When you talk about Miles Davis, you’re really talking about something like eight musicians: a sideman to Bird during the bebop revolution; catalyst of cool jazz; hard bop and modal pioneer; enabler of John Coltrane and leader of the “first great quintet”; nurturer of the younger “second great quintet” in the mid-'60s; collaborator in large ensembles with his musical soul mate, Gil Evans; initiator of an uncompromising jazz-rock-funk fusion; and elder statesmen of a more polished, though still-distinct, fusion in the 1980s.
Even within those periods there are fascinating mini-chapters, like his work from the early 1950s. Now, on the occasion of what would’ve been Miles Davis’ 90th birthday this month, comes The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection, a sometimes-disorienting, ultimately sumptuous set of eleven vinyl records from 1951–54, nine of which feature Miles as the sole leader.
The bulk of Miles Davis’ canonical output is on Columbia Records, which he left in 1986 for Warner Brothers in his final years. His pre-Columbia work from 1951–56 was, for the most part, on Prestige Records, a small, fledgling indie label in Hell’s Kitchen launched by Bob Weinstock in 1949. This set is not a comprehensive examination of his stay at Prestige—that is available on the 8-CD Miles Davis Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings, 1951–1956—nor is there any new material here, but the recordings are in the exact format of their release, the forgotten 10-inch vinyl record, something new at the time that could accommodate more minutes than 78 rpm discs, which were the common format for popular recordings. “I was excited about the freedom this new technology would give me,” Miles wrote in his autobiography. “I had gotten tired of that three-minute lockstep that the 78s had put musicians in.”
If you’re not familiar with the 10-inch format, you’ll have to stay on your toes, as sides rarely go beyond 12 or 13 minutes (and sometimes run for as little as 8 minutes.) The set is in chronological order, more or less, to show how his work progressed, and features the original cover art, complete with typographical errors. (A 7–by–10 replica of one of Miles Davis’ paintings is also included.)
The music, too, will keep you on your toes, and enthralled. In many ways, this is one of his most rollicking periods. It’s post-Bird, post-birth-of-cool (released by Capitol Records), yet pre-great quintet with John Coltrane, which coalesced at Prestige in 1955 (not included in this set) and progressed into super-stardom at Columbia. Miles is still very much trying to find himself, musically and personally. A few of the musicians he organized for what several years later was called Birth of The Cool—white musicians, it should be said— took it to the West Coast and ran with it. Meanwhile, he was battling heroin addiction. “Heroin,” he wrote in his autobiography, “was my girlfriend.”
The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection is a document then of a search, an exhilarating one: a search for self, a search for a sound, a search for an aesthetic, a search for like minds. His various band mates on these dates include: Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, John Lewis, Max Roach, Lucky Thompson, Roy Haynes, Horace Silver, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, and Zoot Sims, whom, according to Miles’ autobiography, he did heroin with right before they recorded Miles Davis Plays the Compositions of Al Cohn in January 1953, on LP 4. It is—maybe because of the drugs, maybe because it wasn’t Miles’ idea to play Cohn’s music—one of the rare uninspired records here. So is the first, Modern Jazz Trumpets, of which Miles is only one of four leaders, along with Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, and the forever under-appreciated Kenny Dorham, highlighted on the cover as “Kinny.” (Remember, typos preserved.)
The rest—before H and after H—is nearly always stirring. Of that first recording, even Miles admitted he wasn’t up to par: “I didn’t play well,” Davis wrote of that January 1951 session, “but I think everyone else played well—especially Sonny [Rollins].” Indeed, Miles and Sonny had something special, and they have three dates together on this set across four of the LPs. As exceptional as some of the talent Miles assembled is, it didn’t always produce memorable partnerships. Charles Mingus, who plays piano on one tune—and he was a good piano player, just listen to Mingus Plays Piano—was never a going to be good fit with Miles. They both had huge personalities. And although he and Thelonious Monk did mesh well together, and played beautifully on four of these LPs, they clashed personally.
By around 1954, Miles wrote that he’d hoped to form a steady touring band with Rollins, Horace Silver on piano, Kenny Clarke on drums, and Percy Heath on bass. It wasn’t meant to be: Rollins had to deal with his own drug issues; Silver joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers; and Clarke went to the Modern Jazz Quartet. That great-quartet-that-never-was did have one session, on the LP Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins from June 29, 1954. The results hover around perfection as they play the Rollins originals “Oleo,” “Airegin,” “Doxy,” and the Gershwin standard “But Not for Me.”
Miles kicked his heroin habit by 1954 and had a great year, all of which is included in this set, and almost all of his sessions were now recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s across the river in New Jersey (though in his Hackensack living room, before he built his fabled studio in Englewood Cliffs). The following year, he did settle on a band, but with another tenor, John Coltrane, a 20-year-old bassist named Paul Chambers, Red Garland on piano, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Not so bad. That quintet would go on to have recording dates for Prestige in 1955 and '56, which became the four albums Cookin’, Steamin’, Relaxin’, and Workin’, though now on 12-inch vinyl as the industry transitioned yet again by the mid-'50s.
The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection can, however, be a little puzzling. If you have a collection of Miles Davis records and want to know if you already own some of this material, it might not be immediately clear. Many fans might own a previous version of, say, Walkin’, which on the cover says “Miles Davis All Stars.” But here, “Walkin’ ” appears not as an LP but merely as a tune—a phenomenal 13-minute version with the superlative tenorist Lucky Thompson—from the April 29, 1954 LP Miles Davis All Star Sextet. Nor is it spelled out that Walkin’ (the 12-inch version, released by Prestige in 1957) is a compilation of two of the 10-inch LPs—Miles Davis Quintet in addition to Miles Davis All Star Sextet—plus one song not on this set. It all gets a little eye-crossing. You can figure most of this out, eventually, flipping back-and-forth from the 12-inch or CD you own (if you do) and the enclosed booklet. It is either maddening or a little fun, depending on your disposition—the fan as archivist.
The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection even rewards when you least expect it, like in 1951’s Lee Konitz Featuring Miles Davis, one of the few times, besides with Bird, where Miles was a sideman. (Cannonball Adderley’s 1958 Blue Note album Somethin’ Else was another, a record so luminous Uniqlo made a T-shirt out of it.) They were colleagues from Birth of the Cool, and Miles liked his playing, even defended him when he was criticized by other black musicians for hiring a white saxophonist. Konitz, the proto avant-gardist who was the first musician to record for Prestige in '49, worked hard—like Miles—to never sound like anyone else, and the two are almost otherworldly here, drifting inquisitively around each other, then as one, as if it were the birth of the free-cool. The daring hints at what would come, for Konitz (still underrated and still playing challenging music at age 88), and for Miles, always prepared to risk, always willing to move beyond his comfort zone. To hear Miles Davis develop—as a person, as a musician, and as a bandleader, in the midst of technological changes—makes this series of recordings on Prestige specialized, yes, but also quite special.
