Miles Davis: Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet

1955/56 was an inflection point in the career of Miles Davis. The trumpeter and bandleader went from a promising talent to the high profile face of jazz and popular music. The two marathon sessions, May 11 and October 26, 1956, that created Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet along with Cookin', Relaxin' and Steamin' might have been written off by Davis as a mere fulfillment of his contract duties for Prestige Records. He had signed a more lucrative contract with the dominant and influential Columbia Records that would eventually make him a wealthy man and a global superstar. These sessions though are a precious documentation of Davis' first great quintet as a working ensemble and are not to be overlooked.

Davis was famous for spotting talent, hiring and eventually firing musicians. This ultimately launched many a sidemen's career. This particular quintet came together when Sonny Rollins left Davis' band and was replaced by the relatively unknown tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. Together with pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones, this ensemble is now recognized as Davis' first great quintet. Coltrane would be fired shortly after these sessions due to his drug habit and would continue his development with Thelonious Monk. In the 1960s, Davis' second great quintet would include Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams.

The brilliance of Workin' and the accompanying sessions was the quintet performing, not new material as you might expect from a studio session, but familiar tunes from their nightly performance repertoire. That attribute comes across in his recording with Davis choice of Richard Rodgers' "It Never Entered My Mind," Davis' favorite pianist Ahmad Jamal's "Ahmad's Blues," Dave Brubeck's "In Your Own Sweet Way," Coltrane's "Trane's Blues," and the his own composition "Four," all music you would hear from the quintet's live performances.

Craft Recordings has painstakingly remastered the analog original tapes and pressed the music onto 180-gram vinyl for this reissue. The detail that went into this precious document is of the highest order.

Comments