Q&A: Vince Wilburn Jr. On Paying Tribute To And Growing Up With ‘Uncle’ Miles Davis

It’s understandable drummer/composer Vince Wilburn Jr. feels the mighty specter of the legendary Miles Davis in all he does. Or, as Wilburn calls him, “Uncle Miles.”

Wilburn grew up watching his uncle from the age of five or six, he estimates. So Wilburn, who played with his uncle for years after becoming a professional jazz musician, was very comfortable paying tribute to Davis with the project Miles Electric Band.

However, as Wilburn explained when we met up with him at the iconic Village Recording Studio in Santa Monica, he wanted to put his own spin on his music and Davis’ considerable influence.

The result is the all-star album, That You Not Dare To Forget. The dazzling collection features an incredible array of talent, including Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Vernon Reid and more.

Wilburn spoke about being in the studio with so many greats and shared some incredible memories of growing up with “Uncle Miles.”

Steve Baltin: Where did the impetus for this album come from?

Vince Wiluorn: It started out as we have a band called Miles Electric Band and in 2009, our publicist at the time had a idea for a gig at Sunset Junction which was a festival in Silver Lake. I think it was the anniversary of Bitches Brew, but I can’t remember which year. And she said, “Would you be able to putting the band together?” I’m like, “Yeah.” So I called Wallace Roney was my first call and his brother Antoine, Darryl Jones and then guys [they] had played with, Darryl Jones, Robert Irving and Munyungo Jackson and Blackbyrd McKnight. And from those calls, this is where the group was born. It was called The Miles Electric Band. Fast forward to right before pandemic, I wanted to record something because the promoters were saying we were a tribute band and I wanted to get away from that. We all love Miles, we all were influenced by Miles and all the players, but I wanted to put a spin on some new music. I tried to get the guys who were in the band, but Darryl was out with The Rolling Stones and Bobby was doing a thing in Chicago. And so I said, “Who’s that forward thinker thinks outside the box?” And somebody I respect and love and admire and it was Lenny. I called Lenny [White] and he said, “Well man, let me take a YouTube, look at some of the YouTubes.” And he looked at some, he said, “Man, I might have something. Some ideas.” We got together. I flew to New York and he is got a studio that he uses called Mozart Studio in New Jersey. And that’s how we started. Then we would listen to songs and pick out musicians that we wanted to play on the tracks like Ron Carter, Vernon Reid, [John] Scofield, it was pretty cool. It turned out nice, yeah. And then the guys that were pretty contributing were like, “The who who’s of jazz.” So it’s pretty cool.

Baltin: When you start a project like this, of course you have an idea in your mind and then all the different artists come in and it takes off in so many different directions. So were there things that really surprised you in it as you started getting into it?

Wilburn: Well, it was like a blank canvas and we had like the colors, the paints. But each musician added their dab of artistry on the canvas and it was great to watch. Like watching Ron Carter, watching Bernard Wright, Vernon Reid, Pedrito Martinez and just seeing what they brought to the each song. It was pretty magical. I’m still a fan of musicians and music. I’ll always be. So it was fun to watch. And just the notes that Ron plays. Then Marcus, then Darryl and then Stanley [Clarke] played on the spoken word track , which is the title track. And that was composed for Cicely Tyson. And she loved it. [But] we couldn’t get her schedule together. And then she passed away. And so the young lady on the track is Rashae Reeves, who is Lenny’s granddaughter. And the spoken word is about Miles and Cicely but Rashae didn’t know anything about Miles because she was too young. So Lenny and his wife tried to explain to her what the relationship was about. And then she just took a pen and a paper and this is what she arrived on. So it was like magical moments like that.

Sage Bava: I imagine you put people like that in a room together and it’s just like explosions of creative ideas that just improvise as jazz is. Did the songs take the shape that you imagined in the beginning or did it become something new?

Wilburn: You raise a great question. Lenny had the ideas and then he had the demos. But then as we approached these songs, it did take on a life of the song. It just blossomed. And it seemed like it all happened fast too ’cause the musicians are quick. But it was very organic and it was quick and everybody played from the heart and that’s important. And it comes out in the music. It wasn’t like just, “Let’s go in and cut and get out.” Everybody just gave me different variations of themes of the song and different takes. And it was just like when we recorded with Miles. He liked everything, one or two takes. And after that he thought that the spontaneity was lost. So what you hear is like one or two takes of everything, which is really cool.

Baltin: Does that just feel more alive to you?

Wilburn: Yeah, because it’s the fear. When I say fear of not knowing, but knowing. Like Wayne Shorter says, “Without a net.” So we go in and we cut and then Lenny and I, after each take, we talk about it and what we can add or take away. And then Lenny says, “I got what I need.” When Ron was recording, he says, “Any more music? Anything else there?” ‘Cause he was so fast, so quick, and so right on. All the musicians were like that. So it was just like, knock it out from the heart. Next song. Next song. Next song. And that you not dare to forget the spoken word track. Stanley came on and played his bass. He was in town for Ron’s Carnegie Hall concert. So we said, “Stanley, why don’t you come by?” And Stanley came, wrote out the note, wrote out the music, wrote out what he needed to chart, and bam. So, there you have it.

