The Times They Are A-Changin'

But all great things must come to an end. By the end of the decade, the members of Davis's band found themselves in the same position that those that came before had. Each of the band members had launched successful solo careers years before and found themselves in periods of artistic change. Shorter's compositions moved closer and closer to free jazz, with his 1969 Super Nova even including free versions of three earlier songs, “Water Babies”, “Capricorn”, and “Sweet Pea”. Tony Williams took an increasing interest in rock music, eventually founding Lifetime with guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young and releasing the group's first record – arguably the first jazz fusion album – in 1969. Carter and Hancock had ample job opportunities elsewhere as well, Hancock eventually going on to form Headhunters and fuse more modern African-American music with jazz.

The jazz scene in the late 60's was undergoing drastic change as well. The death of John Coltrane in 1967 is undoubtedly one of the largest events in the history of American music. Coltrane's unflinching dedication to pursuing the freedom of expression he saw in free jazz made him a hero to a younger generation of players that felt his interest endorsed their work. While his death certainly did not end this musical trend, it marked a point of divergence, after which many musicians had difficulty finding their own way. Simultaneously, rock music took more and more young listeners away from jazz, the rise of the Beatles signaling the fall of almost every jazz musician's career. While by this point, Davis had succeeded in making himself a pop culture icon who had to worry less about fleeting trends, even he realized that in order to remain culturally relevant, he'd have to draw inspiration from this new music.

Elements of this change appear before the impending break-up of the Second Great Quintet. The final albums the group released, Miles in the Sky and Filles De Kilimanjaro, introduced electric keyboard and bass to the instrumentation and experimented with long, open-ended jams as song form, pulling from rhythmic styles of the pop world. While traces of the spirit remained, the music on these albums demonstrated very readily that the character of the group had begun to move away from the brooding, chromatic post-bop world it defined into something new. Yet this material is still transitional, the full introduction into Davis's next period had yet to come, and the almost forgotten “Lost Quintet” had yet to solidify as a group.