By 1960, modern jazz was in upheaval. This shift was thanks in no small part to the seismic, artistic advances that Miles Davis and his quintet had made the year prior when he released Kind of Blue, a still-astonishing document of restraint and free melodic expression that would go on to become one of the best-selling jazz albums of all-time. That same year, John Coltrane also pivoted to the cascading changes and torrential outpouring (deemed “sheets of sound”) of his breakout solo album, Giant Steps. Distinct from the restrained and cool sound of his boss, Coltrane was well on his own skyward trajectory when Davis brought him back to the fold for a European tour booked by jazz impresario Norman Granz, which also featured Stan Getz on tenor sax and Oscar Peterson on piano. It marked the first time Davis would tour with his own band, and they were met with packed houses and rapturous applause each night. But as Davis wrote in his 1989 autobiography: “[Coltrane] decided to go with us, but he grumbled and complained and sat by himself all the time we were over there.”
These three weeks of grumbling and complaining comprise Miles Davis and John Coltrane: The Final Tour, the sixth edition of Columbia’s Miles Davis Bootleg Series. Across the five previous installments lies a latent theme of tension and change, each volume revealing a transitory aspect of Davis’ sound. But none bear the audible friction between Davis and Coltrane on almost every number of this four-disc set, which draws from two concerts in Paris, two from Stockholm, and one from Copenhagen. You can hear the sideman straining to push past Davis—the man primarily responsible for realizing that Coltrane could be Coltrane. In turn, Coltrane’s stratospheric rise would soon lead Davis to raze his sound to its foundation and build it up anew in the years to come.
From the song selection on this volume, it’s clear Davis is already approaching a crossroads in his own repertoire. He wants to explore both the Kind of Blue material still fresh on his mind while also satisfying the crowd with the type of exquisite balladry that had helped make him one of the most famous jazz artists of the era. So the fake book standards from his 1957 album ’Round About Midnight are juxtaposed with the emotive modal jazz monoliths “So What” and “All Blues” from Kind of Blue, all featuring the blowing of Coltrane, who sometimes sounds like he’s trying to explode the songs from within.
For instance, Davis and band move at a dizzying double-time tempo on the four sprawling takes of “So What.” Rather than the iconic smoldering slink that opens Kind of Blue, Paul Chambers’ slow vamp speeds up to a roiling bassline. At this speed, it’s a treat to hear the nimble pianist Wynton Kelly tackle the number, adding a bluesy and rollicking feel to the chart. On the first performance at the Olympia in Paris, Davis soars to the upper register in his solo before drifting back down. Coltrane enters with a bluesy phrase that briefly aligns with Davis before his vibrato opens wide. Coltrane starts pushing at the boundaries of the song, the flurry of notes coming faster and faster.
Coltrane sounds a little confined in the changes, like he’s straining to break free not just from the song but the earth’s gravitational pull. Nearing the nine-minute mark, his overblowing and dissonance elicits a few hoots and whistles. While the “new thing” in jazz was already stirring and gaining steam thanks to the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Sun Ra’s reedsman John Gilmore, few in the European audience would have experienced such new sounds live.
The raspy dissonance Coltrane flashes on “Bye Bye Blackbird” earns plenty of whistles and shouts, and only on “Round Midnight” is he compact and concise within the song. Whether it was from the promoters, the press, or Davis himself, who never had a good word to say about the free jazz stylings of Coleman or Taylor, Coltrane feels a little bit more reigned in after this particular night.
Not that there isn’t plenty to admire outside of the outré. Kelly’s take on Bill Evans’ original, more ascetic piano lines adds a new wrinkle to “All Blues,” swinging between two chords and giving the horns plenty of space to move. Meanwhile, Coltrane’s solo fidgets like a hummingbird around a blossom, attacking the song from as many angles as manageable while Kelly’s own turn features playful cascades and big shimmering chords.
The solo order remains the same throughout the set (Davis, then Coltrane, then Kelly, and sometimes Chambers), so a sense of predictability does settle in across the four discs. Which is not to say that there’s still not plenty of play to be had here, as sly allusions abound throughout: Davis quotes a line of “Dixie” on one version of “Walkin’,” Kelly plinks in a phrase of Monk’s “In Walked Bud” during “So What,” Coltrane quotes “Willow Weep for Me” one night in Stockholm. And amid Coltrane’s nightly quests through “So What,” he starts to sow the seeds for what would in a few years become one of his signature songs, “Impressions,” itself built on the same harmonic structure as the Kind of Blue song.
That’s not the only advance Coltrane made on his last tour with Davis. “Before he quit, I gave him that soprano saxophone,” Davis recalled in his autobiography, the instrument that would come to signify Coltrane’s ascension to spiritual jazz. “I always joked with him that if he had stayed home and not come with us on this trip, he wouldn’t have gotten that soprano saxophone, so he was in debt to me for as long as he lived.” It’s a patented Miles blend of joke and hyperbole. But his relationship with Coltrane proved to be the kind of impetus that would push Davis to reinvent himself, as well. Soon after, neither star would sound quite like this again.
