Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew” Meaning, Song Facts & History

This is the fascinating story of Miles Davis making his masterpiece 1970 album, and why he named it Bitches Brew

At Bluescentric, we’re honored to dream up and manufacture merchandise on behalf of Miles Davis’ estate, and we enjoy deep dives into his vast catalog. Today’s dive is is the great Bitches Brew, an album we have in constant rotation in the factory while we make official Miles Davis t-shirts.

By 1969, Miles was 43 years old & watching rock musicians selling out arenas & jazz music stuck in old ways. And so, as he did many times in his life, he wanted to change up his sound. He thought he could do rock and funk better, and set out to capture the sounds of a changing country.

So on August 19th, 1969, Miles Davis started his recording session at 10:00 AM, coincidentally exactly 24 hours after Jimi Hendrix finished his famous set at Woodstock, just a couple hours away.

The album was recorded over three days in Columbia Records’ Studio B in New York City.

Davis and his hand-picked band would record six tracks, “Pharaoh’s Dance,” “Bitches Brew,” “Spanish Key,” “John McLaughlin,” “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” and “Sanctuary.”

“I would direct, like a conductor, once we started to play… recording was a development of the creative process, a living composition. It was like a fugue, or motif, that we all bounced off of.”
– Miles Davis on the Bitches Brew sessions, in his memoir Miles: The Autobiography

The Album Artwork

That haunting psychedelic, surrealist album art was painted by Abdul Mati Klarwein eight years earlier in 1961. He called the work Annunciation and it was one of 69 related pieces from his studio, which he called Aleph Sanctuary.

Miles tried to buy the original painting back in the 1980s, but the painting is currently in a private collection and not available for viewing.

The teeth-gritting girl with the magnificent head-dress on the back of Bitches Brew actually pops up on the back of another very famous album cover, released five months later — Santana’s Abraxis!

Klarwein painted a number of album covers for artists including Jackie McLean, Gregg Allman, Eric Dolphy, Buddy Miles, Earth, Wind & Fire and a Jimi Hendrix album that was abandoned after his death.

The Bitches Brew Band Members

Miles assembled a massive 13-member ensemble, including the following…

• Trumpet: Miles Davis
• Soprano Sax: Wayne Shorter
• Bass Clarinet: Bennie Maupin
• Electric Pianos: Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, and Larry Young
• Guitar: John McLaughlin
• Bass: Dave Holland (acoustic/electric) and Harvey Brooks (electric)
• Drums: Jack DeJohnette and Lenny White
• Percussion: Don Alias and Juma Santos (Airto Moreira also contributed)

In a funny piece of music trivia, Miles Davis does not play at all on the track titled “John McLaughlin”!

The Album’s Producer

Longtime collaborator Teo Macero was the producer, and played a “secondary creative role” by editing the raw studio jams, (like looping sections and splicing tapes) to create the final compositions.

Reportedly, some of the tracks like Pharaoh’s Dance were so heavily edited that the musicians didn’t recognize their own parts in it.

The “Bitches Brew” Album Name

On November 14th, 1969, producer Teo Macero sent a telegram to the CBS executives with a curt, simple alert.

Miles just called and said he wants this album to be titled:

“BITCHES BREW”

Please advise.

Much speculation has been made on the origin of the name, but Miles didn’t publicly explain the name at all.

His wife at the time, Betty Davis, did claim that Miles had wanted to call it “Witches Brew” and she suggested the change to Bitches to give it a little edge.

How The Album Was Received

While today Bitches Brew is regarded as a Jazz masterpiece, at the time, the stark change was quite offensive to Jazz critics. Stanley Crouch infamously called Miles “The most brilliant sellout in the history of jazz.”

With Bitches Brew, Davis was not leading the music into the future; he was following the tail of the rock-and-roll dog.
– One of numerous criticisms that music critic Stanley Crouch would later have to eat

The concern was understandable at face value. It was an experimental album with little obvious commercial appeal, but Miles’ instincts were right.

The album quickly became Miles Davis’ first gold record, selling over 400,000 copies in its’ first year, and peaking at #35 on the Billboard 200, both of which is nearly unheard of in Jazz.

In 1971, Miles won a Grammy for the album, for “Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album”.

In 1971, he would continue showing the world that Miles Davis could play rock and funk better than anyone with his incredible 2-track album: JACK JOHNSON.

At Bluescentric, we’re honored to dream up and manufacture merchandise on behalf of Miles Davis’ estate, and we enjoy diving deeply into his music catalog with you. If you might enjoy official Miles Davis t-shirts, gifts, music and merch, check it out below.

Here’s Miles Davis famously playing Bitches Brew live at Tanglewood Festival: