Teo Macero, R.I.P.

Jess Harvell | February 22, 2008 3:00 am
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Teo Macero, the cut-up whiz who helped Miles Davis edit his freewheeling ’60s and ’70s albums into partially (or wholly) collaged electric jazz masterpieces that continue to spark debate and cross-genre advocacy today, died on Tuesday in New York. Macero’s career began as a Julliard-trained saxophonist and composer who performed with jazz giants like Charles Mingus before being drafted by Columbia Records in the late ’50s, producing classic sides for artists like Dave Brubeck and beginning his long, fruitful association with Davis. Anyone who wants a quick insight into Macero’s sometimes seamless, sometimes bracingly obvious editing magic needs only to A/B the “official” versions of Davis albums like Live/Evil and On The Corner with the extensive, unedited Davis box sets that have been released over the last decade, a trend which the New York Times obit notes an understandably proprietary Macero viewed less than charitably, as any professional illusionist might. Macero was 82. [NY Times]

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