I’ve seen scores of comments from people who love his music and wish to love this record, and work to do so, as if listening were a job that one didn’t care for but might in time after settling in. Davis is jazz’s resident restless soul, the musician who needs to morph in order to keep his art alive. “For shame!” wagged the fingers, as charges of hubris were rampant. The record was derided as an affront to taste, an insult to listeners, a sham perpetuated by a man who wanted to rub your face in something most unpleasant, just because he thought he could.
Critics tore into it as if pulling a White Fang, sinking teeth as deeply as possible. Upon its release in October 1972, On the Corner was reviled. When he’d had enough of that, he vocalized to Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People.” I observed this man and had one thought: Miles Davis’ On the Corner. He drank from an enormous cup that might as well have been a bucket, and between sips he sang the names of the various subway stops to the opening four-note pattern of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
His bulk worked for him, though: Was part of his look, and a formidable, prepossessing one at that. There was a large man on the train, whose size made him automatically incongruous. In the early autumn, I was heading back into the city of Boston on the subway from a leafy suburb where I had watched a football game.
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