Miles Davis - Volume 2
Released - February 1956
Recording and Session Information
WOR Studios, NYC, May 9, 1952
Miles Davis, trumpet; Jay Jay Johnson, trombone; Jackie McLean, alto sax; "Gil" Coggins, piano; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums.
BN430-1 tk.8 Donna
BN431-3 tk.13 Would'n You
WOR Studios, NYC, April 20, 1953
Miles Davis, trumpet; Jay Jay Johnson, trombone #1,2; Jimmy Heath, tenor sax #1,2; "Gil" Coggins, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
BN479-0 tk.7 Ray's Idea (alternate master)
BN480-1 tk.11 Tempus Fugit (alternate master)
BN482-0 tk.16 I Waited For You
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 6, 1954
Miles Davis, trumpet; Horace Silver, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
BN548-3 tk.4 Take-Off
BN549-0 tk.6 Lazy Susan
BN550-0 tk.8 The Leap
BN551-0 tk.9 Well You Needn't
BN552-0 tk.10 Weirdo
BN553-1 tk.12 It Never Entered My Mind
Session Photos
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| June 6 1954 session |
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| Take Off | Miles Davis | 06 March 1954 |
| Weirdo | Miles Davis | 06 March 1954 |
| Woody 'n' You | Dizzy Gillespie | 05 September 1952 |
| I Waited For You | Gil Fuller, Dizzy Gillespie | 20 April 1953 |
| Ray's Idea" (Alternate Take) | Gil Fuller, Ray Brown | 20 April 1953 |
| Donna | Jackie McLean | 05 September 1952 |
| Side Two | ||
| Well, You Needn't | Thelonious Monk | 06 March 1954 |
| The Leap | Miles Davis | 06 March 1954 |
| Lazy Susan | Miles Davis | 06 March 1954 |
| Tempus Fugit (Alternate Take) | Bud Powell | 20 April 1953 |
| It Never Entered My Mind | Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart | 06 March 1954 |
Credits
Cover Photo: FRANCIS WOLFF Cover Design: HERMANSADER/MILES
Engineer:
Producer: ALFRED LION Liner Notes: LEONARD FEATHER
Liner Notes
|
AT THE END of 1955 Miles Davis received an unexpected Christmas gift. For the first time, the readers of Down Beat had elected him to first place on trumpet in the annual popularity poll. At that, it was a close race, with only a few votes separating him from the next two eligibles.
That this token of esteem was long overdue can be gauged by the fact that Miles, as far back as 1947, won a poll in which the voters were not the public but a handful of critics, who selected him as the new star of the year in the Esquire balloting. (He tied with Dizzy in this year's Down Beat Critics' poll, too.)
Poll victories, however, are a reflection neither of success nor of artistic merit. Miles' talent is its own best reward, for the music you can hear between these covers stands a good chance of lasting long after the details of the voting are forgotten.
Miles Dewey Davis - born Alton, Illinois, May 25, 1926, raised in East St. Louis, Dizzy and Bird admirer when the old Eckstine band passed through town, Julliard student in,1945, Fifty Second Street denizen, big band sideman with Eckstine and Benny Carter-is a singular human being. Today's leader is always yesterday's follower. Just as Dizzy Gillespie was the chrysalis that grew from an Eldridge egg, so was Miles the butterfly that emerged in the next stage of stylistic development. In fact, so swiftly did his own style develop that it is hard to remember back to the time when Miles' solos seemed to bear a resemblance to Dizzy's.
Wasn't it Barry Ulanov who once wrote that Miles' tone reminded him of a man walking on eggshells? If not, let whoever it was come forward and take a bow, for nothing could more aptly conjure up the manner in which Miles' notes emerge from the bell of his horn, the staccato yet fluid drive of his rhythmic conception. Melodically it would be harder to express his personality in words; one can only observe that if Dixieland is, as it has so often been called, "happy music” then the solos of Miles Davis more likely reflect the complexity of the neurotic world in which we live. The soaring spurts of lyrical exultancy are outnumbered by the somber moments of pensive gloom.
How can you prove it? Miles uses the same twelve notes every other living jazzman uses. Who can say that this music is happy and that music is sad? That Miles can be so completely Miles that Dizzy's Woody'n You assumes a new and un-Gillespieish coloration in his hands?
You can't prove it. All you can say is, well, that's what makes jazz the exciting thing it is, limning the character of the man who makes it, fabricating moods and transmitting thought vibrations in the very moment of creation. And in this process Miles is a past master.
- LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)
Cover Design by HERMANSADER/MILES
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
Producer Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records has often been credited with an ability to get performances out of great musicians that they never quite matched on other labels. This Miles Davis Sextet session of April 20, 1953 is a case in point, at least as it relates to the trumpeter's other work at the time. Davis taped three sessions for Prestige in early 1953 as well, yet none produced music of the brilliance heard here. It's not that Prestige skimped on supporting players, given that Charlie Parker (on tenor), Sonny Rollins, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, John Lewis and Max Roach were among the featured notables; or that the compositions recorded for Prestige were trite or unoriginal. Blue Note just seemed to find a balance of sidemen, old and new material, and ambience, the later generated in major part on this occasion by the dynamic Art Blakey. The results were so spectacular that the generally critical Davis even admitted to considering this one of his most successful days in a recording studio.
