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
Few musicians in jazz history began their careers as leaders in the recording studio as auspiciously as Miles Davis. The first discs that bore his name found him at the head of Charlie Parker’s quintet for Savoy in 1947, with Bird himself playing tenor saxophone. Then came the three Nonet dates Davis cut for Capitol in 1949-50, later to be known as Birth Of The Cool, which have also been released in the RVG Series. These innovative sessions made a strong impression, and led to three straight victories for the trumpeter in the Metronome polls of 1951-3.
Yet even as he amassed awards, heroin was bringing Davis to the lowest point of his career. He rarely worked and his musicianship suffered. The recordings he made for Prestige and Blue Note in this period are generally uneven and frequently sluggish. At the end of 1953, he returned to his family’s home in Illinois and overcame his addiction. By late winter of 1954, he was back in New York, poised to realize further triumphs in a career that would last another four decades. This collection, the first of two that feature all of the music Davis recorded under his own name for Blue Note, finds the trumpeter on both sides of that crucial trip home.
The first sessions was recorded during a year that Davis biographer Ian Carr has described as generally “empty and miserable”, a judgment that the music bears out in part. Certainly the rhythmic snap of Davis’s best previous recordings is absent, and the material in general is less forward-looking than one had come to expect on his sessions. The band, however, represented one of Davis’s best ensembles, with established innovators paired alongside promising youngsters. Drummer Kenny Clarke was arguably the first modernist, and bassist Oscar Pettiford had been the leading voice on his instrument since the death of Jimmy Blanton. J.J. Johnson held a similar position among trombonists, and had worked with Davis previously in both Parker’s band and the Nonet. The new generation was rep resented by two young Harlem musicians, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean (who had made his recording debut seven months earlier on a Davis session for Prestige) and pianist Gil Coggins. The six titles were initially released on 78 singles, and in the 10” LP Young Man With A Horn. The session also produced three alternate takes, which are programmed here after the six master takes.
“Dear Old Stockholm” is the lone sign that, despite his problems, Davis was looking ahead. The melody is an old Swedish folk song that his friend Stan Getz had recorded a year earlier during a Scandinavian tour under its original title, “Ack Varmeland Du Skona” (Oh. Varméland, Thou Fairest). Davis added a vamp between melodic stanzas, plus a suspended ending to each chorus. He takes a tull solo chorus, then splits another with McLean (green but already a recognizable personality) and Johnson on a more deliberate version of what would become a classic arrangement in the hands of the 1956 Miles Davis Quintet.
Pettiford’s “Chance It” is one of several backward glances in this collection to the early days of bebop. The tune had been recorded under the title “Max Making Wax” on Charlie Parker’s notorious 1946 Lover Man session for Dial, with Howard McGhee on trumpet. The alternate was recorded before the master take (as were the other alternates in this collection) and has some rough moments when McLean’s reed squeaks and the rest of the rhythm section fails to enter for Davis’s fours with Clarke. Things are generally more centered on the master take, including the arranged interludes that take Davis into and through his two choruses, Mclean’s affinity for his neighborhood friend Sonny Rollins is particularly clear when he blows in the alto’s lower register.
“Donna,” credited to Mclean here, had been identified as a Davis composition when it appeared at a faster tempo under the title “Dig” on the trumpeter’s October 1951 sextet session with McLean and Rollins for Prestige. Under either name, it is a new melody based on the chord changes of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” The band gets a strong medium-tempo groove going that allows Pettiford to show both his rhythmic strength and melodic imagination; and Davis and McLean bear down in their choruses with the altoist beginning his statement on both takes by quoting Parker’s “Sweet Georgia Brown” solo from the 1945 JATP recording. The master is a bit brighter in overall mood.
The Dizzy Gillespie standard that follows has been subjected to many spellings, including “Would’n You” on the original Blue Note release. The piece, written by Gillespie for Woody Herman, should properly be rendered as “Woody ‘N’ You.” There is a hint of its big band origin in this arrangement, with countermelodies on the theme statement and Johnson and Mclean riffing behind Davis’s solo chorus. Johnson and Pettiford also split a chorus before Davis’s returns, blowing on the bridge. There is a momentary nod to Gillespie during Davis’s solo on the master. This is another composition that the 1956 Davis group would revisit.