Baltin: As you’re watching all these people do this, were there moments for you where you still have that sense of disbelief?

Wilburn: Well, it was my project, but it’s happened like that all my life. As a kid, I used to stand backstage while my parents watched Uncle Miles or Miles in the audience. So I got a bird’s eye view of what the drummer is doing, the interaction of the music. I was about five or six years old, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. And Tony Williams told Wallace Rooney, he said, “When Vince used to come and sit backstage, I knew he was gonna play drums.” ‘Cause I was just mesmerized. And that never left me. That thirst. So fast forward to what we are doing on this project, I felt like a kid. I felt like when I was five years old, because everybody was making it work.And that’s something for artists too if they have the chance to see how musicians communicate. It’s like with the Quintet, which I was blessed to see. They didn’t look at each other. It was just communication. That type of like magical communication that happens from the downbeat. And then when I got to play with Miles, it was the same way from the downbeat. He had that way of bringing it all out of us. So I miss him.

Bava: I want to hear more on that. “Bring it all out of us and the not looking at each other and that feeling.” Can you expand on that?

Wilburn: Well, when you play music, you’re thinking about it but it’s coming from your heart. Well, it comes from my heart. I’m sure it comes from your heart. And you want to cut the communication with the audience if you’re recording on the record. And I learned that from Miles. He was never afraid to take a chance and whatever he was thinking at the time, whatever we recorded or whatever we did under his direction, it always worked. But he had that uncanny way of knowing how to shift the music, shift the recording session or the concert ’cause he could feel it. He could feel it from the audience or he could feel it from the musicians. And that alone was like, ” How does he know?” And he would tell us to try things and we were looking at each other, the band members, and it always worked. And so that’s one of the things I learned is to have a little bit of fear. But have a little bit of knowing that you’re going to come out on the side where you want to be. You don’t know, but you know, is what I’m trying to say. And so that wins out with the fear of the uncertainty that some musicians might have. You always gotta have a little bit of fear. I do because it’s that not knowing but knowing. Because Miles would have us try things. And the way he could shift gears and we would have a set list, but if it wasn’t working or if he didn’t feel it with the audience, he would change the set list on stage. And he told me never to take my eyes off of it. He had a wireless mic. So I’m playing and I’m looking all under the symbols and he’s just going across the stage and you could feel the audience just shift to wherever he is. And it was like, “Wow. This man with a trumpet can do this.” Not even in some countries not even speaking the language, of course. And that’s something I’ll never forget. So we are just trying to carry on what he taught us.

Baltin: At what point did you start to figure out who Uncle Miles was to the world?

Wilburn: Check this out. Back in the day, they didn’t have TSA so you could go to the gate to meet the passengers. So we used to go pick up Uncle Miles and walk him back from the gate to the car. He’d get his luggage, but he would get stopped like every five, 10 steps. And I’m a little boy. I’m like, “Why does everybody keep stopping Uncle Miles and talking to him?” I couldn’t put it together. I grew up in Chicago. They would send records to my parent’s house and I would get them and take them downstairs. My parents had a great stereo and I had my drum set up and I would just play these records still not understanding who this was until I was around maybe 10 then it kind of dawned on me like, “Whoa. This is Miles Davis. This is uncle Miles, but this is Miles Davis.” And my parents let me do the regular things as a kid. I was in the Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, played football. But I just figured it all out. I figured it all out. I’m like, “Wow.” So years later when I joined the band, I would just pick his brain like, “Uncle Miles. What was it… When you graduated and came to Juilliard, what was it like to go to Bird Land? What was the other thing?” He said, “Ah. Shut up.” He wouldn’t talk about that. He said Max Roach played so fast and made his lips bleed. And he would say things like, when he got the gig with Bird, the club owner asked Charlie Parker, who’s playing trumpet, ’cause I think Dizzy [Gillespie] had moved on. And he pointed at Uncle Miles, and Uncle Miles was looking around like, “Me?” So, those stories. So that’s what I grew up with. And as I got older, I was like a sponge still always. We had a studio out in Malibu and he always wanted us to try track, give him tracks, Aaron and I. And stickler about practicing, never get relaxed on your instrument, but always think forward, always evolve. And he never listened to the old records. Never. He didn’t even have them in the house. It’s just another thing I learned.

Bava: Going back to what you said before that I loved about this inner knowing. Was there a life experience that you had where you found that feeling of knowing that you know?

Wilburn: No, just being around progressive musicians all my life. And there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, nothing wrong with looking back and retro or whatever, but lot of musicians that I’m attracted to are musicians that change. Move the needle or change the course of music. And I guess that’s from being around Miles or listening to Wayne or Herbie [Hancock], I call them my uncles. Now I love the old R&B and I love funk and I love, of course, the classics. But for me, I’m just trying to think the future. I don’t know what lies in the future, but it’s just staying progressive. Staying evolving. That rubbed off on me.