2026 IS THE CENTENNIAL YEAR OF MILES DAVIS (b. May 26, 1926, d. September 28, 1991)--PART 3: The Many Sides of Miles Davis + More Music + Interviews and Critical essays
Still Kind of Blue was the name of a spirited, fast-paced roundtable discussion at this year’s Jazz Congress conference, which took place at Jazz at Lincoln Center in January.
Bassist/producer Marcus Miller, trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard, drummer/nephew Vince Wilburn Jr., journalist/historian Lauren du Graf and New Yorker critic Richard Brody shared personal experiences and insights; this journalist had the honor to moderate. How best to mark the legendary trumpeter’s centennial? By allowing the stories to flow, and cross-discussions to happen. And they did. It took just one question, and off they went: How does Miles Davis’ legend differ from other historic figures in jazz? The following discussion has been edited for space.
Vince Wilburn Jr.: I was privy to see a side that a lot of people couldn’t witness. This man was the first to wake up in the morning and the last to go to sleep at night, and during the course of the day he would change clothes five or six times. I was like, “Chief, what are you doing?” He said, “I’m rehearsing my shit.”
He never liked to play any of the music he recorded in his career. He didn’t even have it in the house. He wouldn’t listen to Kind Of Blue or Sketches or any of those iconic albums. He always wanted to evolve and push the needle forward and he was always into sounds.
Back in the ’80s there was MTV, and I remember that it would be on in the house and the sound was turned down, but if there was something that caught his eye then he would turn the sound up. Like Scritti Politti, we did “Perfect Way” because he dug that video. Same with “Human Nature,” Michael Jackson. Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time.” He would call the record label and have them send the records over to him. And he was into a [Guadaloupean gwoka] group called Kassav’. There was so much music that he was checking out.
Terence Blanchard: Two stories from when I was playing with Art Blakey in Perugia [at the Umbria Jazz Festival in 1983 and ’85]. I’m with Dizzy Gillespie in his dressing room and he started to play and I’m just tripping because, hey, I’m hanging with Dizzy. He stopped playing and out of nowhere he said, “Miles Davis could always play the prettiest notes.” That was a powerful statement for me to hear because in that one phrase it eliminated the whole notion of competition. It was truly about admiration for what Miles brought to the table, and I knew Miles was comfortable with what Dizzy himself had brought. For me, it’s all about celebrating our differences and not using them to keep us apart.
The other story: I’m back in Perugia and after we had played, I’m coming out of the hotel and these journalists walk up and say, “What do you think about what Miles Davis said?” “Well … first of all, what did he say?” He had said something that was very favorable about me. So we went to his show that night in Terni, right outside Perugia, and when he came off the stage Al Foster could see me looking at Miles with admiration. Al said, “Have you ever met Miles?” and I said, “No.” “Come on in, man, let me introduce you.” When I walked in the door, Miles just looked at me and called my name. That blew me away, that he was that aware of all of the young musicians who were on the scene. I remember he said, “Keep doing what you’re doing.” Keep doing what you’re doing, motherfucker.
Marcus Miller: I mean, we celebrate these people, use the word “legend” and you start to forget that they were human beings. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. I remember [in 1981] he had been in retirement for five years, self-imposed, and we didn’t know whether he was coming back. All of a sudden I’m getting a call from him and he said, “Can you make this session in two hours?” That was probably for the best because if I had two weeks I would have freaked out all that time. I got my instrument on my back and I went to the legendary Columbia Studio B. He walked in the door, and I didn’t see him at first because I was looking up here [points to being 6-plus feet in height] and he was down here. By the time I got into Miles’ band he was already — “MILES DAVIS” — with quotes around the name. He was 5 foot 6. I’m asking myself, “Wow, he’s a human being?”
I’d been hearing stories about Miles my whole life: all the stories from my family, from musicians, the whole community. My dad played classical piano, and he had a cousin who played jazz piano — Wynton Kelly. So when I got the call I was 21, but my family wasn’t even impressed. I said, “Man, I’m playing with Miles Davis.” “Oh, yeah, like Cousin Wynton? Listen, what you want for dinner?”
Blanchard: What trumpet player do you know right now who really wants to play with a Harmon mute? Almost nobody, because he put such a stamp on that. When I was with Art Blakey I used to play “My Funny Valentine” as my feature because I loved Miles so much. So I wouldn’t play much of the melody and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Art pulled me aside and said, “You ain’t Miles. Find your own shit to do.”
Miller: Find your own shit.
Blanchard: When I met Miles that night with Al Foster, everything changed because I realized by just being in a room with him, I’m never going to be that. So there’s no need for me to chase that.
Miller: Because you met him, and he’s just a human being, and he’s being him. Miles learned that, too. He was like, “OK, I’ve been doing this bebop thing trying to sound like Dizzy and Fats Navarro …” He was busting his ass trying to play like those guys would play: high, fast. It was incredible, the level of musicianship.
Wilburn: He said he used to play so fast it made his lips bleed.
Miller: This is what you had to do to play on that level. He went away for a while to stop abusing certain substances, came back and said, “I’m going to be courageous enough to play what I feel.” He was hip, but he also had every man’s ear. That’s what allowed him to play only the beautiful notes. He left space. You know how much courage it takes to leave space when you’re playing an improvisation?
Blanchard: At a time when nobody was doing that.
Miller: He’d leave out a whole two bars before he’d play the next thing. I remember hanging out with my Uncle Big Willy in his music room. He’d have a bourbon, his chair and Kind Of Blue on. Miles would play four notes and then leave two bars of space, which gave Uncle Big Willy, who’s on his third round of bourbon, time to reply, “Come on Miles, talk to me! Aw shucks, now, come on!” That takes courage. It also requires you to have some badass background musicians so that when you’re waiting for that space that music is still cooking.
Blanchard: What about [starts singing “The Theme”] … ?
Miller: [sings along, all laugh] What he did do was he brought his humanity to music. He was always interested in the hip thing. Now “hip” has a kind of negative connotation these days because it means “shallow” to a lot of people. But back in the 1940s, hip was hip. Hip was harmonically sophisticated, rhythmically sophisticated and operating on a high level and still cool.
So, OK, in the ’50s, he becomes the hippest guy in jazz along with Art Blakey and Clifford Brown and those guys. Then he got tired of that. Who quits a style when they’re on the top? Who says I’m going to change up the whole thing? But when people say, “Man, Miles kept changing and I’m not with all the changes,” I always tell them he never changed because all he was doing his entire life was searching for that hipness.
I have a buddy who is a big fan of the music from the ’70s or the early ’80s, and whenever the artist he loves shows up with something different, something new, he’s insulted. He’s like, “MF, I bought each of the records that you made for the last 10 years twice because CDs came out and I rebought them. MF, you owe me.” And this is what a lot of listeners feel about artists who decide to change.
Richard Brody: We’re talking about legend. There’s a line in [Jean Luc] Godard’s Alphaville: “You will suffer a fate worse than death. You will become a legend.” It’s a funny thing to say. The name of this panel is Still Kind of Blue — Miles did Kind Of Blue at the age of 33. He still had another 30 years ahead of him. Just the same way that people kept on telling Godard, “Why don’t you remake Breathless?” and he finally said, “I hate that film, I wish I had never made it.”
I can only imagine what a musician, who has achieved the very pinnacle of success and acclaim in one style of music, experiences when he does something drastically different and a lot of the people who loved what he did before now were insulting him publicly.
I was a 16-year-old out of Long Island and came into the city, and what I saw was a concert at Carnegie Hall [on March 30, 1974] that is now commemorated on the Dark Magus album. Wooooh! I knew that he played with electric instruments but nothing prepared me for the immensity, the density, the strength of the sound in person. It filled Carnegie Hall like a gigantic sculpture.
The Dark Magus concert was not reviewed in the New York Times, and apparently it wasn’t reviewed in DownBeat. I couldn’t find anything. But when Miles did a concert later the same year, John Wilson wrote in the New York Times: “Given the sounds that Bubber Miley was able to get from his trumpet, I’m not sure that the wah-wah pedal actually adds anything to the instrument’s history.”
I started listening to jazz because of the modernists, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane in the later period, and I loved Miles’ music. When I attended that concert I realized, “This is as out there as Albert Ayler, as out there as Cecil Taylor. This is some of the most radical music ever made.” Not that his early music wasn’t profound and intensely moving. I still listen to that all the time. But Miles had broken through in a certain way that very few musicians ever had.
Wilburn: [Multi-instrumentalist James] Mtume said they were in Europe in ’73, and at one concert no one dug it. They wanted the old Miles and they were, like, throwing things at the stage. But the next night they played another city they got five standing ovations. Uncle Miles wasn’t concerned about what people dug. It was about what he and the band wanted to express.
Blanchard: Art Blakey used to say, never get a hit because it will haunt you the rest of your life.
Miller: Exactly. With Miles he was lucky enough, like you’re saying, Richard — he created brand new audiences every time he changed, and I think that made a big difference.
Wilburn: Everybody has a favorite period of Chief’s career. I grew up in Chicago, and my parents would have these parties and some of my dad’s friends would start drinking and argue, “Vince, you gotta turn that old acoustic shit out.” They wanted to hear the electric stuff. And my dad was like, “This is my house, I’ll play whatever I want to.” This was going on in the basement, and I could hear it upstairs.
Blanchard: There are different factions of Miles fans, fans of certain periods — which I find incredible because his legacy was one of never being in the same place.
Wilburn: They said, “Why does Miles have his back to the audience?” No, no, no, no, no. He was digging what was happening on stage and that’s why he would walk up to Marcus, to Darryl Jones, lean next to Bob Berg, to any of the band members to feel the vibe and get close to them. It was amazing.
Brody: When I saw him on stage, I could see exactly what you described. He was conducting, he was creating with the band.
It was very odd to be following the career through records if you weren’t seeing him in concert. I saw Dark Magus, and the records that came out next, which were Big Fun and Get Up With It, great though they are, it wasn’t Dark Magus. There was a disjunction between what was happening live and what was happening in his recording business.
I think that’s why he’s not given enough credit not as an orchestrator, an arranger and a creator of what is essentially jazz orchestral music. Every one of those quintets, it wasn’t just five great soloists. Each one of those bands has a unique sound world of its own. Obviously he spent a lot of time with Gil Evans back in the ’40s and ’50s, and nothing against Gil, but I consider the sound world that Miles Davis created for small and large groups to be more original and distinctive, a more comprehensive sound world. The Miles Davis sound is the sound of everybody together.
Lauren du Graf: The origin of the term “legend” in medieval times was a saint or a martyr whose story would be told every year on a holiday, and the reason these stories stick around is because they tell us something about who we are, who we want to be, and maybe who we don’t want to be. And we talk about the courage to change, that’s huge. How many of us have been personally inspired by some dimension of who Miles Davis was in our own life? Maybe we didn’t change our whole style of dressing. Maybe we did.
But I think about his defiance — like his defiance of a police officer while standing in front of a club just down the street from here [at Birdland in 1959] who wanted him to move along, when his name was on the marquee! He stood up to that and insisted time and again on being himself in a world that didn’t always want him to be who he was.
I think we also have to acknowledge the shadow side of the legend, too, the things we don’t necessarily want to repeat. We could talk about his relationships with women. He was a human being, one with many flaws and imperfections and in order to love him truly we cannot tuck those underneath the carpet. So I would say his legend lives on for me in a deeply inspiring way and a complicated way as well.
