Directions
(Zawinul)
In 1975 zawinul told ray townley of down beat that
he wrote this tune during a trip to austria in 1967. "i
had spent a winter with my Family in austria, and i
wrote about ten tunes, including 'in a silent way,'
'directions,' which miles [davis] used to play for a
long Time as an opener for his show, 'early man,'
[sic, 'early minor'] and 'orange lady,' which by the
way is 14 minutes of 'great Expectations' on the
[davis] big fun album. But there was some kind of
mess-up with the titles, so it was not mentioned that
it was My tune. Also 'pharoah's dance,' 'double
image,' and a couple of other things. I wrote them
all in this period during 1967."
Davis's recording of "directions," with zawinul
playing the rhodes electric piano, occurred near
the end of 1968, at a point of great Exploration for
the trumpeter. Paul tingen, author of miles beyond:
the electric explorations of miles davis, 1967- 1991,
wrote, "with 'Directions' miles's explorations into
jazz- rock suddenly took a great leap forward."
"directions" was davis' set opener for three Years,
lending credence to the notion that this was an
important composition in the development of davis'
move toward rock-jazz. Two studio versions of
"directions" can be heard on davis' album,
directions, and live recordings can be heard on
black beauty: miles Davis at fillmore west and miles
davis at fillmore: live at the fillmore east. More
recently, saxophonist bob belden recorded it on
two Of his albums.
This track was also the subject of the october 12,
1972 down beat "blindfold test" in which drummer
elvin jones commented on Several tunes without
being told what was being played. Here are his
comments about "directions:"
"my impression of that is that it is one of the best
examples i've heard of the use of electronics
musically, in conjunction with some Acoustical
instruments. It was kind of refreshing. I had never
heard that group before, i know who it is but i'd
never actually heard Them do anything. I know
them, but i'm not going to get into that. My
impression is that it sounded nice to me. I never
heard Anybody else do that with that kind of
instrumentation.
"that's another five [stars]. One further comment: it's
very hard for some people to take that, because
unless they're musically Oriented it would appear
initially to be a lot of noise, and they wouldn't be
able to accept the values that were apparent."
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