The 1970s are often the era that most music listeners and critics ignore. Miles Davis produced numerous albums from 1970 to 1975. Including bootlegs, there are at least 50 albums of music that can be found for this time period. Between twelve and twenty album lengths of music were produced. Miles toured a lot in the early 70s and much of the recorded material is live music. From 1970 to 1975 Miles looked at many different directions of music. He never actually had solid footing in any one of these directions. He recorded more music in this five-year time span than most musicians ever recorded in their career. His playing during this time was a combination between funk, world beat, rock and jazz. He had many influences such as Jimi Hendrix, James Brown and of course cocaine. These influences had a large effect on his live shows; he went from suite and tie to bell-bottoms in only three years.
In March 1970 he released "Bitches Brew." The artsy cover makes the cross over to rock listeners whom were dropping acid and listening to some "far out jazz shit." This album mixed the best elements of 60's free jazz with the funk rhythms, and electric rock textures with Miles" own thoughts in harmony. Bitches Brew sold over 400,000 copies in a year, making it the biggest selling jazz album in history. Bitches Brew became the first gold record of his extraordinary career. Miles Davis was on the trumpet, Wayne Shorter and Steve Grossman on soprano saxophone, Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet, and John McLaughlin on electric guitar. Dave Holland, Harvey Brooks and Ron Carter on the basses, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Larry Young playing the electric piano. Larry Young played the organ and celeste, Jack DeJohnette, Don Alias, Lenny White and Billy Cobham on the drums. Jumma Santos, Jim Riley, Don Alias and Airto Moreira played percussion, Bihari Sharma was on the tambura and the tablas, and Khalil Balakrishna was on the sitar.