Two ballads by Davis and the rhythm section complete the date. The trumpeter had participated in a Lee Konitz session for Prestige 14 months earlier where “Yesterdays” was recorded, contributing a strong introduction and coda on that occasion. Here he lets Coggins open, then takes over for three choruses. There is some uncharacteristic double-timing during the second chorus, but otherwise the performance features the ballad sensitivity that was already a Davis trademark.
Charlie Parker had recorded “How Deep Is The Ocean?” at his final session for Dial in 1947. On that occasion, guest J.J. Johnson (24 bars) and Davis (eight bars) split a solo chorus. This time the trombonist lays out, and Davis carries the performance after a lovely Coggins intro. While the mature Davis sound is not yet present, and the melodic shapes are more symmetrical than we would come to expect in the trumpeter’s later work, the haunting emotional climate is unmistakable.
The March 6. 1954 quartet session was Davis’s first after overcoming his heroin dependency. It looks both backward and forward , focusing on many of the ideas that Davis would revisit throughout the decade; and it includes a rhythm section that was well attuned to his new directions. Horace Silver and Percy Heath would continue to record with the trumpeter throughout the year, and this identical quartet with Art Blakey on drums made a second studio appearance nine days later for Prestige. The present six titles formed the 10” LP Miles Davis Volume 3, with all but “Take Off” and “It Never Entered My Mind” also appearing on 45 rpm singles.
“Take Off” is a themeless inspection of the chord sequence that the Davis Nonet had recorded as “Deception” (credited to Davis) in 1950, and Davis had reprised as “Conception” (credited to George Shearing) on the 1951 sextet date that produced “Dig.” The changes are laced with harmonic suspensions that offer a preview of Davis’s late-fifties modal style, and the trumpet solos also reveal the growing concern for space that would mark his mature work.
“Lazy Susan” is another themeless track on a familiar set of chords — in this case the Tadd Dameron “Ladybird” sequence that Davis had used as the basis for his “Half Nelson” in 1947. There is a relaxed feeling here that allows Heath’s masterful walking lines to shine through, and a beautiful series of exchanges between Davis and Blakey after Silver has soloed.
“The Leap” employs a chorus based on the changes of “Get Happy,” then introduces a harmonic suspension that carries over into the first eight bars of the next chorus and lasts LS bars in all. The leap” takes place once the soloist moves back to the familiar harmonic pattern. Both Davis and Silver take quickly to the mixed form, each displaying an assertiveness that would quickly become associated with the hard bop style these musicians were pioneering.
Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t” had been introduced by the composer on Blue Note seven years earlier, but had yet to catch on as the jazz standard it would soon become. This version is more deliberate than the one recorded by the ’56 Davis Quintet, but no less inventive. Davis would also record a themeless take on these changes fir Prestige a year later and call it “I Didn’t”.
Challenging altered blues changes had been a Davis specialty since his 1946 “Sippin’ At Bell’s” “Weirdo” is one of his most ingenious explorations in this vein, and turns the simple line “Walkin’”, that he would record for Prestige in the following month into a far more mysterious terrain. There are two great solos from the leader, as well as a provocative Silver chorus. This melody would reappear under the title “Sid’s Ahead”, with Davis playing both trumpet and piano, on the 1958 Columbia album Milestones.
“It Never Entered My Mind” was also revisited by Davis on Prestige in 1956. At that point, he had switched from the cup mute heard here to Harmon mute, and had expanded ideas that underpin this arrangement. While that later version is one of his ballad masterpieces, this earlier take also includes beautiful playing from the perspective of both sounds and ideas. Miles Davis was clearly back to stay.
Davis cut one other session for Blue Note between the two included here. It can be found on Miles Davis Volume 2 in the RVG series, and features some of his most important work from the period.
--Bob Blumenthal, 2001