Miller: Miles Davis was a human being, and in my life I’ve had a lot of people who I’ve idolized, who were my mentors and who had some serious personality flaws. And this is not a question that I have the answer for. Now I’m confronted years later by some of my heroes who treated women in ways that none of us could ever condone and asking myself, “How do I reconcile the two sides?” And I don’t know if I can.
du Graf: I just finished reading Cicely Tyson’s memoir and watching the Betty Davis documentary and all the interviews with [Miles’ first wife] Frances [Davis] and with [his first partner] Irene, and reading [his last girlfriend] Jo Gelbard’s book as well. These are stories I cannot forget and I can’t move past in many ways. Miles wasn’t my mentor but he is my favorite musician. But I can’t hear the music in the same way because for those of us who have lived through domestic violence, we know the intense terror that imposes on a person, and that’s really hard.
At the same time I’ve written extensively about Shirley Horn, and her whole career trajectory owes everything to Miles. She was locally known in Washington, D.C., and he called her up — I’m not going to try to do his voice — “Come to New York.” He insisted that she open for him at the Village Vanguard when nobody knew her, and because of that Quincy Jones signed her to Mercury. We would not know Shirley if it weren’t for Miles.
His wives, too, have stories like this, and his ex-girlfriends. Betty Davis said that she was inspired to produce her own music because of his encouragement and his example. His genius definitely gave, and it took.
Miller: So, how do you reconcile?
du Graf: I don’t. I don’t.
Miller: OK, good. I’m in the same place.
Blanchard: I think a lot of us are.
Miller: He was complicated.
Blanchard: I’ve been asked that question, “How can you listen to this guy’s music?” We want to make these people perfect. One of the things I think we have to remember is back then in our community, therapy was not something we dealt with. I look at it now as being a godsend for a lot of us to help us push through a lot of these issues. We talk about it. We have words for it. When I listen to Lauren talk about him supporting women it lets us know how complex a person he was.
Wilburn: Gemini, double Gemini. … Don’t you feel we all learned to change from being around him? Don’t you feel we’ve all learned to change?
Miller: Yeah, we’ve all learned to try to summon as much courage as we can. That’s what makes his music everlasting. He wasn’t trying to be a genius. He was just being him: curious, courageous.
Blanchard: Wayne Shorter said, “Jazz means, ‘I dare you.’” If that doesn’t define Miles’ career more than anything, I don’t know what else does, because that dude was fearless. That’s the thing that Vince is talking about. The thing about Miles that I’ve always admired was the fact that he stayed curious. That’s the most important thing. When you think about it, Miles Davis set the tone for a lot of us.
Wilburn: I’ve always said, what other musician played with both Charlie Parker and Prince? There was only one musician. DB
Composer and musician James Mtume Destroys Jazz Critic Stanley Crouch in a Debate about Miles Davis.mp4
James Mtume & Stanley Crouch Debate Jazz Great Miles Davis' Electric Period at the Amistad Center for Art & Culture in Hartford, CT:
VIDEO:
Jazz History: Miles Davis and Juliette Gréco: a beautiful love, but an impossible love
29 March 2025
Jazz History/L' Histoire Du Jazz:
Miles Davis and Juliette Gréco: a beautiful love, but an impossible love
29 March 2025
Miles Davis and Juliette Gréco, the great, the wonderful love... but the impossible love.
We are in Paris, in 1949, in the district of jazz, arts and beautiful letters, in Saint Germain des Près. We meet Marguerite Duras, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian. The nights of Saint Germain des Près are more beautiful than the day.
American jazz resounds in the vaulted cellars of jazz clubs and on the stage of the Pleyel Hall. And that evening, a very young American trumpeter of 23 years, gives his first concert in France on the occasion of the International Jazz Festival in Paris. His name is Miles Davis and no one will ever forget his name again. Neither the audience, nor this young French singer and actress whom he will meet in the dressing rooms at the end of his performance.
This young woman is Juliette Gréco. She later said: "I had been brought behind the scenes by Michèle Vian, Boris' wife. I saw Miles in profile: it was absolutely a Giacometti. With a face of great beauty; an Egyptian statue.
Miles Davis meets love in Paris and finds in France a real artistic refuge. At a time when the United States was still marked by severe racial discrimination, France offered a breeding ground for innovation and the creation that Miles Davis cherished.
His first Parisian stay lasted a week. During these few days Miles Davis and Juliette Gréco did not leave each other, did not let go of the hand. Jean-Paul Sartre asked the musician why he did not marry his beautiful Juliet. "Because I love her too much to make her suffer," replied the trumpeter. When he returned to New York, he fell into heroin. “It took me four years to pick up,” he admits in his autobiography. And seven before returning to France, his second homeland.
A few years later, in 1954, Juliette and Miles met again in New York, but the situation is very different from Paris. In New York, they are constantly being singled out. Mixed couples are rare. Racism is omnipresent. And after a humiliation in a fancy restaurant, Miles asks Juliette never to set foot in the United States again. Their love is impossible. Miles loved Juliette too much to see her suffer.
France will become the second homeland of Miles Davis, that of his heart. He returned to Paris to record the soundtrack of the film "Elevator for the Scaffold" by Louis Malle. Then, for other concerts in Pleyel, the Olympia, Jazz à Juan or the Nice Jazz Festival. To receive the Legion of Honor. Juliette and Miles will stay in touch with them all their lives. They will never stop loving each other. Miles Davis, during his tours, when he played in venues where Juliette Greco was also to perform afterwards, left small words in the dressing room. He wrote to her, “You’re not here tonight.” Before dying, Miles Davis, knowing he was sick, made a last trip to Paris, to say goodbye to Juliette Gréco.
by Tom Schnabel
June 10, 2015
KCRW
A young Miles Davis went to Paris in 1949 with the Tadd Dameron group and fell in love with two women: La Belle France and Juliette Greco. Miles came from a solid, well-to-do family, attended The Juilliard School, and was a hip, sophisticated jazz musician. Paris intellectuals were hugely fond of the new post-war bebop style and treated jazz musicians with the utmost respect and admiration.
Juliette Gréco, like Miles, was only 22 at the time. A young, left bank bohemian beauty and aspiring actress, she had survived the war after being arrested and detained at age 16 by the gestapo because her mother had been a résistante. With her captivating allure and love of existential poetry, Gréco played muse to many, including philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and poet Jacques Prévert—both of whom wrote for her to put to song, photographers Robert Doisneauand Henri Cartier-Bresson, among others.
But it was before Gréco’s rise as a chanteuse that she and Miles met after his performance with the Dameron group at the Salle Pleyel. Unable to afford a ticket to the show, she was brought backstage by friend and wife of French trumpeter and novelist, Boris Vian. There, she and Miles met in the wings and—despite their language barrier—found themselves completely smitten by the end of dinner.
It was the beginning of a passionate love affair that would last until the end of Miles’s life. Never mind that he was married and had already fathered a child at the age of 17. Gréco admired him as an artist and was taken by his debonaire, Giacometti-esque figure. He and others like Dizzy Gillespie brought over their new bebop jazz style to post-war Paris and transformed the music scene.
The French drew parallels between their homegrown existentialism and American bebop jazz, with its looser syncopation and the artistic freedom it encouraged. Jean-Paul Sartre, the great French intellectual and existentialist philosopher, once asked Miles (he was a fan of both Gréco and Miles) why he didn’t marry her, to which Miles replied that he loved Gréco too much to make her unhappy.
History bore out Miles’s attitude toward the racism prevalent in America correctly. A few years later, when both of them had made it big, Gréco was in New York for a big show and invited Miles to the Waldorf Astoria for dinner. The maitre’d made no attempts to hide his disapproval. Who knows, maybe he didn’t even know that it was the famous French chanteuse, Juliette Gréco, but just another white woman with a black man. No food was delivered for almost two hours, until the waiter finally slammed their plates down on the table. It was excruciating for both of them. Miles called later in tears, saying that he never wanted to be with her in America again because of what happened. Recalling the incident in an article penned for The Guardian, Gréco said, “I suddenly understood that I’d made a terrible mistake, from which came a strange feeling of humiliation that I’ll never forget. In America, his color was made blatantly obvious to me, whereas in Paris, I didn’t even notice he was black.”
Years ago, my French friend, Benedicte Bodard, and I were on double-duty Miles Davis watch at the Pepperdine University swimming pool, where I swam regularly. Miles lived nearby and often swam there. I told Benedicte to listen for the roar of a yellow Ferrari Testarossa V-12, which would announce Miles’s arrival. I thought if she met him, then maybe I could meet him (also in the pool) talk with him, and put him in my first book, Stolen Moments, which was published in 1988. I never got to meet him there, but Benedicte did. Seeing she was French, he immediately warmed up to her and spoke to her at length about his love for Juliette Gréco.
Recently, the iconic chanteuse, Juliette Gréco, now 88, was interviewed by veteran French jazz journalist Philippe Carles in The Guardian. She remarked, “Between Miles and me there was a great love affair, the kind you’d want everybody to experience.”
Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis (Musicians in Their Own Words) November 1, 2008
Miles Davis – 10 of the best
The trumpeter started recording more than 70 years ago and altered the course of jazz many times. Here are 10 key tracks from his extraordinary career
by Angus Batey
12 April 2017
The Guardian (UK)
Between his first recording session in 1944 and his death in 1991, Miles Davis changed the course of music many times. The first of these came with the short-lived lineups he assembled for a New York residency and three studio sessions between January 1949 and March 1950. The nine-piece lineup was unusual – few jazz bands used a French horn – and the gigs attracted little attention. The sessions produced a handful of singles for Capitol Records, later collected as an album called Birth of the Cool – these ensured the band’s shadow would prove longer than all but a handful of its contemporaries.
The recordings were the result of hanging out after hours at arranger Gil Evans’s basement flat. The punchy, brightly coloured Venus de Milo was one of three tracks the group recorded that was composed by saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. The epithet “cool” isn’t entirely helpful, suggesting a prizing of style over substance: this music is never aloof or detached. Rather, this is what you got when you tuned down the frenzy of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and allied it to the kind of sophisticated big-band arrangements Duke Ellington pioneered. Davis was a fan – and a part – of both traditions: not for the first time, what he crafted was a fusion of preceding forms that changed what would follow.
2. Générique
Touring Europe had a profound effect on Davis. In France, he felt respected as an artist without question or caveat: this had never been the case in his racially segregated homeland. Certainly, he was sure he would never have been approached by a movie director during a US nightclub residency and asked to compose music for a film. When Louis Malle made just that offer to Davis in November 1957, Davis accepted the challenge. The soundtrack to Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold) was recorded in two days in December. The band – a local pick-up group, including expatriate American drummer and bebop pioneer Kenny Clarke – were given little more than some rough ideas Davis had jotted down in his hotel room the night before. On arrival at the studio they found the film’s star, Jeanne Moreau, holding court at a makeshift bar; loops of footage from the film were projected while they improvised, with Davis suggesting that whatever they played be in counterpoint to the images on the screen. It wasn’t the first jazz soundtrack to a film noir, but it’s an exemplar of the form: Davis’s careful, vulnerable, vibrato-less playing – sometimes using his mute, at others gently enhanced with echo – was tailor-made to snake through black-and-white shots of night-time city streets and imply turbulent moods swimming through shadowy rooms and behind inscrutable faces shot in stark closeup.
VIDEO:
Davis had already formed and fired the group that would become known as his “first great quintet” (drummer Philly Joe Jones, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers and John Coltrane on saxophone) when, days after returning from Paris, he re-recruited five superb musicians and began working as a sextet. Lineup tweaks were frequent, and by March 1959, the group featured Jimmy Cobb on drums, Wynton Kelly on piano, Chambers, Coltrane and additional saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. Yet for one of two sessions on 3 March, Bill Evans returned to the piano stool, so fundamental did Davis feel his style was to the material the group was about to record. The two March sessions – and another on 22 April, again with Evans taking Kelly’s place – would give the world Kind of Blue, on which Davis and friends once again upended convention and took jazz off on a new expedition. The set texts tell how Kind of Blue broke the mould, with the players rejecting chords as the basis of improvisation and adopting modes. Another way of thinking about it would be to do as Davis seems to have intended: reflect on the album’s title and listen while six master musicians reconfigure the blues for a new era.
4. Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio)
Not content with reinventing small-band jazz with the quintet and sextet, Davis was at the same time in the middle of a series of recordings with Gil Evans that bore more similarities to classical orchestral scores than what was generally considered jazz. Sketches of Spain was the third of these releases and is perhaps the most ambitious. Davis had already begun exploring Spanish music when he was introduced to Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez early in 1959. Davis and Evans worked up an arrangement of the second movement for trumpet rather than guitar: its ubiquity as a piece for brass bands today underlines how influential this reading would become. That it showcases some of Davis’s most confident playing is only part of the story: what matters is that he inhabits the character the notes suggest, and, through his trumpet, finds a truth in the music only the greatest artists could ever have located.
5. Yesterdays (Live at the Plugged Nickel)
There was a constant churn of collaborators through the early 60s but, with the recruitment of long-time target Wayne Shorter as the eventual replacement for Coltrane on sax in September 1964, Davis finally had what many have described as the greatest group in jazz history. That appraisal may do the “second great quintet” – Davis, Shorter, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Tony Williams and pianist Herbie Hancock – an injustice: they’re clearly one of the finest bands ever assembled, in any genre of music.
By the end of 1965, the new quintet were more than familiar with their leader’s counter-intuitive mindset, and keen to take him out of the comfort zone of a live repertoire that stuck to standards and ignored the adventurous new material they had been recording. Before a December residency at the Plugged Nickel in Chicago, and behind Davis’s back, Williams – barely out of his teens – suggested to Carter, Shorter and Hancock that from the first note of the first set they should play the opposite of what tradition, convention and their leader’s improvisations implied. The four musicians agreed, and didn’t waver even when, on arrival at the venue, they found out that the shows were being recorded by Columbia. The first night wasn’t taped – Davis was arguing with the label – but seven sets from the next two nights were.
Over the course of these performances, released in full in the mid-1990s as the box set The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel, you can hear the band as they work out ways to become even greater than the considerable sum of their parts. It’s hard to pick a single moment to represent the combination of genius and madness all five were channelling, but by the third night, when Davis has begun to understand what was going on, the group found a way of combining the outre adventurousness of Ornette Coleman’s and Coltrane’s bands of the time with the sharp-suited cool Davis had made a visual and audible trademark. An unexpected roll through Jerome Kern’s Yesterdays from the last set finds the group in total command of this new way of working.
6. Freedom Jazz Dance
The album the quintet cut during the first studio visit after the Plugged Nickel shows, Miles Smiles, wrings every last drop of creativity out of a band relishing newly unleashed senses of purpose and possibility. The sessions were quick: a few minutes’ rehearsal, then one live take. The recordings crackle with risk-taking, and it’s difficult not to get swept away by the infectious sense of unshackled creativity every player brought to the table. The way Freedom Jazz Dance emerged from the mists is particularly fascinating. The initial run-throughs (released last year on an absorbing box set, also called Freedom Jazz Dance) show Carter struggling to hear the tune anew, having played on its original recording with Eddie Harris a few weeks earlier. After he finds a fresh heartbeat, ideas quickly take shape, but it isn’t until Davis suggests to Williams that he play triplets on every beat (“I can’t play it that fast!” the drummer complains, yet barely a minute later is doing so) that the last piece of the puzzle falls in to place. Davis comes in early but they keep going, Shorter’s and Hancock’s solos conversationally addressing the questions Davis had posed in his opening bars, Carter and Williams achieving what ought to be impossible by keeping the bedrock solid while ensuring it constantly moves and changes.
7. In a Silent Way
The quintet dissolved following Carter’s departure and there was never really a constant, consistent Davis studio band afterwards. The British guitarist John McLaughlin’s appearance in the studio for the sessions that became the 1969 album In a Silent Way was unplanned: he was in New York to start work with Lifetime, Tony Williams’ new band, and was invited to the studio by Davis the night before. They weren’t familiar with the material, and the version of the title track that ended up on the album is effectively the sound of the musicians gently and carefully feeling their way through the complicated melody. The results – almost unbearably fragile, and feeling all the more precious for the sense that it could all fall apart at any second – are astounding. It’s a piece of rare and intense beauty, infused with both a wonder and a gradually unfolding understanding that seem to have been as real and unexpected for those playing as they are for the listener. Miraculously, it retains this sense of revelation every time you play it. Taking advantage of every development available – from amplified instruments to multitrack recording and postproduction techniques that anticipate sampling – Davis was taking his own ideas and music through the doorways technology and culture had newly opened.
8. Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Bitches Brew was the record to really scare the jazz purists away: a chaotic, crowded, often cacophonous double LP, it was as extreme as Davis had got. That he was accused of “selling out” at the moment he pushed his music to the limits of listenability probably says more about his detractors than it does about the man or his creative output. The Jimi Hendrix influence is often cited as reaching its apogee on this track, with the title’s nod to Voodoo Child; but in truth, this is Miles, the native son of East St Louis, going back down the Mississippi to reconnect anew with his blues roots. The album version differs dramatically from the one the live band had been playing, and not just because twice as many musicians had been assembled for the session. It’s slower, anchored by a simple drum track played by Don Alias, who had been brought in to play congas: he’d heard a rhythm on a visit to New Orleans and felt it would fit this track better than the one the two drummers (Jack DeJohnette and Lenny White) had tried on earlier, aborted takes. Note, too, that title: Davis isn’t stalking or hunting his prey, hiding in the undergrowth ready to pounce – he’s out there in the open, letting his quarry know that he’s on its tail. That sense of fearless indomitability is there in every note of what is, even in a career brimming with standout moments, a notably thrilling and strident performance.
Video: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, played live at Tanglewood in 1970
9. Right Off
From the point where Hancock first used an electric keyboard on a quintet session, detractors had been complaining that Davis was making rock music. Among the many problems with that view was: if In a Silent Way was “rock”, what on earth was Bitches Brew? Davis was operating beyond genres, pigeonholes and categorisations. He’d been using the slogan “Directions in music” on his album sleeves for years. He remained, as the 1957 album title put it, Miles Ahead.
Yet in the first half of 1970, Davis finally made a rock album. A Tribute to Jack Johnson was released in a muddle and failed to replicate the impact of Bitches Brew – partly, its maker intimated, because it was the soundtrack to a film about the controversial black heavyweight boxing champion and was suppressed by those who still felt threatened by the thought of black success in a white-dominated world. There were only two tracks, both Teo Macero-edited patchworks, both clocking in more than 25 minutes – but there’s no arguing with the music. Again, the session relied on accident and happenstance. Herbie Hancock wasn’t supposed to be there – he only dropped in to the studio on his way home from the shops. The basic boogie riff that kicks the record off wasn’t what they’d planned to record: it was just McLaughlin, bassist Michael Henderson (a teenager Davis had stolen from Stevie Wonder’s band) and drummer Billy Cobham jamming while they waited for Miles to get ready.
In the control room, Davis heard the warmup and told Macero to run the tape: Hancock set down his groceries and was ushered to the Hammond organ stool. Davis left the control room to prowl the studio, waiting to hear where he could fit in: after couple of minutes, McLaughlin changed chord but Henderson didn’t, and Davis took his opportunity. His first note is the only one that features in both chords, its blast from his trumpet resolving the tension of the apparent mistake with a moment of astonishing musical acuity and insight. Davis proceeds to solo for the next eight minutes, some of the strongest, most strident playing of his life: as if the simple format of the rolling blues-based stomp had freed him from the uncertainties and doubts that often made his playing so emotional, yet could sometimes leave him sounding tentative. By the time McLaughlin quotes Sly and the Family Stone’s Sing a Simple Song, the track has taken us off into another galaxy of sound and imagination.
10. Prelude
Influenced by everything from funk bands to avant garde classical composers, Davis’s ensemble became ever less bound to the past, even as its reliance on grooves and cyclical riffs (particularly from the rhythm section) re-emphasised its debts to blues. But whatever this new music was, it certainly wasn’t pop.
Evidence of what his mid-70s band were up to exists in several supersized portions, doled out across three official live albums and a slew of bootlegs. Nothing sounded like what this septet were up to back then, and nothing has sounded like it since. The first track on Agharta, recorded in Osaka in February 1975, is a 35-minute collision of ideas, structures and sounds given the title Prelude on the record (but which is, in effect, a medley that includes the tracks Tatu and Maiysha as well as Agharta Prelude), that is among the most singular musical moments of the 20th century. Themes and moods are built and destroyed; ideas are assayed, discussed between the instruments, then rejected, only to be replaced by something else. It’s as if the ceaseless quest for something new, the defining characteristic of his creative life, had intensified as Davis found himself skating ever closer to the edge. Though Davis continued to record, this marked the end of the parts of the journey that took him furthest and deepest into the great musical unknown.
Explore more on these topics:
Miles Davis
10 of the best
Jazz
blogposts
Miles Davis - Four (Official Visualizer) - from MILES '54: The Prestige Recordings
Miles Davis
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6621nE8BitY&list=PLYmwFR_XLSpZxnm7SphF
#milesdavis #classicjazz #jazz
Celebrating the 70th anniversary of a pivotal year for Miles Davis, Miles ’54: The Prestige Recordings is a new, 20-track compilation, collecting genre-defining recordings from the trumpet icon’s 1954 output, including music from classic albums Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis Quintet, Miles Davis All Star Sextet, and Miles Davis Quartet (all originally issued via Prestige Records). Featuring a hall of fame-level cast of musicians, including Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Horace Silver, Miles ’54 blends originals by the influential jazz legend, with popular ballads and compositions by his world-famous sidemen.
Physical editions offer a brand-new essay by GRAMMY®-winning music historian Ashley Kahn (author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, among others) as well as in-depth session notes by GRAMMY-winning writer, Dan Morgenstern. Release date: November 22, 2024 on 180-gram 4-LP, 2-CD, and hi-res digital.
