oeuvre. (The other studio album by this band was ‘Round About Midnight on Columbia, also recently reissued). This was the classic 1955-56 quintet, with John Coltrane (tenor sax, no soprano yet), Red Garland (piano) Paul Chambers (bass) and Philly many times, including, exactly as chronologically programmed here, as the last three CDs of the 8-CD box, Miles Davis Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings, 1951-1956.
So, what’s new here? Why do we need this package? Actually, there is some new material, live recordings taken from broadcasts by the quintet and a later version with Bill Evans, on the fourth CD, which also is enhanced with transcriptions of Davis’ solos on five tracks.
The transcriptions are fine for musicians and the broadcast tapes are nice finds, though hardly essential. What the 1958 quintet classic quintet could not be duplicated or equaled, even by a pianist as prodigiously is the mother lode here, the essential and classic recordings by one of the most distinct and influential quintets in jazz. Along with the Kind of Blue sextet, this was Miles Davis’ most popular and accessible band, one that even people who don’t care for jazz can enjoy.
Like the even more popular Dave Brubeck Quartet of the same era, this Miles Davis Quintet perfectly balanced and contrasted opposites in its main soloists, but while Brubeck had only alto saxophonist Paul Desmond as a foil, Miles had Coltrane’s freneticism and Garland’s sprightliness to set off his own spare, lyric intimacy. And both bands were blessed with superb drummers (Brubeck’s Joe Morello, Miles’ Jones) who knew how to shift These studio sessions, which did much to define the way bands approached the longer track format of LPs, range from ballads and midtempo swingers to flat-out bebop and hardbop, but performed with a polish and elegance that makes them all of a piece. No matter what the material, there’s no mistaking the sound of this band.
Like the best music of the mid ‘50s, from Count Basie and Duke Ellington to Frank Sinatra, this Davis quintet had elegance and panache. Davis introduced a new repertoire of standards, much as Sinatra was doing on his Capitol albums and a new way of playing them with his sensual, insinuatingly intimate Harmon microphone. With that mute and arrangements borrowing the structure of Ahmad Jamal’s approach to melodies, including spatial dynamics, interludes, tags and transitions, this quintet created a new paradigm for songs By the early ‘60s, Miles had effectively abandoned the marvelous popular songbook standards that so stand out on these recordings.
This quintet was the last full flowering of lauded by jazz fans.
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