In the art world there is often discussion of an artist’s late period. There is a late Rembrandt. A late Picasso. A late De Kooning. In film as well. A late Buñuel. A late Bergman. A late Woody Allen. A late Scorsese. A late Coppola. The film world abounds with lates. There is a late Philip Roth. A late Saul Bellow. A late John Updike. There is going to be a new novel by Thomas Pynchon published in October 2025, and he has been in a late period for decades.
There are late periods in classical music. Beethoven has a famous late period. Popular music often described as made to be disposable and a form of planned obsolescence seems to age faster than all these other art forms. Led Zeppelin only existed for ten years and their last two studio albums, Presence and In Through the Out Door, seem to be late period art. The Beatles have a late period as well. They grew up so fast. Artists like Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones, who have been putting out new music for decades, seem to fit the more traditional parameters of beginning, middle, and late periods.
Is there an age threshold for starting a late period? People talk of late John Coltrane, but he died at 40, still a young man. Is this considered old age for a musician? Or was his work of the later 1960s just the work of an artist in his prime, with none of the decline in powers typically associated with a late period? Can an artist who died young have a late period? Jimi Hendrix was a blip on the radar screen in terms of creative longevity, but his work with Band of Gypsies is vastly different from when he started, and some say it was a falling off from his debut Experience album (Lou does not agree), which many considerhis finest album? Could the same be true of Jim Morrison? Is LA Woman a late work by a dying artist, with the debut being the pinnacle? What about musicians like Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson who began as young children? Does their late period start in their early 30s given that by that point they have been creative beings for decades? Is Taylor Swift currently in a late period or does she just have a vast middle period, decades and decades long in the making?
Miles Davis definitely had a late period and the copy of Tutu, an album dedicated to Desmond Tutu in 1986 on sale at Vinyl Vogue, would seem to be a prime example. Miles was a pioneer and innovator almost without parallel in the 20th Century. Picasso might be his only peer in terms of an artist who created new forms and established new frontiers to explore at every stage of their career. Cool jazz, modal jazz, and fusion are just some examples. Tutu would seem to be a step backwards in innovation and a decline. This is typical of work in a late period as there is an exhaustion of creative energies and a lack of new areas to conquer. That may or not be true with Tutu. The album is a prime example of 1980s-era smooth jazz and Miles, as is the case more often than not, was an inspiration for this style. His more far-out experimental jazz fusion of the 1970s paved the way for smooth jazz in the next decade. Smooth jazz is after all a form of jazz fusion. Maybe a reaction to the extremes of 1970s Miles, but one dependent on Miles, nonetheless.
As a result, Tutu is an important album for its era and in its way innovative. It is representative of where jazz was in the 1980s, Lou may not like where jazz went but he must admit that Miles, for better or worse, was instrumental in getting it there.
Suggested Sites and Sounds:
Adorno on Late Beethoven: Adorno, T - Late Style in Beethoven, (1993) | PDF
Pynchon’s latest is late: Thomas Pynchon has a new novel coming this fall. It's his first in 12 years | AP News
Late De Kooning The Eighties: Willem de Kooning: The Late Paintings, The 1980s | MoMA
— Lou Waxman