When Bitches Brew was released in March 1970, jazz critics called it commercial garbage and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen dismissed it as out of tune, yet it won a Grammy, went platinum, reached No. 35 on the Billboard 200, and birthed jazz-rock fusion. This deep dive zooms in on the August 19 to 21, 1969 sessions at Columbia’s Studio B, where Miles Davis, restless after In a Silent Way and absorbing rock, funk, Paul Buckmaster, and Joe Zawinul, expanded his band, handed out chord sketches instead of scores, and arranged everyone in a half circle with Wayne Shorter and himself in the middle while Max Roach watched uncredited.

The episode explains why Davis snapped his fingers to change tempo, shouted John McLaughlin’s name for solos, hired rock bassist Harvey Brooks for a hypnotic groove, and stacked two bassists, multiple drummers, and up to three electric pianos on a static modal foundation. It then turns to producer Teo Macero’s musique concrete approach, with 19 tape edits on “Pharaoh’s Dance,” 15 on the title track, and none on “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” and the album’s influence on Herbie Hancock, Radiohead’s OK Computer, Brian Eno, and Aphex Twin, up to its 2025 addition to the National Recording Registry.

• The walking bass line and why Davis wanted to escape it
• No sheet music as a leadership tactic that forced hyper-focused listening
• Modal playing as a ten-lane highway instead of a twisting road
• Razor blades and tape loops: the studio as an instrument in 1969
• The unexplained title and the theory that it honors the women in Davis’s life