Order Here:
https://found.ee/miles-54
Order Here:
https://found.ee/miles-54 #milesdavis #jazz
#classicjazz #PrestigeRecords #CraftRecordings
https://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2026/05/2026-is-centennial-year-of-six-major_01302142170.html
Miles Davis discography
The discography of Miles Davis encompasses the recorded works of the pioneering American jazz trumpeter and bandleader, spanning his sessions from the late 1940s to his death in 1991, with posthumous and archival releases extending into the 2020s, and reflecting his transformative influence across multiple jazz subgenres including cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, post-bop, and jazz fusion. It includes at least 60 studio albums, 39 live albums, 46 compilation albums, and 27 box sets. Davis's early recordings, beginning with his contributions to Charlie Parker's bebop groups in 1945 and his first leadership efforts on Prestige and Capitol labels, laid the foundation for cool jazz with the seminal nonet sessions compiled as Birth of the Cool in 1957 (recorded 1949–1950).[1] By the mid-1950s, his classic quintet with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones produced a series of hard bop albums for Prestige, such as 'Round About Midnight (1957) and Milestones (1958), emphasizing blues-inflected improvisation and rhythmic drive.[2] In the late 1950s and 1960s, Davis shifted toward modal improvisation and orchestral collaborations, most notably with his sextet featuring Coltrane on Kind of Blue (1959), widely regarded as the best-selling jazz album of all time and a cornerstone of modal jazz.[3] His partnerships with arranger Gil Evans yielded expansive works like Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1959), and Sketches of Spain (1960), blending jazz with classical and Spanish influences on Columbia Records.[2] The second great quintet era, with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, produced acclaimed post-bop albums including Miles Smiles (1967), Nefertiti (1968), and Miles in the Sky (1968), incorporating emerging rock and electric elements. Davis's late-1960s transition to electric jazz fusion marked a radical departure, beginning with In a Silent Way (1969) and culminating in the double album Bitches Brew (1970), which integrated rock rhythms, electric instruments, and studio editing techniques to pioneer jazz-rock and sell over 500,000 copies.[2] The 1970s saw further experimentation with funk and avant-garde sounds on albums like On the Corner (1972), Big Fun (1975), and Get Up with It (1974), though commercial success waned amid Davis's retirement from 1975 to 1981 due to health issues.[4] His 1980s comeback blended jazz with pop and synth-funk on Warner Bros. releases such as The Man with the Horn (1981), Star People (1983), You're Under Arrest (1985), and the Prince-influenced Tutu (1986), produced by Marcus Miller. Davis's final studio effort, Doo-Bop (1992), released posthumously, fused hip-hop beats with jazz, underscoring his lifelong adaptability.[2] Throughout his career, Davis recorded for major labels including Capitol, Prestige, and Columbia (later Sony), with extensive live albums, bootlegs, and box sets like The Complete Columbia Album Collection (2009, 70 CDs) documenting his prolific output and band interactions.[5] His discography, which includes collaborations with artists like Gil Evans, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock, continues to influence contemporary music through reissues and archival releases from the Miles Davis estate into the 2020s, such as Birth of the Blue (2024) and Miles '55 (Remastered 2025).[6]
Studio albums
(1951–1956)
During the mid-1950s, Miles Davis established himself as a leading figure in jazz through a series of studio recordings for independent labels, transitioning from bebop roots to pioneering cool jazz and hard bop expressions. These sessions, often conducted in small New York studios like Rudy Van Gelder's, captured Davis's maturing trumpet style and his ability to lead diverse ensembles amid heroin addiction challenges and contractual complexities. Between 1951 and 1956, approximately 12 albums were released across Prestige, Blue Note, and Debut, featuring collaborations with rising stars that laid the groundwork for his quintet innovations.[7] Prestige Records served as Davis's most frequent outlet, with Bob Weinstock's label prioritizing spontaneous, small-group performances that emphasized Davis's lyrical phrasing. Early 10-inch LPs like The New Sounds (1951, recorded October 5, 1951) introduced his quintet with Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, Jackie McLean on alto, Walter Bishop Jr. on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Art Taylor on drums, including tracks such as "Chance It" and "Down." Subsequent releases built on this, with Blue Haze (1954, recorded March 15, 1954, among other dates) showcasing Horace Silver on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums in cool-toned originals like the title track and "Blue Room." Walkin' (1954, recorded April 3, 1954) highlighted hard bop energy with Lucky Thompson on tenor and David Schildkraut on alto, featuring the bluesy title cut and "The Serpent's Tooth." Bags' Groove (1954, recorded December 24, 1954) paired Davis with vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Roach, delivering standards like "Oleo" and the modal "Bags' Groove." Later, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (1956, recorded December 24, 1954) assembled an all-star group including Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Thelonious Monk on piano for select tracks, Percy Heath on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums, noted for "Sid's Delight" and intense interplay. These Prestige efforts totaled around eight releases by 1956, reflecting Davis's contractual commitment that overlapped with his 1955 Columbia signing, allowing him to complete obligations through one-off sessions.[8][9] Blue Note Records documented Davis's work in fuller sextet arrangements during three sessions from 1952 to 1954, emphasizing the label's commitment to emerging hard bop voices under Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff. Young Man with a Horn (1953, recorded May 1952 and April 1953) featured J.J. Johnson on trombone, Jimmy Heath on tenor saxophone, Gil Coggins or Horace Silver on piano, Percy Heath or Rolland Wilson on bass, and Art Blakey or Kenny Clarke on drums, with highlights like "Dear Old Stockholm" and "Woody 'n You." The 12-inch compilations Miles Davis, Vol. 1 (1955, from the same sessions) and Miles Davis, Vol. 2 (1956) expanded on this material, adding tracks such as "Yesterdays" and "How Deep Is the Ocean," underscoring Davis's fluid integration of bebop lines with rhythmic drive. These three releases captured his brief but influential Blue Note tenure, prioritizing ensemble balance over solo spotlights.[10] Debut Records, co-founded by Davis, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach in 1952 as a cooperative venture, offered creative freedom for experimental outings. Blue Moods (1955, recorded July 9, 1954) presented Davis in a 19-piece orchestral setting arranged by Eddie Wilkins, with J.J. Johnson on trombone, Danny Bank on baritone, and a rhythm section including Clyde Lombardi on bass and Roach on drums, evoking cool jazz atmospheres in pieces like "Blue Mood" and "Nature Boy." Followed by Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet/Sextet (1956, recorded August 1955), this album featured Coltrane on tenor, Jackson on vibes, Silver on piano (alternating with Britt Woodman on trombone for sextet tracks), Chambers on bass, and Jones on drums, including improvisational gems such as "Selim" and "Changes." Debut's two releases highlighted Davis's venture into vibes and larger textures, producing roughly four sides before the label's focus shifted.
This foundational period culminated in Davis's shift toward major-label stability, paving the way for modal explorations in subsequent years.[11]
Columbia Records releases (1957–1975)
Miles Davis's association with Columbia Records, beginning in 1957, represented a pivotal era in his career, characterized by innovative orchestral arrangements, modal improvisation, and the gradual incorporation of electric instruments that laid the groundwork for jazz fusion. During this nearly two-decade span, Davis released over 20 studio albums, collaborating with renowned arrangers like Gil Evans and assembling influential ensembles including his first and second great quintets. These recordings not only achieved commercial success but also reshaped jazz aesthetics, with albums like Kind of Blue becoming bestsellers and enduring classics. The period opened with a series of orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans, blending Davis's trumpet with large ensembles to explore cool jazz and impressionistic textures. Miles Ahead (1957), recorded May 1957 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York, featured Evans's arrangements for a nonet including horns and woodwinds, with tracks like "Springsville" and "Miles Ahead" highlighting Davis's lyrical phrasing. The album peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200. Porgy and Bess (1959), drawn from George Gershwin's opera and recorded July 1958 at the same studio, united Davis with vocalist Betty Carter in select takes and Evans's orchestra, yielding reinterpreted standards such as "Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So." It reached No. 10 on the jazz charts. Sketches of Spain (1960), recorded November 1959 and March 1960, incorporated Spanish folk influences via Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, with Evans arranging for a 22-piece ensemble; standout tracks included "Solea" and the adagio from the concerto, earning Grammy nominations and charting at No. 8 on the Billboard 200. These works showcased Davis's ability to merge classical elements with jazz, influencing subsequent orchestral jazz projects. Transitioning to smaller group settings, Davis's 1959 album Kind of Blue, recorded March–May 1959 at Columbia Studios, introduced modal jazz through pieces like "So What" and "All Blues," featuring John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. This sextet recording became Columbia's best-selling jazz album ever, certified quadruple platinum and peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), recorded March 1961, reunited Davis with Coltrane briefly alongside Hank Mobley on saxophone and Kelly on piano, interpreting standards like the title track and "Toreador"; it reached No. 39 on the Billboard 200. By 1963's Seven Steps to Heaven, recorded in May 1963 at Columbia Studios and July 1963 at Birdland (studio portions), Davis integrated George Coleman on saxophone and formed the nucleus of his second great quintet with Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums, blending standards like "So Near, So Far" with originals; the album hit No. 39 on the pop charts. The second great quintet dominated the mid-1960s output, emphasizing time-no-change structures and collective improvisation. E.S.P. (1965), recorded January 1965 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio, marked the full quintet's debut with Wayne Shorter joining on tenor saxophone, producing tracks like the title piece and "Iris," which explored post-bop complexities; it peaked at No. 106 on the Billboard 200. Miles Smiles (1967), recorded October 1966, delved deeper into rhythmic displacement with "Orbits" and "Dolores," solidifying the group's chemistry. Sorcerer (1967), from May 1967 sessions, featured ethereal ballads like "Prince of Darkness" alongside Shorter's "The Sorcerer." Nefertiti (1968), recorded June–August 1967, pushed boundaries with no drum solos and bass-driven grooves in the title track and "Freedom Jazz Dance." These albums, all reaching the lower Billboard 200, captured the quintet's peak creativity before Davis's electric shift. As the 1960s waned, Davis embraced fusion, incorporating rock rhythms and electronics. Miles in the Sky (1968), recorded May and July 1968, introduced electric piano with Hancock and added guitarist George Benson on "Stuff," bridging acoustic and electric eras; it charted at No. 134. Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968), from June and July 1968 sessions, experimented with time signatures in tracks like "Petits Machins," featuring Corea on piano and Shorter's compositions. In a Silent Way (1969), recorded February 1969 at Columbia Studios, marked Davis's full electric pivot with Corea, Hancock, Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin on guitar, and Dave Holland on bass; the title track and "Shhh/Peaceful" evoked ambient textures, reaching No. 134 on the charts. The double album Bitches Brew (1970), compiled from August 1969 sessions with a large ensemble including Corea, Zawinul, Lenny White, Bennie Maupin, and Larry Young, fused jazz with psychedelic rock through editing by producer Teo Macero; it topped the jazz charts, peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200, and won a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. The early 1970s saw Davis deepen fusion explorations with sprawling, groove-oriented works. Jack Johnson (1971), based on August–September 1970 sessions for the film soundtrack, featured McLaughlin, Hancock, and Billy Cobham on intense tracks like "Right Off" and "Yesternow," edited by Macero; it reached No. 52 on the R&B charts. Live-Evil (1971), incorporating studio material from 1970 sessions alongside live tracks, included electric quintet pieces with Keith Jarrett on keyboards and Michael Henderson on electric bass, such as "Funky Tonk" and "Inamorata." On the Corner (1972), recorded June–September 1970 with Hare Krishna influences and a street-funk vibe, featured Henderson, Badal Roy on tablas, and Collin Walcott, with tracks like the title cut challenging listeners; it peaked at No. 156 on the Billboard 200. Big Fun (1974), a double album from 1969–1972 sessions, showcased varied lineups including Corea, Shorter, and Sonny Fortune, with extended jams like "Great Expectations." Get Up with It (1974), recorded 1973–1974, blended funk and avant-garde elements on "He Loved Him Madly" (a tribute to Duke Ellington) and the abrasive "Maiysha," with Dave Liebman on saxophone and Reggie Lucas on guitar; it reached No. 47 on the Billboard 200. These fusion albums expanded Davis's audience while polarizing critics, setting precedents for jazz-rock integration.
