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Teo Macero, the cut-up whiz who helped Miles Davis edit his freewheeling ’60s and ’70s albums into partially (or wholly) collaged electric jazz masterpieces that continue to spark debate and cross-genre advocacy today, died on Tuesday in New York. Macero’s career began as a Julliard-trained saxophonist and composer who performed with jazz giants like Charles Mingus before being drafted by Columbia Records in the late ’50s, producing classic sides for artists like Dave Brubeck and beginning his long, fruitful association with Davis. Anyone who wants a quick insight into Macero’s sometimes seamless, sometimes bracingly obvious editing magic needs only to A/B the “official” versions of Davis albums like Live/Evil and On The Corner with the extensive, unedited Davis box sets that have been released over the last decade, a trend which the New York Times obit notes an understandably proprietary Macero viewed less than charitably, as any professional illusionist might. Macero was 82. [NY Times]
Teo Macero, R.I.P.
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What a loss. What I admire even more than his editing of the electric records is his production work on the middle-period stuff, from the classic quintet records to the Gil Evans collabs. He knew so much about space and ambience and balance-how something as simple as mic placement could make the difference between an adequate record and a magical one.
There are all kinds of reasons why Kind of Blue is the one jazz record that seemingly everybody owns and likes; but a big part of it, I’ve always thought, is that it’s just a great sounding recording. And I put that all on Teo Macero. God rest and God bless.
Yet another tragic loss. Macero-era Miles Davis was definitely an inspiration to me when I performed in a college jazz band. To think that he did all of those awesome edits by the cumbersome task of splicing tape, long before Pro Tools made editing too easy.