Much has been written about what is perhaps trumpeter Miles Davis' most controversial album, On The Corner (Columbia, 1972). Already shaken from the electric onslaught of Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1969), A Tribute To Jack Johnson (Columbia, 1970), and a series of live or, in the case of Live-Evil (Columbia, 1970), largely live releases, it was the album that finally sent most jazz critics running for the hills, but not before weighing in with strong condemnation of what was universally considered a sell-out.

Revisiting the album, and the two June, 1992 sessions from which it was culled, on The Complete On The Corner Sessions, one can only wonder who it was that critics felt Davis was selling out to.

Thirty-five years later, On The Corner has taken its rightful place as one of Davis' most influential electric recordings; a dense, jagged, near-55 minutes that may have grooved, but was hardly the kind of music to which the young demographic of the time was listening.

By this time, many of Davis' illustrious band mates from the mid-to-late-1960s had moved into the fusion camp—guitarist John McLaughlin's raw but beautiful Mahavishnu Orchestra, keyboard players Chick Corea's increasingly progressive rock-informed Return to Forever and Herbie Hancock's more approachably funky Head Hunters, and keyboard player Joe Zawinul/saxophonist Wayne Shorter's collaboration Weather Report, which began closest to Davis' electric work but would ultimately move towards more commercially approachable (and successful) music.

While there's no shortage of hypnotic, booty-shaking grooves on On The Corner, there's an angularity—and a lack of the more formal structures that Davis' fusion cousins were using—that made it largely inaccessible to the audience the trumpeter was targeting at the time. Davis was no stranger to innovations that were ahead of his time, but few (if any) of his other albums have taken so long to be recognized for their significance.

From a trumpeter who'd established his reputation as a lyrical player with an appealing tone, there's little that can be called pretty or lyrical about On The Corner; even McLaughlin's tone is almost guttural. But if On The Corner wasn't melodic or eminently appealing in tone, it was a remarkable mix of stylistic ideas that ran the gamut from 20th Century classical composition to tabla and sitar-driven Indo-centricity, all tied together by Davis' fascination with the unshakable groove music of Sly Stone and James Brown.

The Complete On The Corner Sessions represents, however, more than the music recorded for that controversial album; it includes every studio session from March 9, 1972 through to May 5, 1975, Davis' last studio date before heading into a self-imposed period of retirement for half a decade, finally reemerging as the star and, some might argue (though incorrectly), the sell-out that he was so often accused of being from the moment he plugged in, in the late 1960s.

The set contains much of the material that would ultimately surface on Big Fun and Get Up With It, both on Columbia, from 1974, although some of the material on those releases can be found on The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (Legacy, 2003) and The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (Legacy, 1998). In fact, the only track that isn't on any of the box sets in its final form is "Great Expectations," which appears as a thirteen-minute track on the Bitches Brew box, half the length of the Teo Macero-collaged version on Big Fun.

A six-CD set, perhaps the most striking of Legacy's series of Miles Davis box sets, The Complete On The Corner Sessions is housed in a metal box with raised versions of the cartoon-like street images from the original album. A 120-page book brings together the previously unexplored perspective of British composer/cellist Paul Buckmaster (who, for Davis, was a significant link to the contemporary classical music of artists like Karlheinz Stockhausen), along with a lengthy essay by journalist Tom Terrell and brief pieces by series co-producer Bob Belden.

The aesthetic appeal of the box is undeniable, but it's the music—especially the three-plus hours of unreleased material and unedited masters—that matters (and the definitively remastered versions of the material already available). It's a window, not just into the mind of Davis, but of producer Teo Macero, who innovatively utilized primitive looping (does anyone remember two inch tape and an Exacto knife?) to shape the lengthy jam of "On The Corner" into the far more remarkable "On The Corner/New York Girl/Thinkin' Of One Thing And Doin' Another/Vote for Miles," and pare the nearly eighteen minutes of "One And One" into its final six-minute form.