This table summarizes the core studio releases, emphasizing Davis's evolution from acoustic sophistication to electric innovation during his Columbia years.[12][13]
Warner Bros. Records releases (1986–1992)
After emerging from a six-year retirement in 1981 due to health complications including severe joint pain and respiratory issues, Miles Davis resumed recording with a focus on electric jazz fusion infused with funk, synthesizers, and contemporary pop elements, building on his experimental 1970s work at Columbia Records. His association with Warner Bros. Records began in 1986, where he collaborated with younger producers and musicians to blend jazz improvisation with R&B, hip-hop influences, and electronic production, often prioritizing atmospheric textures over traditional structures. His Warner Bros. era emphasized shorter, more accessible tracks while maintaining his signature trumpet phrasing, though critics noted a dilution of improvisational depth amid commercial pressures. Earlier comeback albums from 1981 to 1985 were released on Columbia Records.[14] Tutu (1986), produced by Marcus Miller with executive production by Tommy LiPuma, marked Davis's label debut and featured overdubbed contributions from Miller (bass, synths), Scofield (guitar), and drummer Philly Joe Jones on tracks like the title instrumental and "Portia." Recorded primarily by Miller in 1985-1986 with Davis adding trumpet later, it exemplified synth-funk fusion with R&B edges, polarizing critics—praised for its sleek production but faulted for minimalism—yet earning a Grammy nomination and peaking at No. 3 on the Jazz Albums chart.[15] Music from Siesta (1987), a soundtrack composed and produced by Miller for the film Siesta, included Davis's trumpet on atmospheric pieces like "Lost in the Stars" and "Siesta," with collaborators including guitarist Scofield and keyboardist Kei Akagi. The 1986 recordings blended ambient jazz with orchestral elements, receiving positive notes for its cinematic mood despite limited commercial impact.[16] Amandla (1989), produced by Miller and featuring guests like Scofield, saxophonist Kenny Garrett, and bassist Adam Holzman on fusion tracks such as "Amandla" and "Mr. Pastorius," addressed Davis's health challenges during 1988-1989 sessions. It was lauded for revitalizing Davis's electric sound with stronger ensemble interplay, achieving No. 1 on the Jazz Albums chart and a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.[17] Doo-Bop (1992), a posthumous release compiled from 1991 sessions produced by hip-hop artist Easy Mo Bee, incorporated rap elements and beats on tracks like "Chocolate Chip" with rapper Phat Daddy, alongside Davis's trumpet and turntablist Scratchmaster Ice. Reflecting Davis's late interest in hip-hop fusion amid declining health, it received varied reviews for its innovative but raw experimentation, posthumously topping the Jazz Albums chart.[18]
Live albums
Classic period recordings (1950s–1960s)
The classic period of Miles Davis's career, spanning the 1950s and 1960s, saw his quintets and sextets redefine jazz through spontaneous improvisation and cool-toned expressionism, with live recordings providing essential documents of their evolution beyond studio polish. These performances, often captured at iconic venues like the Newport Jazz Festival and the Blackhawk nightclub, highlighted Davis's interplay with collaborators such as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Herbie Hancock, emphasizing standards like "So What" and "All Blues" alongside originals. Unlike the controlled studio sessions, these live albums reveal the group's dynamic energy, with mono and stereo editions preserving the raw acoustics of the era's technology, sometimes resembling early bootleg captures in their immediacy.[19] One of the seminal releases, Miles Davis at Newport 1958, recorded on July 3, 1958, at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, featured Davis's first great sextet: Davis on trumpet, Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. The setlist included "Ah-Leu-Cha," "Straight, No Chaser," and "If I Were a Bell," showcasing the group's modal explorations and high-energy solos, marking a pivotal moment as Davis transitioned from Prestige to Columbia Records. Released later that year by Columbia, it underscored the festival's role in elevating jazz's visibility. An expanded archival edition, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1: The Complete Newport Jazz Festival 1958 (2010, Columbia/Legacy), added previously unreleased tracks from the same performance, including "Sweet Sue" and "Four," offering fuller insight into the sextet's cohesion.[20][21] The Blackhawk nightclub in San Francisco became a cornerstone for live documentation during the early 1960s, with Davis's quintet—featuring Coltrane, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums—recorded over three nights April 21–23, 1961. Friday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco, Vol. 1 (1961, Columbia) captured the opening night's intensity on tracks like "Walkin'" and "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," highlighting Coltrane's fiery tenor work amid the club's intimate atmosphere. Its companion, In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, San Francisco, Vol. 2 (1961, Columbia), drew from subsequent evenings, featuring extended takes on "The Theme" and "Ricky-Tick," with mono pressings emphasizing the venue's natural reverb. These albums, among the first multi-night live jazz series, illustrated Davis's ability to sustain creativity across sets, influencing later club recordings.[22][23] At Carnegie Hall (1961, Columbia), recorded on May 19, 1961, at New York's Carnegie Hall, blended Davis's quintet (Coltrane, Kelly, Chambers, Cobb) with the Gil Evans Orchestra for a 19-piece ensemble, performing arrangements of "So What" and "Blues No. 2" alongside standards like "New Rhumba." This two-disc set, available in mono and stereo, captured a rare fusion of small-group improvisation and orchestral color, commemorating Davis's rising stardom and Evans's collaborative genius from their 1950s studio work. The performance's historical weight lies in its bridging of Davis's cool jazz roots with broader symphonic ambitions.[24] As the 1960s progressed, international tours yielded vibrant live documents from Davis's second classic quintet with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. Miles in Tokyo (1964, Columbia), recorded July 14, 1964, at Tokyo's Kohseinenkin Hall, featured the Miles Davis Quartet on "I Thought About You," "So What," and "Walkin' Up," with Davis's spare phrasing in a stereo mix that preserved the hall's clarity. Similarly, Miles in Berlin (1964, Columbia), from September 25, 1964, at the Berlin Philharmonie, included "Autumn Leaves" and "All of You," noted for Williams's propulsive drumming and the group's telepathic interplay during European acclaim. These releases highlighted Davis's global appeal and the quintet's maturing post-Coltrane sound.[25][26] The quintet's 1964 performances culminated in My Funny Valentine (1965, Columbia), drawn from February 12, 1964, at New York's Philharmonic Hall. With the same lineup, it spotlighted ballads like the title track and "Stella by Starlight," alongside uptempo "All Blues," in a stereo edition that captured hall grandeur, emphasizing Davis's lyrical trumpet in quieter settings. *'Four' and More (1966, Columbia), from February 12, 1964, at New York's Philharmonic Hall, added swinging takes on "So What" and "Walkin' Up," rounding out the era's live canon with the group's rhythmic innovations. A key document from late 1965, Miles Davis Quintet: Live at the Plugged Nickel, Chicago (Columbia, complete edition 2005), recorded December 22–23, 1965, at the Plugged Nickel nightclub, captured the quintet—Davis (tp), Shorter (ts), Hancock (p), Carter (b), Williams (dr)—in extended improvisations on standards like "If I Were a Bell" and "Stella by Starlight," showcasing their peak interplay and influence on post-bop. Early bootleg-like captures, such as radio broadcasts from the 1958 Brussels All Stars concert (later issued as Brussels 1960 in expanded forms), further evidenced the period's undocumented vitality, though official releases prioritized polished excerpts.[27][28][29]
These recordings, totaling around a dozen official volumes when including variants, encapsulate the classic period's improvisational essence, with venues like the Blackhawk fostering extended dialogues that defined hard bop's live tradition.[30]
Electric and fusion period recordings (1960s–1980s)
Miles Davis's electric and fusion period marked a radical evolution in his music, incorporating electric instruments, rock rhythms, and larger ensembles that expanded beyond traditional jazz structures. Beginning in the late 1960s, Davis assembled bands featuring keyboards, guitars, and multiple percussionists, fostering extended improvisations that blended jazz improvisation with funk, rock, and world music elements. These live recordings, often captured during marathon performances at festivals and clubs, showcased the raw energy of his ensembles and the development of a dense, psychedelic sound influenced by studio experiments like Bitches Brew.[31] An early overlap into the electric era can be seen in Miles Davis in Europe (1964), recorded live at the Antibes Jazz Festival in July 1963. This double LP features Davis's second great quintet—comprising Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums—delivering acoustic sets of standards and originals like "So What" and "All Blues" with propulsive intensity that hinted at the rhythmic innovations to come. While still rooted in acoustic jazz, the album's high-energy improvisations bridged Davis's modal phase to his emerging fusion explorations.[32] The full embrace of electric instrumentation arrived with performances documented on Miles Davis at Fillmore (1970), a double album recorded over four nights in June 1970 at New York's Fillmore East. The septet included Wayne Shorter on soprano and tenor saxophones, Chick Corea on Fender Rhodes electric piano, Dave Holland on acoustic and electric bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Airto Moreira on percussion, creating layered textures with wah-wah trumpet and interlocking grooves on tracks like "Directions" and "It's About That Time." This release captured Davis's band navigating rock audiences, emphasizing collective improvisation over solos in sets that ran over an hour.[33] Similarly, the Isle of Wight Festival performance on August 29, 1970, originally circulated as a bootleg before its official 2013 release as Isle of Wight, exemplified the chaotic, festival origins of Davis's fusion sound. Recorded in front of 600,000 attendees amid the event's rock-heavy lineup, the set featured Davis on electric trumpet, Gary Bartz on alto and soprano saxophones, Chick Corea on electric piano, Keith Jarrett on organ, Dave Holland on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Airto Moreira on percussion—delivering marathon renditions of "Bitches Brew" and "Directions" that fused jazz heads with psychedelic jamming. The archival release highlights the band's ability to adapt to outdoor amplification and audience energy, preserving a pivotal moment in Davis's electric transition.[34] By 1972, Davis's ensembles had grown more percussive and guitar-driven, as heard on In Concert (1973), recorded September 29, 1972, at Philharmonic Hall in New York. The octet—featuring Carlos Garnett on soprano and tenor saxophones, Cedric Lawson on electric piano and synthesizer, Reggie Lucas on guitar, Michael Henderson on bass, Al Foster on drums, and percussionists Badal Roy and Don Alias—produced triple-LP expanses of funk-fusion like "Rated X," with Davis's processed trumpet weaving through polyrhythmic vamps. These recordings underscored the evolution toward denser, urban grooves, moving away from the earlier quintet configurations with Corea and Shorter.[31] The mid-1970s saw Davis's live output reach its most ambitious scale with Dark Magus (1977), a double album from a March 30, 1974, Carnegie Hall concert. The nonet, including Garnett, Lucas, Henderson, Foster, Mtume on congas and arm percussion, and additional percussion from Don Alias, delivered raw, aggressive sets titled after bandmates like "Ron McClure" and "Ife," emphasizing marathon bass-driven riffs and collective intensity over structured themes. This release, one of several triple-LP epics from the era, captured the band's peak fusion density, with Davis directing from the sidelines amid swirling electronics and horns.[35] Two landmark double albums from the same February 1, 1975, day at Osaka's Festival Hall—Agharta (1975) and Pangaea (1976)—further exemplified this evolution. Both feature an all-electric septet: Davis on trumpet and organ, Sonny Fortune on alto saxophone, flute, and soprano, Pete Cosey on electric guitar and synthesizer, Lucas on rhythm guitar, Henderson on Fender bass, Foster on drums, and Mtume on percussion and congas. Agharta's afternoon show includes epic tracks like "Prelude" and "Maiyish II," spanning over 50 minutes with tribal rhythms and Davis's sparse, intervallic trumpet lines, while Pangaea's evening performance extends pieces like "Zimbabwe" into hypnotic loops. These Japan-only initial releases documented Davis's most experimental live phase, prioritizing textural immersion and endurance over melody.[36][37] After a hiatus, Davis's 1981 comeback tour yielded We Want Miles (1982), a double album compiling performances from Boston's Kix Club in June 1981, New York's Avery Fisher Hall, and Tokyo dates. The sextet—Bill Evans on soprano and tenor saxophones, Mike Stern on guitar, Marcus Miller on bass, Foster on drums, and Mino Cinelu on percussion—revitalized the fusion template with tracks like "Jean Pierre" and "Code 3," blending post-bop swing with electric funk in more concise sets. This release marked a shift to tighter arrangements while retaining improvisational fire, signaling Davis's adaptation to 1980s production.[38] Miles! Priority (1982), a Japan-exclusive live album from the same tour, focused on high-energy excerpts with the Evans-Stern-Miller-Foster-Cinelu lineup, capturing the band's precision in venues like Tokyo's Shinjuku, and reinforcing the enduring appeal of Davis's electric ensembles through focused, riff-based explorations. These recordings collectively illustrate how Davis's live fusion work from the late 1960s to the 1980s transformed jazz into a visceral, genre-blurring force, with ensembles evolving from quintets to percussion-heavy units that thrived on extended, immersive performances.
