The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grateful Dead (1970)

What’s that, you ask? Did Miles Davis open for the Grate­ful Dead at the Fill­more West? In what world could such a thing hap­pen? In the world of the late sixties/early sev­en­ties, when jazz fused with acid rock, acid rock with coun­try, and pop cul­ture took a long strange trip. The “inspired pair­ing” of the Dead with Davis’ elec­tric band on April 9–12, 1970, “rep­re­sent­ed one of [pro­mot­er] Bill Graham’s most leg­endary book­ings,” writes the blog Cryp­ti­cal Devel­op­ments. I’ll say. Davis had just released the ground­break­ing dou­ble-LP Bitch­es Brew and was “at some­what of an artis­tic and com­mer­cial cross­roads,” exper­i­ment­ing with new, more flu­id com­po­si­tions.

Aggres­sive and dom­i­nat­ed by rock rhythms and elec­tric instru­ments, the album became Davis’ best sell­er and brought him before young, white audi­ences in a way his ear­li­er work had not.  The band that Davis brought into the Fill­more West, com­pris­ing [Chick] Corea, [Dave] Hol­land, sopra­no sax play­er Steve Gross­man, drum­mer Jack Dejohnette, and per­cus­sion­ist Air­to Mor­eira, was ful­ly versed in this new music, and stood the Fill­more West audi­ences on their ears.

I can only imag­ine what it would have been like to see that per­for­mance live. But we don’t have to imag­ine what it sound­ed like. You can hear Davis’s set below.

In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Davis described it as “an eye-open­ing con­cert for me.” “The place was packed with these real spa­cy, high white peo­ple,” he wrote, “and when we first start­ed play­ing, peo­ple were walk­ing around and talk­ing.” Once the band got into the Bitch­es Brew mate­r­i­al, though, “that real­ly blew them out. After that con­cert, every time I would play out there in San Fran­cis­co, a lot of young white peo­ple showed up at the gigs.”

Did the Dead become a crossover hit with jazz fans? Not exact­ly, but Davis real­ly hit it off with them, espe­cial­ly with Jer­ry Gar­cia. “I think we all learned some­thing,” Davis wrote: “Jer­ry Gar­cia loved jazz, and I found out that he loved my music and had been lis­ten­ing to it for a long time.” In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, the Dead’s Phil Lesh remem­bered hav­ing his mind blown by Davis and band: “As I lis­tened, lean­ing over the amps with my jaw hang­ing agape, try­ing to com­pre­hend the forces that Miles was unleash­ing onstage, I was think­ing What’s the use. How can we pos­si­bly play after this? […] With this band, Miles lit­er­al­ly invent­ed fusion music. In some ways it was sim­i­lar to what we were try­ing to do in our free jam­ming, but ever so much more dense with ideas – and seem­ing­ly con­trolled with an iron fist, even at its most alarm­ing­ly intense moments.” You can stream the Dead­’s full per­for­mance from that night below. Think what must have been run­ning through their minds as they took the stage after watch­ing Miles Davis invent a new form of music right before their eyes.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Opens for Neil Young and “That Sor­ry-Ass Cat” Steve Miller at The Fill­more East (1970)

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness