Cassandra Wilson: Traveling Miles : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Since Miles Davis' death, in 1991, there have been more than a dozen tepid album-length tributes to the jazz avatar. Cassandra Wilson's Traveling Miles actually has something to do with its subject: It's moody, full of voodoo and shaped by the austere restraint that was a Davis trademark.

Jazz singer Wilson learned the art of understatement by listening to Davis. She knows how to be patient -- she can say more with one whispery sigh than many divas do with hours of hear-me-roar belting. On Traveling, she sets out to capture the parts of Miles that elude notation: the lonely atmospheres, the stabbing repetitions, the hungry cries. Her originals illuminate the life lessons embedded in his music ("Right Here, Right Now" is an eloquent argument for living in the moment). And like the rearranged pop songs that have dotted Wilson's last few albums, her adaptations of Davis' themes offer new ways to hear the familiar: The brisk, Brazilian-tinged "Never Broken" echoes the interaction of Davis' Sixties quintet in its heady E.S.P. phase, while "Resurrection Blues (Tutu)" deepens one of the most poignant melodies of Davis' later years.

Wilson's emphasis on vibe can sometimes go too far -- her version of the Cyndi Lauper hit "Time After Time," a staple of Davis' Eighties live set, quickly becomes dirgelike, and several other pieces languish in a sluggish medium tempo. But the bulk of Traveling Miles works because it strives not for specific notes or rhythms but for the shadowy inflections that gave Davis' music such a powerful, inescapable aura. (RS 810)

TOM MOON