Posthumous and archival releases (1990s–2025)
Following Miles Davis's death on September 28, 1991, a series of posthumous live album releases emerged from archival sources, primarily drawn from unreleased tapes held in the Columbia Records vault, preserving performances spanning his career from the 1950s to the 1980s.[6] These efforts, spearheaded by Sony Music's Legacy Recordings division, emphasized historical completeness by excavating multitrack recordings, radio broadcasts, and festival sets that had languished unused, often filling gaps in documentation of key ensembles like his 1960s quintets and 1970s electric bands.[39] Remastering processes, typically handled by engineers such as Mark Wilder at Battery Studios, involved high-resolution transfers to enhance audio fidelity, reducing noise and restoring dynamic range from original analog sources.[40] One of the earliest significant posthumous live releases was Miles & Quincy: Live at Montreux (1993), capturing Davis's final Montreux Jazz Festival appearance on July 8, 1991, just months before his death, with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones performing reorchestrated versions of Davis's classics like "So What" and "My Funny Valentine."[41] This two-disc set, sourced from the festival's high-quality multitrack recordings, highlighted Davis's late-career hip-hop-infused style alongside guest soloists, achieving notable commercial success by peaking at No. 16 on Billboard's Jazz Albums chart.[42] The Legacy Recordings' Miles Davis Bootleg Series, launched in 2013, became the cornerstone of these archival efforts, yielding over eight volumes by 2025, each comprising multiple discs of previously unreleased live material to document transitional periods in Davis's evolution.[43] For instance, Volume 1 (Live in Europe 1967, 2013) presented three full concerts by the Second Great Quintet—featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—from October 1967 Belgian and Dutch dates, sourced from promoter archives and radio tapes, offering insights into their post-bop intensity during the Miles in the Sky era.[6] Similarly, Volume 3 (Miles at the Fillmore – Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3, 2014) compiled eight nights of electric fusion performances from June 1970, remastered from 16-track tapes to reveal the band's raw interplay with Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea on dual keyboards.[6] Later volumes addressed specific historical voids, such as Volume 4 (At Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4, 2015), which assembled live sets from the Newport Jazz Festival across two decades, including rare 1955 cool jazz with Thelonious Monk and 1975 fusion with electric bassists Dave Holland and Michael Henderson, all drawn from festival archives and improved via digital remastering for clarity.[44] Volume 6 (The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series Vol. 6, 2018) documented the Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane on their final European tour in March 1960, featuring full concerts from Paris, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, sourced from radio and private tapes to capture their collaborative fire before Coltrane's departure.[45] The series continued into the 2020s with Volume 7 (That's What Happened: 1982-1985, 2022), a three-disc exploration of Davis's Warner Bros. years via unreleased studio-live hybrids from European and U.S. tours, remastered to highlight his comeback band's synthesizer-driven sound with Bob Berg and Bill Evans.[39] Culminating recent efforts, Volume 8 (Miles in France 1963 & 1964: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8, November 8, 2024) delivered over four hours across six CDs or eight LPs from five French concerts, including Juan-les-Pins and Paris dates with George Coleman in 1963 transitioning to Shorter in 1964, sourced from French radio and promoter vaults to showcase the quintet's formative hard bop-to-post-bop shift.[46] By 2025, these releases exceeded 15 major archival live collections, with audio quality advancements—such as 24-bit/192kHz remastering—enabling deeper appreciation of Davis's improvisational nuances and ensemble chemistry, while tying briefly to personnel from his classic quintets.[40]
Compilation albums
Official compilation albums
Official compilation albums represent curated selections of Miles Davis's recorded works, often drawing from specific labels or eras to highlight key tracks, popular hits, or thematic groupings without altering the original recordings. These releases, primarily from major labels like Prestige, Columbia, and Capitol, served to introduce or reintroduce Davis's music to new audiences, with many focusing on his seminal cool jazz, hard bop, and modal periods. Unlike box sets or remixed editions, they typically compile 8-12 tracks from multiple sessions, emphasizing accessibility and commercial appeal.[30] Prestige Records, Davis's early label, issued several compilations in the late 1950s to capitalize on his growing fame, such as Early Miles (1959) gathers rare 1949-1953 recordings like "Tempus Fugit" and "Enigma," highlighting his bebop roots and collaborations with Sonny Rollins. Another Prestige effort, Miles Davis and Horns (1959), compiles horn-driven tracks from the 1950s, such as "Floppy" and "Blues for Pablo," blending cool jazz with orchestral elements. Columbia Records, where Davis spent his most prolific years, produced numerous official compilations starting in the 1960s. Miles Davis' Greatest Hits (1966) selects ten popular tracks from 1957-1964, including "So What" from Kind of Blue and "Someday My Prince Will Come," focusing on his modal and cool jazz hits to appeal to mainstream listeners. The double album The Best of Miles Davis & John Coltrane (1973) curates collaborative sessions from 1958-1961, featuring "Freddie Freeloader" and "My Funny Valentine," emphasizing their influential partnership. In the 1980s, Miles Davis: The Columbia Years (1988) offers a career-spanning anthology with tracks like "Milestones" and "All Blues," released to mark Davis's 30 years with the label. Later Columbia/Legacy compilations continued this tradition, often tied to anniversaries or estate releases. The Essential Miles Davis (1997) is a two-disc set compiling 26 tracks from 1949-1985, including rarities like "Generique" from the Ascenseur pour l'échafaud soundtrack and fusion cuts like "Right Off," providing an overview of his evolution from bebop to jazz-rock. This Is Miles Davis (1998) focuses on vocal and ballad-oriented selections, such as "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" and "You're My Everything," drawing from 1950s-1970s sessions for a romantic theme. The 2001 release The Best of Miles Davis: The Capitol/Blue Note Years aggregates 12 tracks from his pre-Columbia era (1947-1955), like "Boplicity" from Birth of the Cool and "Blue 'n' Boogie," underscoring his foundational contributions to cool jazz. Capitol and other labels contributed label-specific anthologies, such as The Best of Miles Davis (1971, Capitol), which compiles 1950s tracks including "Israel" and "Compulsion," reflecting his nonet and early quintet work. Warner Bros. compilations from the 1980s electric period include The Best of Miles Davis: The Warner Bros. Years (1993, Warner Bros.), selecting fusion and pop-jazz tracks like "Jean Pierre" and "Tutu," capturing his 1980s comeback.
Soundtrack albums
Film and television soundtracks
Miles Davis contributed original scores to several films, particularly during his later career, blending his improvisational jazz style with cinematic narratives. His most renowned soundtrack work emerged from innovative, real-time composition methods, influencing the integration of jazz in film music. These efforts, often collaborative, showcased Davis's trumpet leading atmospheric, mood-driven pieces that complemented noir, thriller, and drama genres.[55] One of Davis's seminal soundtrack albums is Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), composed for Louis Malle's film noir Elevator to the Gallows. Recorded in Paris over two nights in December 1957, Davis and a quartet of French musicians—including tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen, pianist René Urtreger, bassist Pierre Michelot, and drummer Kenny Clarke—improvised the score in real time while viewing rough cuts of the film, capturing its tense, shadowy atmosphere. The album features 10 tracks, such as the haunting title theme "Générique" and "L'Assassinat de Carala," emphasizing modal jazz structures with Davis's muted trumpet evoking isolation and suspense; it marked a breakthrough in synchronized jazz scoring and was released by Fontana Records.[55] In the 1980s, Davis explored fusion and electric jazz in film scores, beginning with Music from Siesta (1987), the soundtrack for Mary Lambert's surreal drama Siesta. Collaborating with bassist and composer Marcus Miller, Davis provided trumpet overlays on Miller's synth-heavy arrangements, creating a dreamlike, nocturnal sound palette inspired by Spanish motifs. Key tracks include "Lost in Madrid, Pt. 1" and "Siesta / Kitt's Kiss / Lost in Madrid, Pt. 2," which blend electronic textures with Davis's expressive solos to underscore themes of desire and disorientation; the album, released by Warner Bros., highlighted Davis's adaptability to contemporary production techniques.[56][57] Davis also contributed to the soundtrack for Dennis Hopper's neo-noir thriller The Hot Spot (1990), performing on several original pieces amid a blues-infused ensemble featuring John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal. His tracks, including "Bank Robbery," "Gloria's Story," and "End Credits," deliver brooding, electric trumpet lines that amplify the film's sultry, crime-ridden Texas setting, with "Bank Robbery" building tension through rhythmic pulses and muted improvisation. Released by MCA Records as a various-artists compilation, Davis's contributions reflected his late-period interest in blending jazz with rock and blues elements.[58] His final major soundtrack project was Dingo: Selections from the Motion Picture Soundtrack (1991), co-composed with Michel Legrand for Rolf de Heer's Australian film Dingo about a jazz-obsessed everyman. Recorded shortly before Davis's death, it features orchestral arrangements with Davis's trumpet leading tracks like "Kimberley Trumpet" and "Concert on the Runway," evoking vast outback landscapes and personal longing through lyrical, post-bop phrasing. The album, issued by Warner Bros., stands as a poignant capstone to his film work, emphasizing melodic introspection over fusion experimentation.[59][60] Posthumously, archival recordings from Davis's 1986 sessions for Jerry Schatzberg's film Street Smart surfaced in various releases, including elements compiled in Miles in the Movies (2010). These urban-themed improvisations, featuring Davis's electric trumpet with Al Foster on drums and others, captured New York nightlife vibes intended for the film's gritty narrative; though not a full standalone album at the time, they were drawn from unreleased tapes and integrated into broader compilations, preserving his raw, city-inspired sound.[61]
Collaborative soundtracks
In the late 1980s, Miles Davis engaged in several collaborative soundtrack projects that blended his improvisational trumpet style with the compositional frameworks of other artists, particularly during his fusion-oriented comeback period under Warner Bros. Records. These efforts often involved co-composition and integrated performances, allowing Davis to contribute atmospheric and thematic elements to film scores while adapting to ensemble dynamics.[56] One prominent example is Music from Siesta (1987), a soundtrack for Mary Lambert's film Siesta, where Davis partnered with bassist and producer Marcus Miller. Davis invited Miller to co-compose and produce the score, resulting in a fusion of ambient jazz, electronic textures, and Davis's signature muted trumpet improvisations across tracks like "Kitt's Kiss" and "Lost in Madrid." The album's seamless track integrations, such as the layered motifs in "Theme for Augustine," highlighted Davis's ability to respond spontaneously to Miller's rhythmic foundations, creating a dreamlike sonic landscape suited to the film's surreal narrative.[56][57] Another key collaboration came with Dingo (1991), the soundtrack for Rolf de Heer's Australian film of the same name, co-composed with French veteran Michel Legrand. Davis and Legrand, who had previously worked together on the 1958 album Legrand Jazz, reconvened to craft a score that mixed orchestral swells with Davis's raw, emotive trumpet lines; notable improvisations appear in "Dingo" and "Concert on the Runway," where Davis's playing evokes the film's themes of longing and wilderness. Recorded shortly before Davis's death, the project featured Davis's contributions integrated into Legrand's arrangements, emphasizing spontaneous solos over scripted cues to capture the protagonist's internal journey.[59][60] Davis's involvement in The Hot Spot (1990), directed by Dennis Hopper, marked a gritty fusion team-up with composer Jack Nitzsche, blues legend John Lee Hooker, and others including Taj Mahal and Roy Rogers. Davis provided haunting trumpet overlays on tracks like "Gloria's Story" and "End Credits," improvising melancholic phrases that intertwined with Nitzsche's noir-infused blues backings and Hooker's raw vocals on "Coming to Town." This collaboration underscored Davis's late-career affinity for cinematic tension, with his contributions adding a layer of introspective jazz to the film's seedy crime drama atmosphere.[62][63] These Warner Bros.-era projects exemplified Davis's fusion explorations in film music, where his improvisations enriched collaborative structures without dominating the ensemble sound.
