Pre-sellout,mid-sixties Miles with his last great quintet, the “E.S.P.” “Miles Smiles” quintet.
In 1969, Davis played the Newport Jazz Festival, as he always did, a festival that had become, much to the chagrin of organizer George Wein, the Newport Jazz/Rock Festival. It was Miles’ invariable practice to arrive at the festival minutes before his set began and depart minutes after it ended. He was too important, and too cool, to waste a second on other acts and other musicians.
But in 1969 he watched the entire, four-day show, watched the huge, white crowds—college kids who bought fifty albums a year—roaring their approval of the big rock acts like Sly and the Family Stone, entertainers rather than musicians, who were stealing his fans and outselling him twenty to one. And so he bent.
