R.I.P Pete Cosey

Legendary Chicago-based guitarist Pete Cosey, has died at the age of 68. Jazz blues guitarist Pete Cosey used electronic distortion and innovative methods of stringing and tuning his guitar to impress his signature sound on recordings by artists from bluesmen Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf to jazz great Miles Davis.

Pete Cosey (October 9, 1943 – May 30, 2012) was an American guitarist most famous for playing with Miles Davis' band between 1973 and 1975. His fiercely flanged and distorted guitar bore comparisons to Jimi Hendrix. Cosey kept a low profile for much of his career (he released no solo recorded works).

Prior to joining the Miles Davis band in 1973, Cosey was a busy session guitarist with Chess Records, playing on records by Etta James, Rotary Connection, Howlin' Wolf (The Howlin' Wolf Album) and Muddy Waters (Electric Mud, After the Rain).

Cosey was a key session musician at Chess Records in the 60s, appearing on sides by Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, the Rotary Connection, and Etta James, and he worked with the great Phil Cohran in the latter’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble. He’s probably most famous, though (to the extent that he’s famous at all), for his mind-melting work with Miles Davis in the early 70s: he played on the trumpeter’s heaviest, most electric albums, including Agharta, Pangaea, and Get Up With It. After Davis broke up the band in 1975 and went into semi-retirement, Cosey was never able to build the solo career he so richly deserved. He used his guitar like an abstract expressionist painter, creating thick, richly textured solos with fierce rhythmic power, dazzling colors, and nonchalant violence. He continued to appear on records here and there, including Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock and an album with Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata, but he always seemed to be planning his own next project, which never quite materialized.