Singles
Early singles (1940s–1950s)
Miles Davis's early singles, primarily issued on 78 rpm shellac records and transitioning to 45 rpm vinyl by the mid-1950s, marked his emergence in the bebop scene and his shift from sideman to bandleader. These recordings, spanning 1945 to the late 1950s, captured Davis's evolving trumpet style amid collaborations with jazz luminaries like Charlie Parker, and they laid foundational bebop standards that influenced the genre's development.[64] Many were released on independent jazz labels that prioritized artistic innovation over commercial charts, though few achieved mainstream success; for instance, none of Davis's early singles charted on Billboard's R&B or pop lists, reflecting the niche appeal of bebop at the time. Davis's debut as a sideman appeared on Savoy Records' 1945 single "Now's the Time" b/w "Billie's Bounce" (Savoy 573), recorded November 26, 1945, in New York with Charlie Parker's Quintet, featuring Davis on trumpet alongside Parker on alto sax, Bud Powell on piano for the issued take of "Now's the Time," Curly Russell on bass, and Max Roach on drums. This track, a cornerstone bebop standard composed by Parker, showcased Davis's raw, developing tone at age 19, contributing to the session's historical significance as one of the first major bebop recordings. Savoy Records, founded in 1942 by Herman Lubinsky in Newark, New Jersey, became a key outlet for East Coast bebop through its focus on small-group sessions, releasing over 20 Davis-involved sides in the late 1940s, often under Parker's leadership.[65] By 1949, Davis transitioned to leading his own sessions for Capitol Records, releasing a series of 78 rpm singles from the influential "Birth of the Cool" nonet dates recorded in 1949–1950. Notable examples include "Jeru" b/w "Godchild" (Capitol 57-60005, 1949), arranged by Gerry Mulligan with Davis's nonet including Lee Konitz on alto sax and John Lewis on piano, and "Boplicity" b/w "Israel" (Capitol 57-60011, 1949), both exemplifying the cool jazz aesthetic with arranged charts by Gil Evans. Capitol Records, established in 1942 by Johnny Mercer and Buddy DeSylva in Los Angeles as an independent major label, expanded into jazz in the late 1940s, providing Davis with broader distribution but still limited commercial impact for these sophisticated, nonet explorations. These Capitol singles, totaling around eight releases from the nonet sessions, highlighted Davis's move toward arranged cool jazz, distancing from pure bebop while establishing his leadership.[66][67] In the early 1950s, Davis recorded for Blue Note Records, issuing 78 rpm singles like "Tempus Fugit" b/w "Enigma" (Blue Note 1618, 1953), featuring a sextet with J.J. Johnson on trombone and Lucky Thompson on tenor sax, and "Kelo" b/w "C.T.A." (Blue Note 1620, 1953), both from March 1953 sessions emphasizing hard bop swing. Blue Note, founded in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff in New York, specialized in bebop and hard bop, capturing Davis's quintet and sextet work with three such singles that underscored his growing command of standards like Bud Powell's "Tempus Fugit." These releases bridged Davis's cool phase to more driving ensemble playing.[68] Prestige Records dominated Davis's mid-1950s output, with early 78 rpm and 45 rpm singles drawn from marathon sessions that fueled his quintet era. A prime example is "Walkin'" b/w "Blue 'n' Boogie" (Prestige 9043, 1954 78 rpm; later 45 rpm), recorded April 29, 1954, with a sextet including Horace Silver on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Art Blakey on drums, presenting extended blues like Richard Carpenter's "Walkin'" (retitled from "Gravy") as a bebop vehicle. Prestige, launched in 1949 by Bob Weinstock in New York initially as New Jazz Records, emphasized relaxed, spontaneous sessions, releasing over a dozen Davis singles in the 1950s, such as "Morpheus" b/w "Compulsion" (Prestige 775, 1951) and "Bluing" b/w "How Deep Is the Ocean" (Prestige 912, 1954), which documented his quintet's hard bop evolution and sideman-to-leader maturation. By the late 1950s, as LPs gained prominence, these singles transitioned to 45 rpm promotions, totaling more than 20 releases across labels that solidified Davis's bebop legacy.[69][70]
Later singles (1960s–1990s)
During the 1960s, Miles Davis's singles were primarily promotional 7-inch releases issued by Columbia Records to promote his modal and post-bop albums, often featuring tracks from landmark LPs like Kind of Blue. A notable example is the 1966 Japanese 7" single of "So What" backed with "All Blues," which highlighted Davis's innovative modal jazz sound and was released at 33⅓ RPM for stereo playback.[71] These releases were limited in the U.S. but more common internationally, serving as entry points for fans into Davis's quintet-era work without the full album commitment. As Davis transitioned into his electric and fusion period in the 1970s, singles became rarer, with promotional formats shifting to 12" vinyl to accommodate longer tracks from albums like Jack Johnson. The 1970 Columbia 12" promo single "Sugar Ray" b/w "Little High People" captured the raw, funk-infused energy of this era, drawing from sessions that blended jazz improvisation with rock rhythms.[72] International 45s, such as European editions of "Right Off" from Live-Evil (1970), occasionally surfaced as radio edits, emphasizing Davis's experimental grooves aimed at broader audiences amid the rise of jazz-rock fusion. These releases underscored the period's focus on album-oriented music rather than traditional pop singles. The 1980s marked a resurgence in Davis's commercial singles output during his Warner Bros. and Columbia comeback, coinciding with pop and R&B crossovers. The 1985 CBS 7" single "Time After Time" (a cover of Cyndi Lauper's hit from You're Under Arrest) included a radio edit on the A-side backed by an instrumental version, peaking in jazz charts and exemplifying Davis's fusion of trumpet phrasing with synthesizer-driven production.[73] Similarly, the 1986 Warner Bros. 7" single "Tutu" from the album of the same name featured the title track's sleek, Marcus Miller-produced funk, released primarily in Europe as a 45 RPM promo to promote Davis's synth-heavy return.[74] Other notable 1980s entries included "Don't Lose Your Mind" (1985, Columbia, 12" promo from You're Under Arrest) and "In a Silent Way" reissues tied to fusion retrospectives, often with extended mixes for DJ play. In the early 1990s, following Davis's death in 1991, posthumous singles emerged from unfinished projects, blending hip-hop elements with his legacy sound. The 1992 Warner Bros. 12" promo single "The Doo-Bop Song" from Doo-Bop (produced with Easy Mo Bee) served as the lead release, featuring rap-infused beats and Davis's trumpet overlays on the A-side, backed by "Chocolate Chip" on the B-side; it was issued as a May birthday tribute single before the album's June launch.[75] European 45s like "Portia" (1992, Warner Bros., from Doo-Bop) highlighted international interest in Davis's final hip-hop explorations. Overall, these later singles—totaling over 30 across formats—prioritized album promotion and genre-blending innovation, with B-sides often pulling from the same sessions and radio edits adapting Davis's improvisational style for airplay.
Albums as sideman
Bebop and early jazz sessions (1940s–1950s)
Miles Davis's early career in the 1940s and 1950s was marked by his role as a sideman in pioneering bebop and cool jazz ensembles, where he contributed trumpet solos that helped define the genre's evolution from the frenetic energy of bebop to more restrained, arranged forms. Emerging from St. Louis to New York in 1944, Davis quickly integrated into the bebop scene, recording with luminaries like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, whose sessions showcased his emerging lyrical style amid high-speed improvisations. These appearances, often on small group dates for labels like Savoy and Dial, numbered over 20 in the period from 1945 to 1949, emphasizing Davis's adaptability as a young trumpeter honing his technique.[76] One of the earliest and most influential series of sessions occurred with Charlie Parker's quintet starting in 1945, capturing the essence of bebop's birth. On November 26, 1945, at WOR Studios in New York, Davis joined Parker, Dizzy Gillespie on piano, Curly Russell on bass, and Max Roach on drums for Savoy Records, recording tracks like "Now's the Time" and "Billie's Bounce," where Davis provided crisp, supportive trumpet lines behind Parker's alto saxophone leads. These cuts, released on Parker's The Complete Savoy Sessions (later compiled in various forms), highlighted Davis's ability to complement bebop's rhythmic complexity without overpowering the ensemble. Subsequent Parker sessions in 1947-1948, including live broadcasts from the Royal Roost nightclub on December 11-12, 1948, featured Davis on numbers such as "Scrapple from the Apple" and "Barbados," demonstrating his growing confidence in call-and-response phrasing; these were issued on compilations like Charlie Parker on Dial. By 1950, Davis participated in Parker's orchestral Charlie Parker with Strings sessions for Mercury Records on July 25 and August 30, contributing trumpet to lush arrangements of standards like "Just Friends" and "April in Paris," blending bebop improvisation with string-backed elegance in a departure from pure small-group jazz.[77] Davis's work with Dizzy Gillespie further solidified his bebop credentials during the late 1940s. In February 1946, he appeared on Gillespie's big band recordings for Musicraft, including "Oop-Bop-Sh'Bam" and "Things to Come," where his trumpet added to the ensemble's brassy, innovative harmonies that expanded bebop to larger formats. These tracks appeared on Gillespie's The Complete RCA Victor Recordings and showcased Davis as part of a horn section pushing harmonic boundaries.[78] In the early 1950s, Davis continued as a sideman in bebop circles. A landmark encounter with Thelonious Monk occurred on December 24, 1954, at Rudy Van Gelder Studio for Prestige, yielding "Bemsha Swing," "Swing Spring," and takes of "Bags' Groove," where Davis's fluid lines navigated Monk's angular piano comping—though their personal tensions were noted, the results captured bebop's intellectual depth.[79] In 1958, Davis made a notable sideman appearance on Michel Legrand's debut jazz album Legrand Jazz, recorded on June 25 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York. Davis played trumpet on four tracks: "The Jitterbug Waltz," "Django," "Wild Man Blues," and "'Round Midnight," contributing lyrical solos alongside musicians including John Coltrane, Ben Webster, and Bill Evans, under Legrand's arrangements blending French impressionism with American jazz. Released on Columbia Records, the album highlighted Davis's versatility in an orchestral setting.[80]
Post-1950s collaborations
After establishing himself as a prominent leader in the 1950s, Miles Davis made infrequent sideman appearances, focusing primarily on his own ensembles and explorations. However, he contributed to several significant collaborations in the ensuing decades, often with longtime collaborators like Gil Evans, bringing his distinctive trumpet sound to diverse stylistic contexts. These guest spots highlighted Davis's versatility, from orchestral jazz to fusion-influenced sessions, and contrasted with his more experimental solo work at Warner Bros. in the 1980s.[81] A notable early post-1950s collaboration was Davis's featured role on Cannonball Adderley's Know What I Mean? (1961), recorded in New York City on January 27, February 21, and March 13, 1961. Davis played trumpet on all tracks, delivering muted, introspective solos that complemented Adderley's alto saxophone in a cool jazz setting, with Bill Evans on piano providing harmonic depth. The album's recording context reflected the close ties between Davis and Adderley, who had recently co-led Davis's sextet, and it showcased stylistic contrasts between Davis's lyrical phrasing and Adderley's warmer tone. Specific tracks like "Well, You Needn't" and "Someday My Prince Will Come" emphasized Davis's ability to integrate seamlessly as a guest, marking a rare sideman effort amid his leadership of the second great quintet. In 1961, Davis joined Evans for a live performance at Carnegie Hall on May 19, later compiled and released as Miles Davis & Gil Evans: Carnegie Hall Concerts. Davis served as the featured soloist with Evans's orchestra, performing medleys from earlier collaborations, including "The Meaning of the Blues" and "Concierto de Aranjuez." The recording context captured a one-night event blending Davis's quintet with the larger ensemble, highlighting contrasts between intimate small-group interplay and orchestral grandeur. Davis's trumpet lines, often muted, navigated the dynamic shifts, underscoring his role as a guest star in Evans's arrangements.