The Miles Davis Podcast Player
“Miles just had a presence that influenced the musicians around him to play differently.” -Nels Cline
Goal:
- Create a podcast series exploring Miles’ career, focused around the albums he recorded for Columbia, and also delving into recordings for other labels.
Concept – Excite People Who Think Jazz Is Boring:
- Create a worthy successor to the award-winning Traneumentary.
- Avoid “typical jazz” interviewees whenever possible.
- Keep the story accessible to non-jazz fans, as a “way in” to explore Miles and his music.
Cast – Not Your Typical Collection of Stodgy Scholars:
[wpcol_1third id=”” class=”” style=””]- Chris Botti
- Randy Brecker
- Nels Cline
- Frances Davis (Miles’ Wife)
- Erin Davis (Miles’ Son)
- Easy Mo Bee
- Fly Trio
- Ethan Iverson (of The Bad Plus)
- Steve Kuhn
- Bill Laswell
- Mike Metheny
- Marcus Miller
Production Notes – A Partnership:
- To keep it accessible, we specifically excluded “jazz scholars” from the cast and focused instead on fellow musicians from across the spectrum of genres.
- It was not meant as an explicit ‘sequel’ to Joe’s 32-part Traneumentary (about John Coltrane) but we did intend for it to be a year-long heavily promoted and comprehensive look at Miles’ career and recordings. I’m not sure we were able to reach that lofty goal, but I do think there’s some great content in here.
- This series was a cross-promotional effort that we organized between Legacy Recordings, Concord Music Group, Verve Records & Rhino. Everyone chipped in resources to get it done.
- This was the last long-form podcast I did for Sony.
Credits:
- Executive Producer, Project Lead: Jeremy Meyers
- Interviewer, Editor, Co-Producer: Joseph Vella, Vella Interactive