The instrumentation is similar to that of his first Blue Note date from a year earlier (included on Miles Davis Volume 1 in the RVG series), with tenor sax in place of alto sax. Both J.J. Johnson and Gil Coggins had appeared on the earlier session. Brothers Jimmy and Percy Heath were best known at this point for their respective tenures with Dizzy Gillespie, although Percy's new cooperative band the Modern Jazz Quartet was just starting to gain attention. Blakey was also garnering some overdue notices through his touring with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco's quartet. Davis, Johnson and the Heaths had also been part of a band called Jazz, Inc. that worked briefly in this period. These are players who were clearly comfortable with each other, and who may have played some of this very music in live performance.
Davis was said to have a touch as rare as Lion's when it came to getting the most out of musicians, and this is one early example of his ability to both find players with new ideas and provide a forum in which those ideas could be best expressed. The six selections, originally released on 78 singles and as the 10" LP Miles Davis Volume 2, are equally divided between new compositions and lines that had gained currency among modernists in the previous decade. There are also five alternate takes, three of which first appeared when the masters were first reissued on 12" LP. The present program gives us all of the master takes first, in the order of recording, followed by the five alternates. With one exception noted below, the alternates were recorded prior to the master takes.
The first two compositions are by Johnson. "Kelo" begins and ends with horn fanfares and drum breaks, and finds the sextet totally in synch in its execution of the 24-bar ABA theme. Davis plays two choruses, followed by Heath and Johnson (one apiece) and eight bars from Coggins on each take; and while the playing is uniformly strong, the leader and Heath assert themselves more on the master. One constant here and throughout the session is the earth-moving force of Blakey's beat.
"Enigma" is one of the great neglected jazz ballads. It's hard to understand why more musicians haven't covered this gem, given the sensitivity of Davis's reading and the taut arrangement that surrounds his horn. Clearly Lion was impressed with Johnson's contributions, because the trombonist recorded the first of his own three sessions for Blue Note two months later. Davis and Coggins are the soloists on both takes, each of which features some of Davis's strongest trumpet work of the period.
"Ray's Idea" is one of two titles identified with the 1946 Dizzy Gillespie big band and its chief arranger, Walter "Gil" Fuller. The Ray in this instance is bassist Ray Brown, who was responsible for the very boppish initial phrase of the melody. The introduction and the interlude between trumpet and tenor solos come from Fuller's arrangement, while the riff that launches Davis's first chorus on each take is a variation on the material that Gillespie blew over on the original recording. Blakey's forceful accompaniment was a step beyond the commentary of even the most active bop bomb-droppers, and almost steals the spotlight from soloists Davis, Heath and Coggins; yet both horn soloists display great poise and thrive on the active percussion commentary.
Blakey was only warming up, however, as we hear on the master take of Bud Powell's "Tempus Fugit." His playing is like a manifesto of the new hard bop style, and some of the most incredible drumming ever committed to record. The ringing ride cymbal, left-hand combinations, rim shots and deep tom-tom patterns would all become trademarks in Blakey's work with his own bands, and they reach a peak during Johnson's two heated choruses; then we get 16 bars of Afro-Latin grooving before the theme returns. This is the one instance on the session where the master take was cut before the alternate. Lion may have asked for one more in an attempt to get the band to come out of the introduction and into the theme more cleanly. They do, but the ensuing performance sounds button-downed in comparison, and the producer wisely stayed with the hotter initial take.
"C.T.A. " let the world know that Jimmy Heath was also a very talented composer. It presents a different kind of harmonic movement than the standard bop tune, one that each of the horn soloists (Davis in particular on the alternate take) find quite inspiring. The first trumpet chorus includes a band riff similar to the one heard on "Ray's Idea." Coggins was considered a superior accompanist, and shows why with his support 'here. Some indecision on the final theme chorus on the alternate take may have occasioned the subsequent master.
"I Waited for You," which had been the Gillespie big band's theme song and a feature for vocalist Kenny "Pancho" Hagood, is performed by Davis and the rhythm section. It has a lovely introduction and coda from Coggins, who subsequently recorded with his boyhood friends Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean as well as John Coltrane, and who joined Rollins and Percy Heath in a 1995 concert in New York City. Davis plays a ravishing theme chorus that sticks uncommonly close to the melody, followed by a half-chorus that takes greater liberties yet still keeps the striking melody in focus.
These recordings were made at a particularly difficult point in Davis's life, during which he was in the throes of heroin addiction. Soon he would retreat to his family's home in Illinois and conquer his habit through sheer force of will. The timeless strengths of this music, indicative of so much else that he would go on to accomplish, may have provided some of the motivation that Davis called upon to put his health and his career in order.
— Bob Blumenthal, 2001
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