Mati Klarwein: Bitches Brew

On this day 41 years ago, Miles Davis entered the studio for a three day recording session that resulted in the January 1970 release of Bitches Brew. The tunes were comprised of long free-form jams featuring electric instruments, and a host of studio editing effects. It was all so alien to the jazz aesthetic that many purist listeners and jazz players of the day essentially disowned Miles after hearing it.

To paraphrase Liberace, “Davis cried all the way to the bank.” The album was Mile’s first gold record, selling an astonishing 500,000 copies within a few short months — astonishing because  a typical jazz LP of the day sold between 5,000 to 30,000 copies. Davis established himself as a mainstream star, was never forced to play to audiences of a few dozen in dive clubs again, and essentially created a new genre of music: jazz-rock.

A good part of the commercial success of the album had to do with the fantastic art of Mati Klarwein on the cover. Klarwein’s surrealist paintings were “discovered” by the psychedelic culture of the late 60′s. It was a badge of honor for many rock music lovers to have the cool looking LP in their collection — even if many found the music on the 2 disks a bit too challenging for repeated listening.

Miles Davis Bitches Brew LP Cover

Klarwein had been doing “mindscapes” for over a decade prior to Bitches Brew and was a bit perplexed by his later fame among the druggies. He admitted he didn’t try drugs until long after he had developed his style and found it impossible to paint while under their influence. Not long after, another of his paintings (Annunciation – 1961) graced the cover of Carlos Santana’s second LP: Abraxas. He died in 2002. See more of his work at www.matiklarweinart.com, or check out the video below.

Mati Klarwein: Annunciation