Riffs: Bill Grimes, LSU music professor

“I’m revisiting all of the Miles Davis tracks on Prestige: Steamin, Relaxin, Cookin, and Workin. He recorded these in the early to mid-1950s with a great rhythm section of Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Garland. After all these years, this music still sounds fresh and exciting. The PC bass lines are required transcription material for my bass students, especially the cut on “If I Were A Bell.” As with filmmaker Ennio Morricone—who I’m currently finding all the tracks from—Miles has his own intriguing approach to simplicity and space. Neither of these great musicians bore us with flash and pyrotechnics. They ignore the unimportant notes and give us just the right ones. To quote film composer David Raksin, ‘The problem with most melodic writing, outside the obvious banalities of contemporary pop music, which is at the level of finger painting, is that in order to avoid what has been done, composers too often avoid what should be done.’”