More Miles Davis

• Insanely good sound throughout for this extremely rare original Prestige Yellow and Black label pressing with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
• This early Mono pressing takes the sound of the recording to a place we never thought it could go – never have we heard an album from these famous sessions sound as good as this very LP
• An original in pristine condition, with this kind of sound, is a record that is very unlikely to pass our way again
• 5 stars: “The end results are consistently astonishing. At the center of Steamin’, as with most outings by this band, are the group improvisations which consist of solo upon solo of arguably the sweetest and otherwise most swinging interactions known to have existed between musicians.”

WOW — this Prestige Yellow Label Mono pressing has some of the most realistic, natural Miles Davis sound we’ve ever heard! Both sides earned A+++ grades and play Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus, truly exceptional for a vintage pressing such as this one. You will have an incredibly difficult time finding a copy that can hold its own with this one.

In the past we’ve offered some later pressings that we felt did an excellent job of communicating the music. Hearing the sound with even more life and immediacy as we did here caught us completely by surprise. This copy took the experience and enjoyment of Miles’ and his bandmates’ improvisations to another level.

As a purely practical matter, it’s hard to imagine you could get this music to sound any more realistic and lifelike than it does here while playing with audiophile quality surfaces.

Those familiar with the classic Miles / Coltrane / Paul Chambers / Red Garland / Philly Joe Jones lineup from the mid-’50s simply cannot do better than this copy of Steamin’. It plays Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus with no groove damage or scratches, which is pretty darn amazing in its own right.

Mistakes Were Made

If you made the mistake of buying the awful 5 Disc set of the complete Prestige sessions Acoustic Sounds released in 1996 — half-speed mastered by Stan Ricker (and of course ruined; can you imagine the sound of his phony 10k top end boost on Miles’ muted trumpet?) — comparing that audiophile crap to this pressing would be a good, albeit expensive, way to find out just how wrong those AP records sound.

A cheaper approach would be to buy any of the Steve Hoffman gold CDs of the albums, which, to these ears, are dramatically more natural sounding in every way. In my world, good digital beats bad analog any day. I simply cannot fathom how Acoustic Sounds could produce so much awful sounding vinyl and still be in business, but visiting any audiophile forum will quickly disabuse the reader of any pretense of well-developed critical listening skills to be found among the posters who lurk there. People, especially audiophiles, seem to like the trash these remastering labels have been putting out for decades, and that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.

What amazing sides such as these have to offer is not hard to hear:

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1956 when they were recorded, or 1961 when the album was released
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

The Giants Who Played with Miles on Steamin’

Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – Philly Joe Jones
Piano – Red Garland
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane

What We Listen For on Steamin’

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Side One

Surrey With the Fringe on Top 
Salt Peanuts 
Something I Dreamed Last Night

Side Two

Diane 
Well, You Needn’t 
When I Fall in Love

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

Although chronologically the last to be issued, this collection includes some of the best performances from the tapes which would produce the albums Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and ultimately, Steamin’. A primary consideration of these fruitful sessions is the caliber of musicians — Miles Davis (trumpet), Red Garland (piano), John Coltrane (tenor sax), and Philly Joe Jones (drums) — who were basically doing their stage act in the studio. As actively performing musicians, the material they are most intimate with would be their live repertoire. Likewise, what more obvious place than a studio is there to capture every inescapable audible nuance of the combo’s musical group mind. The end results are consistently astonishing. At the center of Steamin’, as with most outings by this band, are the group improvisations which consist of solo upon solo of arguably the sweetest and otherwise most swinging interactions known to have existed between musicians.

“Surrey With the Fringe on Top” is passed between the mates like an old joke. Garland compliments threads started by Davis and Coltrane as their seamless interaction yields a stream of strikingly lyrical passages. There are two well-placed nods to fellow bop pioneers Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on a revision of their “Salt Peanuts.” Philly Joe Jones’ mimicking cymbal speak — which replicates Gillespie’s original vocals — is nothing short of genius. This rendition is definitely as crazy and unpredictable here as the original. Thelonious Monk also gets kudos on “Well, You Needn’t.” This quintet makes short work of the intricacies of the arrangement, adding the double horn lead on the choruses and ultimately redefining this jazz standard. Although there is no original material on Steamin’, it may best represent the ability of the Miles Davis quintet to take standards and rebuild them to suit their qualifications.

Charles Waring on The Classic Prestige Sessions

Some of the most spectacular jazz of the 50s (or of any era, for that matter) appears on The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions. It is a 6LP compilation that brings together all of the sides recorded for Bob Weinstock’s jazz indie label by Miles Davis and his groundbreaking young group. When the quintet formed in July 1955, saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones were all relatively unknown to the music-buying public, but that situation would quickly change. Indeed, they would quickly become revered by jazz fans as gods.

“He had an idea set in his mind”

“These sessions for Prestige are what I’m really most proud of him for,” says the trumpeter’s son and former percussionist, Erin Davis, in an exclusive interview with Discover Music. “The music he did wasn’t intended to be legendary but was what he just wanted to get done. He had an idea set in his mind, and he knew that bringing in the right musicians would make that happen. He was like: ‘Let’s go to the studio and call the tunes. We don’t need to talk about arrangements or solos, let’s just feel it.’”

“They just got together and called out the tunes,” adds Erin’s cousin, Vince Wilburn, a drummer with Miles Davis’ band in the 80s. “Uncle Miles liked to get it done on the first take. That way you get the synergy of the band. Both Erin and I can attest that he didn’t like to go beyond one or two takes in any music he made. He loved spontaneity. You had to be on your toes to capture what he wanted. I can only imagine what it was like when you had Coltrane and these guys in the studio.”

