranjuez is a city on the outskirts of Madrid in central Spain, with a population of some 60,000. Despite Rodrigo and his wife, the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi (1902-1997), being buried there and him being granted the royal title during his lifetime of “Marqués de los Jardines de Aranjuez” by the King of Spain, Rodrigo never actually lived in the city.
He had, however, been inspired by its gardens while honeymooning there with his wife in 1933, and drew partly upon it in composing the now famous concerto while living in Paris, where he had moved in 1927 to study music and further his career.
Rodrigo, blind since age 3 from diphtheria, wrote “Concierto de Aranjuez” in braille for classical guitar and orchestra, even though he was a pianist himself. He then dictated it note by note to his wife, who translated it into a written score before the couple then worked through alterations at the piano in preparation for the publisher. You can hear it below in its original, three-movement, approximately 23-minute entirety.
For decades after its debut, “Concierto de Aranjuez” was considered partly Rodrigo’s ode, particularly in its lively first and third movements, to the city’s bounteous gardens, while the second movement’s slow “Adagio” was assumed a mournful response to the ravages of the Spanish Civil War that bumped up against World War II from July, 1936 to April, 1939.
The first (“Allegro con spirito”) and third (“Allegro gentile”) movements, while lovely parts of the whole, have been largely eclipsed in the concert and recording repertoire over the years by the “Adagio”—a deeply moving meditation on grief that musicians and orchestras around the world began playing increasingly as stand-alone pieces after Davis released “Sketches of Spain” some 20 years later.
It wasn’t until Kamhi’s 1992 autobiography that the real impetus for the “Adagio” became known. In it, she revealed it was based on the couple’s deep grief over her miscarriage seven months into pregnancy with the couple’s first child in early 1939. The event nearly cost her own life as well, followed by such dire financial circumstances for the couple that Rodrigo had to sell his piano. (Two years later, they had a daughter, Cecilia, who became a ballet dancer and administrator, wife to a famous Spanish violinist, and Rodrigo’s successor as “Marquésa de los Jardines de Aranjuez”.)
In Rodrigo’s original composition, the bookend first and third movements run between five and six minutes, with the “Adagio” taking center stage as the emotional heart of the piece at about twice that length.
Davis’s cover version of only the “Adagio” in “Sketches of Spain” runs to 16 minutes in a style that stays largely true to Rodrigo’s original in its lush and rhapsodic melody line, even given the different instrumentation and, of course, Davis’s jazz infusions.
The jazzified treatment of the “Adagio” stands as a prime example of a musical movement of the time known as “Third Stream,” coined by composer Gunther Schuller two years before Davis recorded the “Adagio.” The form stood on the shoulders of “First Stream” (classical) and “Second Stream” (jazz) in a synthesis that combined various technical elements from both genres into a mashup that allowed the likes of Davis to make something shiny, provocative and new from a piece that even by then had been adapted by scores of artists across the musical landscape.
Upon his first listen to the Rodrigo original in a visit to a musician friend, Davis had remarked: “So I’m sitting there listening…and I say to myself, ‘Godamn, those melody lines are strong.’ I knew right there that I had to record it, because they just stayed in my head.”
Davis got a mighty assist in that desire from his pianist and arranger Gil Evans, with whom he had collaborated just the year before on part of the trailblazing album, “Kind of Blue.” (Coincidentally, another Evans, first name Bill, was Davis’s favorite pianist, who played an even larger role in “Kind of Blue.”)
Davis-Gil Evans was an unlikely pairing across age (Evans born 1912, Davis 1926), heritage (Evans white/Canadian, Davis black/American), and personality (Evans described by those who knew him as kind, gentle, unassuming, Davis widely regarded as more or less the opposite). Yet the two had immense respect for each other.
Davis always spoke glowingly of him, once telling Downbeat magazine, “For my taste, he’s the best. I haven’t heard anything that knocks me out as consistently as he does since I first heard Charlie Parker.”
Let’s give a listen now to one of jazz music’s great collaborations before a few concluding notes and the entirety of the original “Concerto de Aranjuez” below that.
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Gil Evans’s arrangement for Davis’s trumpet and small (19-person) orchestra for the “Adagio” was similar to Rodrigo’s original composition for guitar and chamber orchestra in making sure the solo instrument was not overwhelmed by its supporting instruments. But they diverged significantly in chord changes and the relationship between soloist and orchestra.
