Miles Davis · New to them

New to Davis

Miles Davis was there for one change in jazz after another, from bebop in the 1940s to the restless quintets of the 1960s, and his trumpet sound, quiet and close, is one of the most recognisable in music. This path starts with his best-loved album, then goes back to his first records and walks forward through small groups, an orchestra, another man's session and a concert hall.

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Start with the quiet one
Kind Of Blue Miles Davis · Columbia CL 1355 · 1959
Kind of Blue was recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York on March 2 and April 22, 1959, and released that August. Davis led a sextet: John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans on piano (Wynton Kelly takes his place on "Freddie Freeloader"), Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Davis brought sketches of scales and melodies rather than finished tunes, and called for almost no rehearsal. It became one of the best-selling jazz records ever made, and it is the easiest door into his music: slow and medium tempos, plenty of space, nothing that shouts. Start here, because much of what follows either leads up to it or moves away from it.
Start with
- So What
- Blue In Green
- All Blues
On "So What", Chambers plays the theme on bass and the horns answer him with two notes. The tune sits on one scale for a long stretch, moves up a half step, then comes back. Hear how few notes Davis plays and how much room that leaves. Then compare the three soloists, each in a different voice. "Blue in Green" is a slow ballad, with Evans setting the mood.
In the band
Bill Evans · piano
Bill Evans, a pianist from New Jersey, had played in Davis's band for much of 1958 and left at the end of the year to lead his own group. Davis called him back for these sessions. Evans had studied and recorded with the composer George Russell, whose ideas about scales fed into this music, and he wrote the original liner notes. By the end of 1959 he had formed his trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.
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Back to 1945, with Bird
The Charlie Parker Story Charlie Parker Rebeboppers / The Be Bop Boys · Savoy MG 12079 · 1956
Now go back to where Davis started. On November 26, 1945, Charlie Parker led his first session under his own name, at WOR Studios in New York, for Savoy. Davis was 19. He had come to New York the year before, enrolled at Juilliard, and gone looking for Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the clubs. Max Roach played drums and Curley Russell bass; the pianist is still argued over, Gillespie or Sadik Hakim or both. This LP gathers every take from the day, false starts included, so you hear the tunes take shape. It is bebop near its source, with Davis as the young sideman.
Start with
- Now's The Time
- Billie's Bounce
Both tunes are Parker blues. Listen to the gap between the two horns: Parker's lines rush and twist, while Davis stays in the middle of his horn with fewer notes and a softer sound. In his autobiography Davis said he refused to play "Ko-Ko", a fast piece on the chords of "Cherokee", and that Gillespie plays the trumpet on it.
In the band
Charlie Parker · alto sax
Charlie Parker, from Kansas City, was 25 and already the player every young modernist followed. Davis joined his quintet in 1945 and stayed, on and off, until the end of 1948, playing on most of his Savoy and Dial dates. It was a hard school: Parker was brilliant and unreliable, and Davis often had to hold the band together. Parker died in March 1955, at 34.
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The comeback in Hackensack
Walkin' Miles Davis All Stars · Prestige PRLP 7076 · 1957
By early 1954 Davis had beaten a heroin habit that had dragged him down for years. That spring he went to Rudy Van Gelder's home studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, for Prestige, with Horace Silver on piano, Percy Heath on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums. On April 3 Dave Schildkraut joined on alto; on April 29 J.J. Johnson and Lucky Thompson made it a sextet. The April 29 tracks, "Walkin'" and "Blue 'N' Boogie", are long and relaxed, and "Walkin'" in particular gave the coming hard bop style an anthem. Here is Davis back on his feet, playing with weight and patience.
Start with
- Walkin'
- Blue 'N' Boogie
- Solar
"Walkin'" is a 12-bar blues at an easy, walking tempo, as the title says; listen to how much space Davis leaves in his solo, and how the horns and rhythm section settle into the groove. "Blue 'N' Boogie", Dizzy Gillespie's tune, is faster. "Solar", on side two, was long credited to Davis, but it is now known to be close to Chuck Wayne's "Sonny".
