Miles Davis, E.S.P.
If you want to know what Wynton and Branford Marsalis were listening to when they erupted on the scene in the early 1980s, hear E.S.P. — they even reprised its "R.J.," using the same rhythm section, on Wynton's debut album. The roots of the brothers 'swaggering attitude and deft transitions from one time feel to another are here too. E.S.P. was the first studio outing by trumpeter Miles Davis's second great quintet of 1964-'68, where Wayne Shorter on tenor sax joined the gold-plated rhythm section of pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. (The band had already been warming up on the road.) Shorter had the concept: tunes with weird chord sequences, and even weirder melodies that seemed to pogo around in one spot, like the title track. Soon they were all writing like that, with Miles editing the tunes to bring their best ideas into focus. There's a little of Davis's old Spanish feel on "Mood," but the music's also influenced by free jazz's way of picking at the edges of forms. Trumpet and saxophone attack the melodies in loose unisons that recall Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry — or it would, if Miles and Wayne weren't so much more urbane as stylists.
