The Isle of Wight, 29 August 1970

Miles Davis played the Isle of Wight festival on 29 August 1970, on a bill with Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone and The Who. The band was Gary Bartz on saxophone, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett on keyboards, Dave Holland on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Airto Moreira on percussion.

Rock audiences

Earlier that year he had played the Fillmore East, in March, on a bill with Neil Young and Crazy Horse and the Steve Miller Band, and the Fillmore West, in April, opening for the Grateful Dead. In his autobiography he remembered the room at the West filling with people who talked through the first minutes and then went quiet.

Through the wah-wah

By that summer he had the wah-wah pedal on his trumpet. He said he wanted the voice Jimi had on guitar, and that he had always played the trumpet like a guitar.

The photograph above is the hillside of the festival that weekend, by Roland Godefroy (CC BY-SA 4.0).