Big Fun is an album by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. It was released by Columbia Records on April 19, 1974, and compiled recordings Davis had made in sessions between 1969 and 1972. It was advertised as a new album with "four new Miles Davis compositions" One of three Davis albums released in 1974 and largely ignored, it was reissued on August 1, 2000, by Columbia and Legacy Records with additional material, which led to a critical reevaluation.
Background and recording
Big Fun presents music from three phases of Miles Davis's early-seventies "electric" period. The album is named for a composition Davis recorded in 1973, but it was not released until 2007 on the box set The Complete On the Corner Sessions.
Sides one and four ("Great Expectations/Orange Lady" and "Lonely Fire") were recorded three months after the Bitches Brew sessions and incorporate sitar, tampura, tabla, and other Indian instruments. They also mark the first time since the beginning of Miles Davis's electric period that he played his trumpet with the Harmon mute which had been one of his hallmarks, making it sound much like the sitar. This contributed to creating a very clear and lean sound, highlighting both the high and low registers, as opposed to the busier sound of Bitches Brew which placed more emphasis on the middle and low registers.
"Ife"—named after James Mtume's daughter—was recorded after the 1972 On the Corner sessions, and the framework is similar to tracks from that record. It has a drum and electric bass groove (which in fact at one point breaks down due to mistiming) and a plethora of musicians improvising individually and in combinations over variations on the bassline.
"Go Ahead John"
Recording
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Recorded on March 3, 1970, DeJohnette provides a funky, complex groove, Holland plays bass with one constant note repeated, and McLaughlin plays in a staccato style with blues and funk elements. Approximately six minutes into it, McLaughlin's guitar solo succeeds Davis's first solo, as the band vamps.
In Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis, Chambers writes of Davis's segment and the complex production of "Go Ahead John", "In spite of the gimmickry, the blues segment manages to state some old verities in a new context, and state them powerfully. Most jazz listeners can hope that someday Go Ahead John will be unscrambled and re-presented to them as, among other things, an unhurried blues by Davis accompanied only by Holland". AllMusic editor Thom Jurek writes of the recording, "There is no piano. What's most interesting about this date is how it prefigures what would become 'Right Off' from Jack Johnson. It doesn't have the same fire, nor does it manage to sustain itself for the duration, but there are some truly wonderful sections in the piece". Big Fun debuted at number 193 on the U.S. Billboard Top LPs chart and sold 50,000 copies in its first week. It ultimately reached number 179 on the chart and number six on Billboards Top Jazz LPs chart. According to Todd S. Jenkins of All About Jazz, "The long, ever-droning, darkly exotic electric music, and in fact the very idea of just four songs taking up four full sides of an album, was not too appealing to critics or the general market at a time when short, sharp disco tunes were beginning to chart like wildfire. So Big Fun received generally weak reviews".
In a positive review, Billboard stated "Much of the existentialism in musical forms that has characterized Miles Davis' recent offerings are embodied in this new album, but Davis has the creativity of mind and expertise of profession to break away from the conventional and still remain an exciting, interesting, innovative and acceptable artist. This album is in that genre". Bob Palmer of Rolling Stone commented that "essentially Big Fun is the most consistently appealing, varied and adventurous Miles Davis album since Live/Evil, commands attention as such, and will doubtless give Davis's many imitators something to think about".
Legacy and reappraisal
In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau believed three of the album's "side-long" compositions "wind down prematurely", but "for the most part this is uncommonly beautiful stuff, and it gets better". He singled out "Lonely Fire" as a highlight, writing that "after meandering at the beginning [it] develops into lyrical mood music reminiscent in spirit and fundamental intent of Sketches of Spain". The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) said the album "defies easy categorization, although its dark, moody tracks boast a strong undercurrent of Indian classical rhythms in addition to the expected swathes of rock and funk".
Alternative Press called the album "essential....colorful and exotic" and wrote that it represents "the high water mark of his experiments in the fusion of rock, funk, electronica and jazz". The Penguin Guide to Jazz described it as "an entertaining simulation of a top-drawer R&B band, just about pushed into the jazz zone", with the key elements of Davis's "electronic" sound. Stylus Magazines Edwin C. Faust commented that "a world without this music would be a considerably emptier place" and cited it as Davis's "greatest achievement" with regard to an album's "overall effect". Faust felt that critics who originally found it "scattered" and "unfocused" might not have if they had had "the knowledge of recording dates and band line-ups", while elaborating on its significance to Davis's catalogue: