SoundGround >> RIP Pete Cosey, Miles Davis' mid-70's guitar hero

Pete Cosey has kept a low profile for most of his four-decade career. In fact, in the past ten years it seemed as though the guitarist had vanished completely. "I just go and woodshed," the former Miles Davis sideman told me in 1997. "I disappear from the scene and come back with different stuff." Recently he's come back with several new projects: he's a member of the Electric Mudcats, a Muddy Waters-inspired act organized by Public Enemy's Chuck D; he's the featured soloist on a disc that reinterprets Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps; and he's formed the Children of Agartha, a band with Davis alums Gary Bartz and John Stubblefield that pays homage to the hard-charging, nonlinear music that Cosey made with the trumpeter in the mid-70s. And recently he got an unexpected dose of mainstream exposure: he appeared as a plaintiff on The People's Court.

Last June, Children of Agartha made their debut at the Village Underground in New York. At the end of the night the club's talent buyer, Steve Weitzman, didn't have enough cash on hand to meet the band's guarantee; Cosey agreed to let him pay the balance of $1350 by August 15. When the date came and went without payment, Cosey filed a suit in New York small-claims court. But before the November court date rolled around he was contacted by representatives of the TV program. Both he and Weitzman agreed to appear; the episode was taped late last fall and ran early this year. Cosey presented the facts, the original contract, and Weitzman's promissory note. After some backpedaling from the promoter, the judge ruled in the guitarist's favor.

As Cosey nears 70 quite a few judgments have gone his way. He made significant contributions to some of the most critically maligned records of the late 60s and early 70s; contemporary critics and musicians have reevaluated those albums and Cosey's performances. "It's not so much people catching up to what I'm doing as it's a matter of rediscovery, or, for some of them, discovery," he says. "My music is light-years from that right now. I'm interested in bridges, not barriers. A lot of the young people aren't familiar with many of our great jazz artists nor our great blues artists, so if we can introduce them through our music that'll be beneficial for everyone."