While I love Mitch's drumming and Noel's bass, can you imagine if Hendrix had worked with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce - both much more confident and strident players than the Experience's rythym section.
That would have blown the doors off of everything.
I don't think there was another as "out there" guitar player as Jimi until EVH came along - a little more controlled, but just as confident and chaotic. EVH was quite the systems engineer himself (variac, Floyd Rose later on etc)
Miles always impressed me with his ability to pick the best to back him up, and /then/ let them take the front. Some tracks he barely plays on, waiting minutes for his entry.
Jimmy wanted the best to back him up. But I agree with you; I'm just pointing out why I think he didn't.
Agreed! Like Pharaoh's Dance on Bitch's Brew, Davis doesn't come in for like 4 minutes. Same with In A Silent Way. He just lets the band groove for a while, THEN takes the lead.
In Davis' autobiography, he mentions trying to work with Jimi. I don't think it would have worked really, but who knows. Jimi was completely self taught, while Miles went to Juliard, I don't see how they would have communicated musically, literally. Like, if Miles tells Jimi to try a diminished chord here, or some modal scale there, Miles would have ended up doing a LOT of teaching along the way. And I say this as a guitarist of 30+ years who loves both of them.
Considering that Miles was firmly in a modal music phase at that point, I don't see Jimi's lack of formal training as a hindrance at all. I think he'd be able to hang just fine with Mile's band. Even if Jimi couldn't read changes on a chart, I'm sure he'd have no problem working it out by ear.
I'd like to think that, I love this period from Davis, and love Hendrix, so it would have been great to see a collab.
In terms of communication, I am thinking of something like the musical equivalent to software design patterns, etc. I.e. imagine two devs are pair coding, one of whom has a CS degree from 2002 and one is skilled but self-taught. While working together, the first starts talking about observer or singleton patterns, which the 2nd has never heard of but has coded something 90% of the way there on intuition. There could be some friction as they establish a common language. (Yes, this is based on experience, with myself more or less on both sides of the exchange at one point or another).
That would have blown the doors off of everything.
I don't think there was another as "out there" guitar player as Jimi until EVH came along - a little more controlled, but just as confident and chaotic. EVH was quite the systems engineer himself (variac, Floyd Rose later on etc)