In the band
Horace Silver · piano
Horace Silver, a pianist from Norwalk, Connecticut, was 25 and working out a style built on blues and gospel. Davis liked his funky playing and used him on several sessions that year. With Art Blakey he led the first Jazz Messengers, and from the mid-1950s he led his own quintet on Blue Note for more than 20 years, with tunes like "Song for My Father".
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Rollins tunes and a Christmas Eve
Bags Groove Miles Davis · Prestige PRLP 7109 · 1957
Two more Van Gelder sessions from 1954. Side two is June 29: Davis with the same rhythm section and Sonny Rollins on tenor, playing three new Rollins tunes, "Airegin", "Oleo" and "Doxy", all of which became standards. Side one is December 24, with Milt Jackson on vibes, Thelonious Monk on piano, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke, and two takes of Jackson's blues "Bags' Groove" (Bags was his nickname). That day was tense: Davis asked Monk to lay out behind his solos. Here you hear Davis with some of the strongest players of the time, in two very different moods.
Start with
- Bags' Groove
- Oleo
- Airegin
On "Oleo", Davis plays with a Harmon mute, the small, buzzing, close-up sound that became one of his trademarks. On "Bags' Groove", listen to Monk's piano solo, built from a few spare, oddly placed figures, quite unlike Silver's playing on the other side. Then hear Jackson's vibes, smooth and bluesy, as a contrast to both.
In the band
Sonny Rollins · tenor sax
Sonny Rollins grew up in Harlem and first recorded with Davis in 1951, when he was 20. By 1954 Davis rated him highly enough to build a session on his tunes; "Airegin" is Nigeria spelled backwards. Rollins went on to make Saxophone Colossus in 1956, then stepped away from performing in 1959 for two years, practising on the Williamsburg Bridge. He kept playing into his eighties.
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The first great quintet arrives
'Round About Midnight Miles Davis · Columbia CL 949 · 1957
In the summer of 1955 Davis played "'Round Midnight" with Monk at the Newport Jazz Festival, and the response led George Avakian to sign him to Columbia. He formed a working quintet: John Coltrane on tenor, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. This was his first Columbia album, recorded at three sessions between October 1955 and September 1956 and released in March 1957. He still owed Prestige records, so he was making albums for both labels at once. This is the band in its best clothes: careful arrangements and a big studio sound.
Start with
- 'Round Midnight
- Bye Bye Blackbird
- Dear Old Stockholm
"'Round Midnight" has an arrangement by Gil Evans, uncredited at the time: Davis plays Monk's melody with the mute, then a short fanfare breaks in and Coltrane takes over. On "Bye Bye Blackbird", a 1920s pop song, hear the muted trumpet again, light and close, and then Coltrane's tenor, harder and fuller. The contrast between the two horns is the sound of this band.
In the band
John Coltrane · tenor sax
John Coltrane was in his late twenties when he joined, a tenor player from Philadelphia who was not yet well known, and some critics found his sound harsh at first. Davis kept him, and Coltrane grew fast in this band. Davis let him go in 1957 over his drug use; Coltrane got clean, worked with Thelonious Monk, came back in 1958, and left for good in 1960 to lead his own quartet.
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The quintet with the tape running
Relaxin' With The Miles Davis Quintet The Miles Davis Quintet · Prestige PRLP 7129 · 1958
To finish his Prestige contract, Davis took the quintet to Van Gelder's on May 11 and October 26, 1956, and recorded tune after tune, much as they played them in clubs. The band was paying for studio time, so there were few retakes. Those two days filled four albums for Prestige. Relaxin', released in 1958, leans toward ballads and medium tempos, and Prestige left in snatches of studio talk between the tracks. After the polished Columbia album, it shows the same band at work, with nothing dressed up.
Start with
- If I Were A Bell
- It Could Happen To You
- Oleo
Listen for the talk left on the tape, Davis and the engineer between takes. "If I Were a Bell", from the musical Guys and Dolls, opens with Garland playing a chime-like figure before Davis states the tune with the mute. Then compare this "Oleo" with the 1954 version: the same tune, now played by a working band that knows its own habits.
