First Listen: Dave Douglas

Dave Douglas, The Infinite (RCA) Listening to this low-key but involving album, I was reminded of someone, and the reviewer for the All-Music Guide got it: Miles Davis' bands around the time of Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro, when the piano changed to Fender Rhodes more often than not and Tony Williams was still driving the band. Interesting that since Miles' '65-'69 band has been the template (via Wynton Marsalis) for half the young jazz bands in the last 20 years that Douglas would build on another of the many styles Miles tried on and grew out of.

Fact is, I think in terms of bandleading, of a lifetime new ideas one after the other, Miles is up there with Ellington and Strayhorn. Which leads to an interesting dichotomy in jazz: people who seemed to arrive fully formed and basically refined their personal art/sound their whole lives, vs. people who kept on evolving. Former category: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor. Latter category: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock. I'm sure jazzbos can come up with plenty of their own!