[82] During the 1970s, as Davis delved into electric fusion, guest appearances remained scarce, but his influence permeated former sidemen's projects. Though not directly on Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters (1973), Davis's electric innovations from albums like Bitches Brew shaped Hancock's fusion sound; however, a rare 1970s link was Davis's advisory role in Hancock's transition, though no recorded guest spot materialized in that era. Instead, Davis's 1970s focus stayed on leadership, with stylistic echoes in Hancock's guest-free Head Hunters sessions.[83] In the 1980s and 1990s, Davis's guest contributions became even rarer but impactful, often in pop-jazz crossover contexts. He appeared on Quincy Jones's Back on the Block (1989), playing trumpet on "Jazz Corner of the World (Introduction to Birdland)" and "Birdland," where his searing solos cut through the ensemble featuring Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. Recorded in Los Angeles, the tracks blended big band swing with hip-hop elements, contrasting Davis's recent synth-heavy Warner Bros. output and marking a return to orchestral jazz roots. The album's production context, overseen by Jones, celebrated jazz history while incorporating contemporary guests like Ice-T.[84] Another late-career highlight was Davis's guest spot on Shirley Horn's You Won't Forget Me (1990), recorded in August 1990 at Studio Davout in Paris. Davis played trumpet on the ballad "But Beautiful," delivering a poignant, breathy solo that complemented Horn's vocals and piano. This intimate session contrasted the fusion energy of Davis's 1970s work, emphasizing emotional restraint in a standards context and serving as one of his final sideman efforts before health issues.[85] Davis reunited with Quincy Jones for the live album Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux (1991), recorded on July 8, 1991, at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Davis was the featured soloist with Jones conducting the Gil Evans Orchestra and the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, performing arrangements from their earlier collaborations like "Boplicity" and "Sketches of Spain." The performance, Davis's last major public appearance, showcased stylistic contrasts between his aged, raspy tone and the vibrant big band, in a celebratory context honoring Evans's legacy.[42] Finally, Davis's ultimate guest appearance was on Michel Legrand's 1 + 1 (1991), recorded in June 1991 at CTS Studios in London. Davis played trumpet on tracks like "The Dolphin" and "What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?," providing melodic counterpoints to Legrand's piano and orchestra. This collaboration bookended their history—starting with Legrand Jazz in 1958—and highlighted Davis's enduring lyrical style amid orchestral settings, contrasting his experimental 1980s phase. The sessions, conducted shortly before Davis's death, captured a reflective mood in a fusion of jazz and film-score aesthetics.[86] Other rare 1980s-1990s features included brief contributions to soundtracks and tributes, such as his trumpet on the 1986 film Round Midnight (though primarily his own project) and uncredited overlays in fusion compilations, underscoring his selective involvement as health declined. These appearances, totaling fewer than a dozen verified post-1950s entries, affirmed Davis's status as a sought-after guest whose presence elevated diverse projects.[87]
Box sets
Compilation and studio box sets
Compilation and studio box sets represent a significant portion of Miles Davis's discography, offering comprehensive collections of his studio recordings across various labels and periods. These multi-disc releases often include remastered tracks, alternate takes, session outtakes, and previously unreleased material, providing deeper insights into Davis's creative processes and collaborations. Major labels like Prestige, Columbia (now Sony Legacy), and Craft Recordings have produced these sets since the late 1980s, focusing on studio sessions while excluding live performances. Notable examples encompass early bebop and cool jazz eras through his fusion experiments, with over a dozen such sets issued by 2025, though coverage of post-2010 reissues remains selective due to ongoing archival releases. One of the foundational releases is Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings (1987, reissued in the 1990s), an 8-CD box set from Fantasy Records that compiles all 17 studio sessions Davis recorded for Prestige between 1951 and 1956, featuring collaborators like John Coltrane, Red Garland, and Philly Joe Jones; it includes 70 tracks remastered from original tapes, emphasizing Davis's transition from bebop to cool jazz.[7] Similarly, Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (1996, 6 CDs), issued by Columbia Legacy, gathers the full studio output of their orchestral collaborations from 1957 to 1964, including Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Quiet Nights; remastered by Phil Schaap, it spans 53 tracks with detailed session notes on the innovative arrangements.[88] The Columbia/Legacy "Miles Davis Series" from the 1990s and 2000s produced several Grammy-winning studio compilations, totaling over 40 CDs across eight sets released between 1996 and 2007. Key entries include The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis with John Coltrane, 1955-1961 (2000, 6 CDs), which collects 58 tracks from their quintet and sextet sessions, remastered to highlight Coltrane's evolving tenor work alongside Davis's trumpet; and Miles Davis Quintet: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings 1965-1968 (1998, 6 CDs), a 56-track set documenting the "second great quintet" with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, featuring alternate takes and outtakes remastered for clarity.[89] Another standout is The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (1998, 4 CDs), focusing on the 1969-1970 fusion recordings with over 40 tracks, including edits and jams remastered to capture the electric experimentation.[90] The Complete On the Corner Sessions (2007, 6 CDs) delves into the 1972 funk-jazz period, presenting 28 tracks plus interviews, remastered from multitrack tapes to reveal Davis's radical stylistic shift.[47] Later releases include The Complete Columbia Album Collection (2009, 70 CDs + DVD), a massive retrospective of Davis's entire Columbia studio catalog from 1949 to 1985, with mini-LP replicas and high-resolution remasters of 52 albums, though it incorporates some non-studio bonuses.[91] In the 2010s, The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection (2016, 11 LPs or equivalent CDs) reproduces Davis's early 1950s Prestige EPs in their original format, compiling 72 tracks from 1951-1954 sessions with musicians like Sonny Rollins, remastered for vinyl warmth.[92] The 2019 The Complete Birth of the Cool (70th Anniversary Edition, 1 CD or 2 LPs) focuses on the 1949-1950 Capitol nonet studio sessions, adding four alternate takes remastered from originals, celebrating the cool jazz landmark with 16 tracks.[93] Recent 2020s reissues continue this trend with targeted compilations. Miles '54: The Prestige Recordings (2024, 2 CDs or 4 LPs) assembles 20 tracks from Davis's 1954 Prestige output, including Blue Haze and Walkin', remastered by Paul Blakemore from analog tapes with new liner notes.[94] Miles '55: The Prestige Recordings (2025, 2 CDs or 3 LPs), released in August 2025, collects 16 tracks from 1955 sessions like Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, featuring Thelonious Monk, with 24-bit remastering and session photos.[95] These sets, while enriching archival access, leave some 2020s digital-only reissues and minor rarities uncovered, with ongoing releases from Craft and Legacy addressing gaps in Davis's vast studio legacy.
The live and bootleg box sets in Miles Davis's discography represent a significant archival effort to preserve and release previously unreleased or expanded live recordings from his extensive concert history, often sourced from master tapes of European tours, American festivals, and club performances. These sets, primarily issued by Columbia/Legacy Recordings, capture the evolution of Davis's quintets and ensembles across decades, highlighting improvisational dynamics, band interactions, and stylistic shifts from cool jazz to fusion. Unlike studio compilations, they emphasize the raw energy of live settings, drawing from sources like radio broadcasts, private tapes, and festival archives to provide historical context for Davis's innovative live presentations.[99] One of the earliest and most influential live box sets is The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel (1995), an eight-CD collection documenting four nights of performances by Davis's Second Great Quintet—featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—at Chicago's Plugged Nickel club in December 1965. Sourced from original multitrack tapes, it includes over 50 tracks spanning standards like "So What" and "All Blues" alongside originals such as "Footprints," offering insight into the group's post-bop intensity and Davis's directive leadership during a transitional period toward modal jazz. The set's historical value lies in its completeness, revealing extended improvisations that influenced subsequent live recordings and earned acclaim for restoring the quintet's telepathic interplay. A vinyl and CD reissue was announced for January 2026, marking the first wide-format release in 30 years.[100] The official Miles Davis Bootleg Series, launched in 2013, comprises multiple volumes of rare live material, with over eight installments by 2025 focusing primarily on performances from the 1950s to 1970s, excluding studio-centric entries like Volumes 5 and 7. These sets, often multi-disc affairs, draw from European tour tapes and U.S. venue archives, providing unprecedented access to Davis's global touring output. For instance, Volume 1: Live in Europe 1967 (2013, four CDs) features the Second Great Quintet at venues in Antwerp, London, and Paris, with tracks like "Footprints" and "Masqualero" showcasing extended modal explorations from October broadcasts. Volume 2: Live in Europe 1969 (2013, four CDs) captures a transitional band with Chick Corea and Dave Holland in Rotterdam and Berlin, emphasizing electric influences in pieces such as "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down." Volume 3: Miles at the Fillmore – Miles Davis 1970 (2014, four CDs) compiles eight nights at New York's Fillmore East, highlighting fusion experiments with "Bitches Brew" material alongside rock covers like "Directions," sourced from soundboard recordings that document Davis's genre-blending phase.[6] Subsequent volumes expand this archival scope: Volume 4: At Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 (2015, four CDs) assembles performances from the Newport Jazz Festival across two decades, including 1955 cool jazz sets with Thelonious Monk and 1975 fusion outings with Sonny Fortune, drawn from festival tapes to illustrate Davis's stylistic breadth. Volume 6: The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6 (2018, four CDs), credited to Miles Davis & John Coltrane, restores 1960 European concerts in Paris, Stockholm, and Copenhagen from the First Great Quintet's last joint tour, featuring tracks like "All Blues" and "So What" that capture early modal jazz tensions and Coltrane's emerging intensity from master reels. The most recent, Volume 8: Miles in France 1963 & 1964: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8 (2024, six CDs), focuses on the quintet with George Coleman in Paris and Juan-les-Pins, including radio-sourced sets of "My Funny Valentine" and "Walkin'," underscoring Davis's European popularity and mid-1960s quintet cohesion. These releases, totaling over 15 discs across the live-focused volumes, have been praised for their remastering quality and booklets with essays on tour logistics and tape provenance.[39][101] Another landmark is The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux 1973-1991 (2005, 20 CDs), a comprehensive archive of Davis's nine appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival, compiled from festival master tapes and private recordings. Spanning fusion to hip-hop-infused jazz, it includes full sets like the 1973 electric band's "Right Off" and the 1991 nonet's "In a Silent Way," with Quincy Jones's liner notes emphasizing Montreux founder Claude Nobs's role in preserving these performances. The set's value stems from its chronological depth, documenting Davis's post-retirement comeback and late-career innovations across 11 concerts. A companion 10-DVD edition, The Definitive Miles Davis at Montreux (2007), adds visual elements but focuses on audio fidelity in the CD box. These collections collectively preserve Davis's live legacy, sourced from diverse tapes that reveal the spontaneity absent in studio work.[102]
