page_title: Jack Johnson (album)
section_title: Release and reception
hierarchical_section_title: Jack Johnson (album) / Release and reception
caption_attribution_description: Music critic Robert Christgau on the "Songs of Intimacy" panel at the 2009 Pop Conference, Experience Music Project, Seattle, Washington.
context_page_description: Jack Johnson is a studio album and soundtrack by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. It was released on February 24, 1971, by Columbia Records.
  The album was conceived by Davis for Bill Cayton's documentary of the same name, on the life of boxer Jack Johnson. Its two 25-minute-plus tracks were produced from recordings made on February 18 and April 7, 1970, at 30th Street Studio in New York City. Davis was inspired by the political and racial subtext of Johnson's saga as well as the hard rock and funk sounds of his own era, leading a rock-inspired line-up of musicians in the studio: guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, keyboardists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, clarinetist Bennie Maupin, and drummers Jack DeJohnette and Billy Cobham.
  Jack Johnson performed modestly on the record charts and was generally well received by contemporary critics. It has since been regarded as one of the best albums from Davis' career and the jazz-rock genre, as well as his most overt venture into rock music.
context_section_description: Jack Johnson was released on February 24, 1971, by Columbia Records to some commercial success—peaking at number four on Billboard magazine's jazz chart and at number 47 on the R&B chart—despite little marketing from the label. According to Davis, the record was originally released with the wrong cover: a depiction of Johnson in his car, illustrated in stylized period fashion. The intended cover—a photo of Davis playing trumpet in a bent-backward stance—was used on subsequent pressings, which were titled A Tribute to Jack Johnson. In 2003, the album was included on The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, a five-disc box set featuring previously unreleased music from the original recording sessions.
  Reviewing the album in June 1971 for The Village Voice, rock critic Robert Christgau gave Jack Johnson an A-plus and said it is his favorite recording from Davis since Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). While finding it lacking in the excitement of the best moments from Bitches Brew, Christgau believed the album coalesces its predecessor's "flashy ideas" into "one brilliant illumination." Steve Starger of The Hartford Courant called the album "magnificent" and "another gem" in Davis' 20-year "string of gems", and wrote that the tracks "really make up one long, churning, steaming, brooding, slashing musical experience that never dips below the highest of art." Starger found the sidemen's performances masterful and said that Peters' voiceover at the end gives "Johnson's words frightening majesty".
  Less enthusiastic about the record was jazz musician and journalist Leonard Feather, who wrote a review for the Los Angeles Times titled "Miles Ahead and Miles Behind". Viewing Jack Johnson as a "letdown after the unflawed triumph" of Bitches Brew, Feather was particularly dismayed by Davis for aligning himself with "the thumping, clinking, whomping battering ram that passes for a rhythm section" on the album.
caption: "Jack Johnson is a record I adored from the git, an eccentric call at the time" (Robert Christgau, 2018)[14]
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