By the late 1960s, Miles Davis was already searching for a new musical direction.
Jazz audiences were shrinking, younger listeners were increasingly turning toward rock music, and many of the styles Davis had helped define earlier in the decade were beginning to feel disconnected from the wider cultural moment. At the same time, Jimi Hendrix was becoming one of the most influential performers in popular music, attracting enormous audiences while reshaping ideas about improvisation, sound, and live performance.
In the clip below, guitarist John McLaughlin recalls taking Miles Davis to see Hendrix perform live. The memory captures the beginning of a fascination that would have a major impact on Davis’s music during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
What interested Davis was not simply Hendrix’s popularity. It was the way Hendrix approached sound, rhythm, energy, and the relationship between improvisation and audience connection.
Why Miles Davis Was Paying Attention to Rock Music
By 1968, Miles Davis was already becoming frustrated with the position of jazz in American culture.
Rock groups were drawing younger audiences on a scale that jazz musicians could no longer match, and Davis paid close attention to those shifts. Unlike some jazz musicians of the period, he did not treat rock as something separate from serious musical innovation.
Instead, he saw certain artists as reshaping the language of contemporary music in real time.
Hendrix stood out immediately.
His performances combined blues vocabulary, extended improvisation, heavy amplification, rhythmic repetition, and an intensity that transformed the atmosphere of live concerts. For Davis, this represented something larger than commercial success. Hendrix had found a way to connect experimentation with mass audiences.
That combination deeply interested Miles Davis during this period.
What Fascinated Miles Davis About Jimi Hendrix
Part of Hendrix’s impact came from volume and sound itself.
Distortion, sustained tones, feedback, and heavily amplified guitars became central parts of Hendrix’s music. Rather than treating these elements as imperfections, he used them expressively, shaping entire performances around texture and energy.
Davis began moving in a similar direction.
During the late 1960s, his music increasingly focused less on chord-heavy structures and more on atmosphere, rhythm, repetition, and sonic density. Electric instruments became more prominent, particularly electric guitar, electric piano, and amplified bass.
The rhythmic approach also shifted.
Instead of the constantly moving swing feel associated with earlier jazz groups, Davis became increasingly interested in repetitive grooves and vamps influenced by funk and rock music. Drummers played with greater volume and a stronger backbeat, creating a more physical and aggressive energy inside the music.
These were not superficial changes. They altered the structure of the performances themselves.
How Hendrix’s Influence Appeared in Miles Davis’s Music
The shift became increasingly clear across a series of Miles Davis albums beginning in the late 1960s.
In a Silent Way
Released in 1969, In a Silent Way marked a major turning point in Davis’s music. The album moved away from traditional bebop structures and toward extended, atmospheric forms built around electric keyboards, repeating figures, and layered textures.
Although quieter than later recordings, the album introduced many of the structural ideas that would define Davis’s electric period.
Guitar also became more central within the ensemble, particularly through the presence of John McLaughlin, whose playing connected jazz improvisation with rock intensity in a way Davis found increasingly valuable.
Bitches Brew
With Bitches Brew in 1970, Davis expanded those ideas further.
The album relied heavily on repetition, multiple percussionists, electric instruments, and long-form improvisation. Rather than moving through fast harmonic changes, many sections remained centred around grooves, rhythmic patterns, and evolving textures.
The music also carried a louder and more confrontational energy than earlier Miles Davis recordings.
That shift reflected part of what Davis admired in Hendrix’s performances: the ability to build intensity gradually through rhythm, amplification, and collective momentum rather than relying entirely on harmonic complexity.
A Tribute to Jack Johnson
If In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew hinted at Hendrix’s influence, A Tribute to Jack Johnson made it more direct.
Built around aggressive electric guitar playing, rock-oriented drumming, and extended grooves, the album moved closer to the energy of rock performance while still remaining rooted in improvisation.
John McLaughlin’s guitar became particularly important here. Davis wanted the music to feel immediate, physical, and forceful in a way that reflected the live energy he heard in Hendrix’s concerts.
The album also demonstrated how Davis was moving away from tightly arranged structures and toward longer, more open performance forms.
Miles Davis, Hendrix, and the Idea of Musical Innovation
Part of what Davis admired was Hendrix’s seriousness as a musician.
Although Hendrix was often discussed primarily within rock culture, Davis viewed him as a major musical innovator whose ideas extended beyond genre boundaries. Improvisation remained central to Hendrix’s performances, even when the surrounding musical language differed from jazz.
This mattered to Davis.
Throughout his career, he consistently gravitated toward musicians who were changing the direction of contemporary music rather than preserving older styles. Hendrix represented exactly that kind of figure during the late 1960s.
The influence also extended beyond sound itself.
Hendrix attracted young audiences while still pursuing highly experimental music, something Davis was increasingly aware of as jazz became more disconnected from mainstream youth culture.
The Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix Collaboration That Never Happened
By 1970, discussions had already taken place about Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix recording together.
Several musicians connected to Davis’s circle, including drummer Tony Williams, were also moving between jazz and rock settings during this period, making the possibility seem realistic rather than hypothetical.
The collaboration never happened.
Hendrix died in September 1970 at the age of twenty-seven, ending what might have become one of the most significant crossovers between jazz and rock musicians of the era.
Even without a completed recording, Hendrix’s impact on Miles Davis remained substantial.
His approach to sound, groove, amplification, improvisation, and audience connection helped accelerate one of the biggest transformations in Davis’s career — a shift that would redefine not only his own music, but much of jazz fusion during the 1970s.