On the Corner

Davis conceived the album as a way back to young African-American listeners who had left jazz for Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown. Paul Buckmaster introduced him to Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Davis later described the record as Stockhausen plus funk plus Ornette Coleman. Michael Henderson held down repeating one-chord bass grooves while a changing cast of drummers, percussionists, keyboardists, sitar and tabla players rotated around him, and Teo Macero spliced the takes. Davis played electric trumpet through a wah-wah pedal, sparingly.

The original packaging credited no musicians, which Davis said was deliberate so critics would have to guess the instruments. Corky McCoy drew the cover. Paul Tingen called it the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz. Stan Getz said it was worthless, the NME's Ian MacDonald called it monumentally boring, and Ralph J. Gleason of Rolling Stone liked it. It topped the Billboard jazz chart but reached only 156 on the Billboard 200. Even Dave Liebman and Buckmaster, who played on it, were unenthusiastic.

The view of it changed. Stereogum in 2014 called it one of the greatest records of the 20th century, and Pitchfork ranked it 30th among albums of the 1970s. In the Guardian in 2007 Greg Tate called it the first hip-hop, house, drum'n'bass, breakbeat album he had ever heard, and admirers named there include the Noisettes' Jamie Morrison, DJ Spooky and Jah Wobble. The Complete On the Corner Sessions appeared in 2007, and BBC Music called it possibly the most important Davis box set.