In the band
Red Garland · piano
Red Garland, from Dallas, had boxed before he settled on piano. Davis hired him partly for his light touch and block chords, which recalled Ahmad Jamal, the Chicago pianist Davis admired. Garland's playing shaped the quintet's sound: crisp, swinging, never crowded. He left in 1958, made many trio records for Prestige, then went home to Dallas in the 1960s and played little in public for years.
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One trumpet, 19 players
Miles Ahead Miles Davis + 19 · Columbia CL 1041 · 1957
In May 1957 Davis went into Columbia's 30th Street Studio with an orchestra of brass, woodwinds and rhythm, arranged and conducted by Gil Evans. The two had worked together on the nonet records later issued as Birth of the Cool. Avakian, at Columbia, wanted to show Davis in a bigger setting; his idea, he said, was Miles in front and the setting all Gil. Davis plays flugelhorn throughout and is the only soloist. The pieces run into one another like a suite, drawn from a French opera composer, a Broadway song and modern jazz tunes. It is the first orchestral record on this path, and the start of a partnership.
Start with
- The Maids Of Cadiz
- My Ship
- New Rhumba
Listen to the flugelhorn, rounder and darker than the trumpet. Evans writes for French horns, tuba, flutes and bass clarinet, colours big bands rarely used, and the tracks flow one into the next. "The Maids of Cadiz" is by Léo Delibes; "My Ship" is Kurt Weill's theatre song; "New Rhumba" is Ahmad Jamal's tune.
In the band
Gil Evans · piano
Gil Evans was born in Toronto in 1912 and taught himself to arrange. In the 1940s he wrote for Claude Thornhill's orchestra, and his small basement room on 55th Street in New York became a meeting place for young modernists, Davis among them. He worked slowly; Davis said he might spend three days on ten bars. After their records together he led his own orchestras into the 1980s.
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Six players and a new idea
Milestones Miles Davis · Columbia CL 1193 · 1958
By early 1958 Coltrane was back, and Cannonball Adderley's alto made the quintet a sextet. Milestones was recorded at Columbia on February 4 and March 4, 1958, and released that September. Most of it is hard-driving blues and bebop: Monk's "Straight, No Chaser", Jackie McLean's "Dr. Jackle", the John Lewis and Dizzy Gillespie "Two Bass Hit". But the title track, which Davis wrote, is built on scales rather than a run of chords. You have already heard where that idea led. This is where it began.
Start with
- Milestones
- Straight, No Chaser
- Billy Boy
On "Milestones", the band rests on one scale and then another instead of moving through chord changes, and the soloists have more room and fewer signposts. Then hear the two saxophones side by side on "Straight, No Chaser": Adderley's alto bright and bluesy, Coltrane's tenor dense and searching. "Billy Boy" is a feature for Garland and the rhythm section alone, in his block-chord style.
In the band
Cannonball Adderley · alto sax
Julian "Cannonball" Adderley taught music in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before he sat in with Oscar Pettiford's band at the Café Bohemia in New York in 1955 and caused a stir. He joined Davis late in 1957 and stayed until 1959. His bluesy alto next to Coltrane's searching tenor pushed both men. Afterward he led a popular quintet with his brother Nat, and later had a hit with Joe Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy".
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A sideman, in name only
Somethin' Else Cannonball Adderley · Blue Note BLP 1595 · 1958
Five days after the second Milestones session, on March 9, 1958, Davis did something he rarely did by then: he played on another man's record. Somethin' Else was Adderley's only album for Blue Note, made at Van Gelder's in Hackensack with Hank Jones on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Art Blakey on drums, Alfred Lion producing. By the account in Leonard Feather's original notes, Davis picked most of the tunes and wrote the title track. It sounds like a Davis record in a warmer room: slow tempos, a lot of space, and Adderley's alto alongside.
Start with
- Autumn Leaves
- Somethin' Else
- One For Daddy-O
"Autumn Leaves" takes up most of side one; Davis said the treatment came from Ahmad Jamal. After a long introduction, Davis states the melody with the mute, then Adderley follows. On "Somethin' Else", Davis plays short phrases and Adderley answers them, call and response on a blues. At the end of "One for Daddy-O" you can hear Davis asking Lion if that was what he wanted.
