LJazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold is a song that appeared on the first album by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, around 1967 or so. And ain’t that the truth. Except you don’t get to hear much “hot jazz” in Hong Kong – we do have a few venues where you can hear a bit now and then, and we even have at least one home-grown world-class jazz musician (guitarist Eugene Pao). The Jazz Club is long gone, a fond memory that I can relive whenever I watch John Woo’s film Hard Boiled, which has several introspective scenes shot at that should-have-been-iconic location (Woo himself played the bartender in the film). Ornette Coleman’s coming to town next year and I hope I can work my schedule so that I won’t miss him.

I can only assume there’s not much jazz in Hong Kong because most people here haven’t been exposed to it and think it’s not the kind of music they can understand and enjoy. Or they think Kenny G is jazz. I once was on a flight with Mr. G and somehow passed up the opportunity to ask for his autograph, instead allowing myself to recall Pat Metheny’s famous assessment of him as a musician, “… lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing,” and recalling the Richard Thompson song I Agree With Pat Metheny, Kenny’s Talents Are Too Teeny as I passed Mr. Gorelick in the aisle.

Luckily, when I started listening to jazz, I started with the very best. I bought my first jazz album, my first Miles Davis album back in 1969. It was the landmark double album Bitches Brew. I was 15 years old and knew practically nothing about jazz and even less about Miles Davis. I can’t even recall why I bought it. Perhaps I was lured in by the astonishing cover painting by Mati Klarwein, or maybe I’d read a review of it somewhere. What I do know is that it sounded like nothing else in my record collection and I loved it from the first time I played it. The music on it seemed to fit every mood. It worked great in the background and was infinitely rewarding when I’d clap on the headphones and concentrate on it.

It took just a few years for me to add 10 or 20 more Miles Davis albums to my collection. And just a few years more until I had a secretary who would claim to be the mother of Miles’ children every time she was drunk (which was often), but that’s another story.

While one joke has it that throughout his career, Miles kept playing the same notes, just the music behind him changed, the fact is that Miles rarely repeated himself. From his days backing up Charlie Parker to his first great quintet (featuring John Coltrane) to his orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans to his second great quintet (with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter) to then the astonishing work he did in partnership with Teo Macero (which includes In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew and On the Corner) right up until his more pop oriented final days, Miles never stood still.

Percussionist Mtume relates a great story in the booklet that accompanies the recent release of The Complete On the Corner Sessions. “After that concert, a critic – I can’t remember his name – ran up and said, ‘Miles, every move you’ve made musically, I’ve been there. But I can’t get to where you’re at now.’ Miles looked at him and he said, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do, muthafuckah, wait for you to get there?’” Miles didn’t wait for anyone and the world is still catching up.

Bitches Brew, to a large extent represents the birth of the fusion jazz that’s been so popular since the 1970s. Except that Miles himself almost immediately stopped playing that kind of music.

Where he went next can best be heard on the newly released six disc set The Complete On the Corner Sessions. When On the Corner was originally released in 1972, it left a lot of people confused or pissed off. Critics tried to place it within a jazz context, but Miles had walked away from jazz. He wasn’t going to be constrained by someone else’s definitions. The sounds and rhythms that he heard on street corners in Harlem were reverberating in his head. James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone had become major influences. And there was one more element that he brought in, one that no one could have expected.

Davis decided to work with cellist/arranger/composer Paul Buckmaster. You might recognize the name since he did the string arrangements on all the early Elton John albums. Buckmaster turned Miles on to the work of experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Miles was so taken with this that he played the records constantly in his house and even had a cassette to listen to when driving in his Lamborghini. A lot of people, from the Beatles to Frank Zappa, have given credit to Stockhausen’s influence over the years, but no one heard it, internalized it, turned it around and sent it back into the world the way Miles did.

The Complete On the Corner Sessions represents the eighth and final release in a series of reissues that covers of all of Miles Davis’ studio recordings for Columbia Records. Davis was with Columbia from the late fifties up until his temporary retirement in the mid seventies and these were clearly the most productive years of his career. This reissue project took more than ten years to complete: 43 discs and about 300 individual tracks; each set packaged in an embossed metal box with a 100+ page booklet. It’s extensive, exhaustive and expensive – and worth every penny for not just collecting so many great albums in one series but in providing a way to really understand and enjoy the life’s work of one of the greatest musicians to ever walk upon our earth.

Thirty five years later, listening to the unedited versions of these studio sessions, it all comes together in a way that expands and deepens the original albums. The deep funky bass guitar, the African percussion, the electric sitar and tabla, Miles’ muted trumpet. There’s not a lot of melody to be heard in these tunes. These are deep dark funky grooves, often atonal and grating, sometimes soft and almost winsome. The street informs and infuses everything. And after all these years and all the thousands of records and CDs I’ve bought, there’s still nothing else like it in my collection.