Eric Hobsbawm on Miles Davis
Looking at the Prom which celebrated Miles Davis my thoughts wandered to Eric Hobsbawm.
BBC Proms – 2026: Miles Davis: A Celebration at the Proms – BBC iPlayer
Hobsbawm was the jazz critic of the New Statesman from 1955 to 1965 writing under the pseudonym Francis Newton (who was a Communist jazz player.
In his biography of Hobsbawm Richard J Evans writes of Hobsbawm’s view of Miles Davis
Newton wrote that Miles Davis was a player of ‘surprisingly narrow technical and emotional range’ and ‘most of his records are not very good’ Miles Away, New Statesman, 21st May 1960.
Later lecturing at Stanford (as a Marxist historian) he explored the jazz clubs of San Francisco and having made the acquaintance of Paul A Baran one of the Editors of the Marxist Monthly Review, he took him to a Miles Davies concert. Richard J Evans notes that Hobsbawm found Baran to be unimpressed.
Emile Chabal in his new biography of Hobsbawm (2026) devotes more space to Hobsbawm on jazz and notes that while he admired Miles Davis he had reservations about his ‘technical prowess’. One might suspect that Davis if he knew of Hobsbawm’s perspective probably carried on regardless.
Kmflett's Blog 
Thanks Keith, the attached article and responses are fascinating and evocative. Like yours my dad was communist (leaver not tankie) but for him the only music for the masses was classical. Hobsbawm shows that Marxists can embrace music in the round, although I dispute his denigration of the Stones.