In the band
Hank Jones · piano
Hank Jones grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, the eldest of three brothers in jazz: Thad played trumpet and Elvin drums. He was 39 here and had already worked with Ella Fitzgerald and on Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic tours. His touch was light and exact, well suited to the slow tempos Davis chose for this date. He kept recording into his nineties.
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A benefit night, the slow songs
My Funny Valentine Miles Davis In Concert · Columbia CL 2306 · 1965
Jump to February 12, 1964. Davis's band had changed almost completely: George Coleman on tenor and a young rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. That night they played a benefit concert at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center, in support of voter registration in Mississippi and Louisiana. Columbia made two albums from the tape, and this one has the slow and medium tempos. The band walked off thinking they had played badly; the record proved them wrong. It is the first live record on this path, and a different Davis: freer with time, and more daring at low volume.
Start with
- My Funny Valentine
- All Blues
"My Funny Valentine" runs about 15 minutes. Listen to how the rhythm section stretches and shrinks the tempo behind Davis, slowing almost to a stop and then surging forward. Davis's biographer Ian Carr heard more depth here than in anything Davis had done before. Then compare this "All Blues" with the studio version you heard first: the same tune, five years on, faster and looser.
In the band
Herbie Hancock · piano
Herbie Hancock, from Chicago, played a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony at 11. He was 23 on this night and had joined Davis the year before, already known for his tune "Watermelon Man", a hit for Mongo Santamaria. He later remembered the band leaving the stage dejected, sure they had bombed. He stayed with Davis until 1968, then led his own bands, including the jazz-funk group that made Head Hunters.
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The second great quintet
Miles Smiles Miles Davis Quintet · Columbia CL 2601 · 1967
By the autumn of 1964 Wayne Shorter had replaced Coleman, and the band writers now call the second great quintet was complete. Miles Smiles was recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio on October 24 and 25, 1966. There are no standards now: the tunes come from Shorter, Davis, Eddie Harris and Jimmy Heath. Forms stretch, tempos loosen, and the drummer is as free as the horns. It is not free jazz, but it is a long way from the bebop of 1945. Here the path turns toward the music of Davis's last acoustic years.
Start with
- Footprints
- Freedom Jazz Dance
- Orbits
"Footprints", Shorter's tune, moves between a three-against-two feel and a straight four: listen to Tony Williams shift under Davis's solo while Ron Carter keeps his bass figure going. On "Freedom Jazz Dance", Eddie Harris's tune, the band adds extra bars between the phrases. On "Orbits", Hancock plays right-hand lines with no left-hand chords, which leaves the music open.
In the band
Wayne Shorter · tenor sax
Wayne Shorter came from Newark, New Jersey, and had spent five years as tenor player and musical director of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Davis had wanted him for some time. He brought a book of tunes so unusual that he soon became the band's main composer. After Davis, he co-founded Weather Report in 1970, and from the early 2000s led an acoustic quartet until his death in 2023.
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The last acoustic record
Nefertiti Miles Davis · Columbia CS 9594 · 1968
Nefertiti was recorded at 30th Street in June and July 1967 and released in March 1968. Davis wrote none of it: three tunes are Shorter's, two Hancock's and one Tony Williams's. The band changed tunes in the studio as they went, turning a slow waltz into a fast piece and a fast piece into a slow one. It was Davis's last fully acoustic album; on the next one, electric instruments arrived. The path ends here, at the edge of a very different Davis, with a band that sounds as if it could go anywhere.
Start with
- Nefertiti
- Madness
- Hand Jive
On "Nefertiti", the horns play Shorter's slow melody again and again and never take solos, while the rhythm section improvises underneath: the usual roles turned around. Listen to Williams especially, building and releasing tension under the repeated tune. "Madness", Hancock's piece, was first rehearsed as a slow waltz and recorded fast.
In the band
Tony Williams · drums
Tony Williams grew up in Boston and was 17 when Davis hired him in 1963, after he had worked with Jackie McLean. He played the drums like a lead voice, shifting time and volume behind the soloists, and he wrote "Hand Jive" for this record. In 1969 he formed Lifetime, one of the first jazz-rock bands. He died in 1997, at 51.
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