Short Takes: Aug. 10, 1992

MUSIC

At the End, A Miss by Miles

Although both rely on improvisation and solos, jazz and rap have never found much common ground. The great jazz trumpeter MILES DAVIS was in a recording studio trying to remedy this at the time he died last September. But the unfinished album, Doo-Bop, recorded with the rapper EASY MO BEE, merely skims the rich possibilities of a synthesis. Mo Bee and Davis perform together on just three of the record's nine cuts. Even then, they do not unite. While Mo Bee's rapping is nimble and sharp, and Davis' muted horn hot and restless,...