2026.05.25 Michael Veal on Miles Davis - 1 of 3

The Lost Quintet—Miles Davis' 1968–1969 band, never officially recorded—was a radical pivot point in jazz history, fusing avant-garde freedom with the electric edge of 1960s counterculture. In this episode, scholar and musician Michael E. Veal argues that this group, though unofficially documented, was not a footnote but a crucial bridge between the structured modern jazz of the 1950s and the genre-defying fusion of the 1970s. Veal reveals how Miles, influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and African rhythms, assembled a band of innovators—including Chick Corea on electric piano, Jack DeJohnette, and Dave Holland—not to replicate rock or funk, but to absorb their energy and reframe it through jazz’s improvisational language. The music, though still rooted in jazz forms, embraced free meter, rubato rhythms, and open-ended structures that mirrored the era’s political and cosmic upheavals. This band didn’t just play Miles’ old hits—it transformed them into something new, a sonic manifesto of freedom. As Veal puts it, the Lost Quintet was Miles’ laboratory for the future, where the seeds of *Bitches Brew* and the entire fusion movement were sown. The episode’s live, unreleased recording from the 1969 Antibes Jazz Festival captures that moment in real time: a band on the edge, improvising not just melodies, but a new musical identity.