Miles copied Art Pepper for his tune ALL BLUES

[Guest ariceffron]

...bec. it is just like that one song: los curvevos del mario. art pepper and richie kamuca i think or maby chetty chet chet. i dont rmember but its the ONLY west coast jazz song they EVER play on KPLU. can u bvelieve one song to represent a whole subgenre. ???? hell yeah????

[Guest ariceffron]

if you guys could answer, one at a time, if you think the songs are similar etc. please start now.

[Nate Dorward]

dude, i think it highly unlikely, bec. miles recorded kind of blue in march and april 1959, and pepper recorded las cuevas de mario in octover 1960. draw the obvious conclusion.

[Lazaro Vega]

All Blues was said by Davis to have come out of his interest in the Kalimba, or African thumb piano.

[Guest ariceffron]

oh really whatever but i bet u art wrote it before miles wrote his

[Lazaro Vega]

Sometimes it is hard to go on when something was recorded vs when it was written (think of Monk, or Strayhorn) but the melody or rhythmic movement of All Blues was made famous in Davis' version. That's all there is, the history of it. Too bad you didn't ask Art when he was alive. I'm sure he'd be honest about it. Is there anything about that in "Straight Life." If it were a bone of contention to Pepper, he'd have probably said something about that, too. You'd think. He wasn't a wall flower.

[Pete C]

I never trust assertions on bulletin boards from people who don't bother with the basic courtesies of communication like spelling, punctuation, proofreading, etc. It seems to be an epidemic. I suspect the perpetrators are, in general, fairly young, and think their style is "hip."

[Dan Gould]

Yes, Aric is young, but I don't think it has anything to do with "hipness" and everything to do with the state of American Education!

[Nate Dorward]

You mean they don't teach capital letters in cash-strapped American schools? Things are worse than I'd imagined.

Seriously, it's not ignorance, it's a stylistic choice. An annoying stylistic choice, to be sure, but that's why you put on a style: to please friends in your circle & annoy those outside your circle.

Back on topic: there's no discussion of the tune in Straight Life but there's an appreciative description of Mario, the dedicatee, who was Pepper's favourite drug dealer of the time.

[Jazzmoose]

Are you guys saying that Aric actually chooses to write that way? Wow; that's even worse than I thought...

[mikeweil]

Getting back to topic: Considering the large number of tunes Miles stole or "borrowed" I wouldn't be surprised - but I also think that Pepper wouldn't have missed the opportunity to brag about it in his autobiography.

[chuckyd4]

...bec. it is just like that one song: los curvevos del mario.

Not to be annoying, but I think the name of the song is "Las Cuevas de Mario".... I don't speak Spanish, but I don't think "curvevos" is a word.

If so, someone should have let Laurie Pepper know.... her husband was writing tunes about the Curvevos of Mario. Maybe it was all that time in prison.....

[wesbed]

I'll have to give Aric credit for noticing. While I don't know who influenced who, if either. But 'All Blues' and 'Las Cuevas de Mario' do sound oddly similar.

Edited April 12, 2004 by wesbed

[bertrand]

I checked the copyright database, to see if by any chance Pepper would have copyrighted his piece *before* 'All Blues' was even recorded.

Here's what I found:

RE-457-534

Title: Cuevas de Mario; musical composition. By Art Pepper (Arthur Edward Pepper)

Claimant: Laurie Pepper (W)

Effective Registration Date: 15Dec89

Original Registration Date: 12Jun61;

Original Registration Number: EU674655.

In other words, this tells us nothing more, since the copyright date is posthumous to the recording date.

So the Jury's still out. What would help is to get an idea of whether Miles or Art were playing their respective compositions live sometime before their recording date. I think Ashley Kahn's book tries to get into this, but doesn't go very far (I think he's mostly going by Jimmy Cobb's recollections). Another problem is that the origin of the five compositions on KOB is very sketchy - among other things, there are no copyrights for these tunes.

Bertrand.

[BFrank]

What does that say for Tim Buckley's "Strange Feelin'"?

[mikeweil]

"I've Got A Feeling" from the Pentangle's second LP Sweet Child also resembles All Blues - it is credited to the Pentangle members, who copyrighted all their songs colleictively, no matter who wrote them. An old folk song could be the inspiration, but Miles' tune just as well.

Edited April 13, 2004 by mikeweil