Rodrigo followed the classical concerto structure of the soloist and orchestra in tension until the orchestra finally wrests control as the main theme reaches its climax. Evans subverted that “call and response” architecture into much more a “call and cooperate” approach that kept Davis’s trumpet very much in the primary position, allowing him to feature its elongated notes and melodic lines while he and his supporting cast flexed the brilliant jazz improvisations that were their stock-in-trade.
Those variations from his original text infuriated the classical traditionalist Rodrigo when a fellow blind Spanish musician friend played him Davis’s version. His aesthetic abhorrence at Evans-Davis’s loose structure and altered jazz chords aside, copyright differences between the United States and Spain at the time did not require Evans-Davis to seek permission to adapt Rodrigo’s composition, which further incensed him.
Davis’s response to the dust-up at the time, according to “Miles: The Autobiography,” was: “Let’s see if he likes it after he starts getting those big royalty checks. I never heard anything about or from him after that.”
Indeed, more than 20 years after its debut, “Concerto de Aranjuez” got a huge lift from Davis’s adaptation, both versions riding its Grammy Award and numerous subsequent big-selling covers to an enduring place in the musical world, across multiple genres.
A final fun note: Davis himself was subject to various critics’ carping at the time that the “Adagio” wasn’t even actual jazz, but only reflected some jazz add-ons, making it an unwieldy hybrid. To which he responded with a shrug and what I consider the drop-dead perfect response for musicians and music fans everywhere who resist the pigeonhole of exclusivist, border-defined genres, “It’s music, and I like it.”
Me, too, Miles. Me, too.
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Initial paragraphs of previous songs in this series can be accessed here.
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Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.
Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for library books) grace the rotating banner top of homepage. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Grief by K. Mitch Hodge, Belfast, Northern Ireland, https://unsplash.com/@kmitchhodge
“So What…gliding with Miles Davis” by Paolo Barzam, Canada https://www.flickr.com/photos/paolobarzman/
Joaquín Rodrigo watercolor portrait by Alejandro Cabeza, Spain https://www.flickr.com/photos/alejandro-cabeza/
Seeing Miles Davis, clutching his trumpet while sitting on the steps of a darkened hall, is as cool as Cool can get. I envy you! In 1973, I had a similar experience at UConn’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. I watched Duke Ellington tickle the ivories in a “Mood Indigo” while riding the “A Train” down to Harlem’s Cotton Club. Unfortunately, he died a few months later. After reading your blog and listening to Miles’ trumpet take Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” from a classical stage into a smoke-filled jazz joint, I found “So What” and “Summertime” in my Spotify playlist and drifted away. Another brilliant selection, friend.
The Duke was (and remains) way up there reigning supreme in the Eternal Jazz Juke Joint, as does Miles. I suppose we should feel fortunate to have seen the greats we did and leave it at that. Would be a good life exercise, though, to someday list great concert events we’ve been to in relative order of amazement and impact, and what particular memory shards remain from them. I think we were a bit too young for some, but not too old for others.
And then there’s sports, where I’m glad to have seen the other Big Duke—Snider! And Sandy & Maury, Barry, Jerry & Elgin, & many more others than I can even recall…
About 25 years ago, my older brother and I joined a foursome at the Woodley Golf Course in Van Nuys. One was a young man about 20 years old and the other a 6’5” black man probably collecting social security. Around the 5th hole, the youngster and I drove our balls into the fairway, just a few yards apart. On our walk down the fairway, he asked, “That black guy’s pretty tall. I bet he played basketball.”
I said, “He played for the Lakers.”
“Was he any good?”
“Not bad.”
“What’s his name?”
“Elgin Baylor.He averaged 30 points and 15 rebounds a game.”
“Never heard of him.”
I had actually never heard the original Rodrigo so thanks for that. Miles was just so cool, no matter what he did. I looked around a little more and found a Carlos Santana version that electrifies Rodrigo’s guitar—if you haven’t heard it, check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQEI3rdid8s&list=RDYQEI3rdid8s&start_radio=1
Great anecdote of your golf course encounter with Elgin Baylor, Robert! I tend to think he is one of a minority of players from 50 years ago who could still acquit themselves well on the court these many years later. (His pal out there at guard would be another…)
And Curt, one rarely goes wrong plugging into Carlos Santana, so thanks for that! It was but one of a very long list I didn’t get to in prepping this post, but I’m glad to make its acquaintance now.