Bob Craig was 25, on the front end of a long broadcasting career, when he secured his first press pass to the Newport Jazz Festival.
This was 1969 — the Summer of Woodstock, though Newport came six weeks earlier — and Bob embraced the nomadic spirit of the age. Along with a high school friend, he traveled to Newport, Rhode Island from Boston with no plan for accommodations; they ended up sleeping in the parking lot. This felt like a small price to pay for a chance to experience the world’s foremost jazz fête.
But jazz wasn’t the only thing on the menu at Newport in ‘69: famously, the lineup included acts like Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, James Brown, and the Mothers of Invention along with more familiar offerings like Dave Brubeck and Anita O’Day. The change in the culture was such that even some major jazz artists were forging into hazy terrain — none more than Miles Davis.
“When he hit the stage, it was a Saturday night, July 5, and nobody really knew what to expect,” recalls Craig. “And when he got on stage with those Philippe Chevallier sunglasses… you got the impression that he wasn’t going to play ‘When I Fall in Love.’ So he starts playing ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.’ Nobody had ever heard this before, because it was a couple of weeks or so before he recorded Bitches Brew. Then ‘Sanctuary’ followed, and he closed with ‘It’s About That Time,’ from In a Silent Way. It was like 25 or 30 minutes of Miles onstage, and that was it.”
At that point, young Bob Craig and his friend exchanged a look. “He said, ‘What the hell? What is this?’” And so it went, in the first of several live encounters with an ever-mercurial Miles Davis.
Over the next two decades, Miles hardened his approach to incendiary funk, before going into total seclusion, and reemerging in the Reagan era with a new synth-pop sheen. “I recall seeing Miles Davis at the Academy of Music in 1986, during the concert tour supporting the Tutu album,” says Bobbi I. Booker. Davis’ band on that tour included Bob Berg on soprano and tenor saxophones, Adam Holzman and Robert Irving III on synthesizers, Robben Ford on guitar, Felton Crews on electric bass, Vincent Wilburn Jr. on drums, and Steve Thornton on percussion.
“I was producing and hosting at WRTI (then called Jazz 90), voicing the WRTI Music Book, which gave me access to rehearsal and the show,” Bobbi recalls. “He played with his back turned, unsettling some, while thrilling others. From my seat, even in profile, his face remained elusive. Still, the sound was undeniable. The performance was simply, unmistakably, Miles.”
The following year, Miles returned to the area with a different band — Holzman and Irving were still aboard, alongside saxophonist and flutist Kenny Garrett, the guitarist known as Foley, electric bassist Darryl Jones, percussionist Mino Cinelu, and drummer Ricky Wellman. Bob Craig, now a DJ at WMGK in Philadelphia, was asked to do stage introductions for their concert at the Valley Forge Music Fair in Devon on May 15, 1987.
Before the show, Bob even had a brush with the artist, though hardly any words were exchanged. “There were about seven or eight people in the green room,” he recalls, describing a typical craft services spread. “And all of a sudden, the door in the back opens, and in walks Miles, trumpet in hand, not a word. Looks around, says to everybody: ‘Hope you enjoy the show. Thanks.’ He walks back to his dressing room. Then they got onstage, and I brought him on.”
Bob repeated this gesture one more time the following year, when Miles returned to the Academy of Music. “He had the same presence about him, and it was a similar playlist,” Bob says. “And I just got onstage, introduced him as I did before. But I didn’t take a seat. My wife and I were off on the side of the stage — watching him really closely, his movements and everything. And I remember him coming over to where we were standing, and yelling to the sound guy: ‘Louder, louder.’ And I guess they complied, and he did his thing, walked past us, kind of gave him a little grin, and then off he went.”
None of this music — not “Sanctuary” in ‘69, nor “Human Nature” in ‘88 — was up Bob Craig’s alley, precisely. “I only wish I could have seen Miles in the 1950s and early ‘60s,” he says. And yet, he adds: “You have to admire him always for changing, and always experimenting. Because — you know, I don’t use the word “genius” often at all. But the man was a genius. There was no question about that at all.”
Don’t miss our Miles Davis Marathon at WRTI, which begins at midnight on May 26.