On The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions, all the tracks are presented in chronological order, rather than how Bob Weinstock sequenced them for release. It gives the impression of hearing a live concert in the studio. Says Erin Davis: “In Stanley Nelson’s documentary on my dad, Birth Of The Cool, the writer Jack Chambers talks about how these albums are gems of spontaneous music in the way that they recorded them. So I think a lot of people like these particular sessions because Miles and his band were working in a free environment when they were recording.

“You can feel the camaraderie and pride”

Miles Davis expressed his enthusiasm for the group in this passage from his autobiography: “By the beginning of 1956, I was really enjoying playing with this group and enjoying listening to them plays as individuals.” His son Erin confirms that his father was immensely fond of his first quintet. “This was one of the bands that he used to talk to me about,” he reveals. “He didn’t talk about the music very much, but I remember he used to tell us about Philly Joe all the time. He would tell Vincent and me stories about stuff that happened on the road – but a lot of it I’d be a little reticent to repeat!”

Says Wilburn: “He didn’t talk about his old music very much, but he would always be telling jokes about Philly Joe. The camaraderie, the friendships, the seriousness of the music, and the pride of musicians are the things that you can feel on those Prestige dates. To call off those songs in the studio and make records consecutively like that and put them out was incredible.”

The first album in the box set came from a 16 November session in 1955, which resulted in the group’s debut album, Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet. Miles often used a muted horn, which brought a sense of vulnerability to his sound. Erin says, “The mute gave him a human sound, like a voice, and it’s very compelling. His romanticism came through his music on ballads.”

“He would always pick guys you never expected”

Miles’ lean, lyrical style, compared to Coltrane’s dense, robust yet rhapsodic solos, made the saxophonist – who was then largely unknown – the trumpeter’s perfect foil. “They complemented each other,” says Erin Davis. “You could hear in what he was playing that there was something special in Coltrane. My dad would always pick guys that you never expected him to take. He could hear something in someone’s playing and wanted to have them join his band.”

With Garland providing delicately-sparkling piano and Chambers and Jones establishing an ESP-like rapport with their bass and drums, the group immediately established itself as one of jazz’s leading small ensembles. “It’s like the all-star team of the greats,” says Vince Wilburn. “That band was like a masterclass.”

Highlights from Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet ranged from the beautifully mellow swinger ‘Just Squeeze Me’, to the moodier but more energetic ‘S’posin’’ and ‘Stablemates’, both archetypal slices of classic 50s hard bop. The album also featured the Miles Davis-penned ‘The Theme’, which the trumpeter would use to close his live sets for many years.

The quintet’s second Prestige album, Cookin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet – whose highlights included ‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘Airegin’ – was recorded on 26 October 1956, but by the time it came, out in July 1957, Miles’ group had released their first Columbia album, ’Round About Midnight.

“A masterclass in working the tunes”

Rather than saturate the market, Bob Weinstock had decided to stagger the release of Davis’ remaining Prestige albums over several years. Relaxin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet appeared in March 1958, drawn from both of the trumpeter’s marathon final sessions for Prestige, two years earlier. The album’s killer cuts were a scintillating version of ‘If I Were A Bell’ and a dynamic reconfiguration of Sonny Rollins’ ‘Oleo’.

Prestige released Workin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet in December 1959. By that time, Miles Davis was a jazz superstar having just released the immortal Kind Of Blue for Columbia several months earlier. Like Relaxin’, Workin’ was drawn from the May and October 1956 sessions, and featured ‘Trane’s Blues’, ‘Four’ (a Miles-penned tune that became a jazz standard) and the hauntingly beautiful ‘It Never Entered My Mind’. The latter was a song that Miles had recorded for Blue Note two years earlier.

The band’s final Prestige album was Steamin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet. That, too, was sourced from the same sessions as the Cookin’, Relaxin’ and Workin’ albums, and, like those, is a consistently engaging set characterised by potent individual and collective performances. It contains excellent versions of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Well, You Needn’t’, Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Salt Peanuts’ (showcasing the firecracker trap work of Philly Joe Jones) and the lesser-known Rodgers and Hammerstein tune ‘The Surrey With The Fringe On Top’, which pianist Ahmad Jamal popularised in the early 50s.

“They’re like the Holy Grail”

The sixth and final disc in The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions features some rare bonus material, including essential recordings that capture Davis’ group performing live. There are four songs from New York’s Café Bohemia – the venue where the quintet honed their craft – two from Philadelphia’s Blue Note Club and a couple the group performed on the popular TV show Tonight Starring Steve Allen. They give a taste of what this magnificent band sounded like playing in front of an audience.

Vince Wilburn first became acquainted with his uncle’s classic Prestige albums as a youngster. “I grew up on the south side of Chicago, and my parents used to play all these records in the basement,” he says. “I remember just lying in bed listening to them.”

Erin Davis went to live with his father when he was 14, but says there were none of his old records in the house. It was only after Miles passed away, in 1991, that Erin began discovering how extensive and varied his father’s back catalogue was. “To be honest, after he died, I was looking to fill that hole, and I listened to a lot of his music. I just took it upon myself to explore his catalogue and started deep-diving into music from so many different periods. When I put the Prestige sessions on, it’s just a masterclass in working the tunes.”

“They’re just that good”

Beautifully presented in a linen-wrapped hardcover book format, The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions boasts an insightful essay by eminent jazz scholar Bob Blumenthal. Each disc has been pressed on 180g vinyl and manufactured by the California-based company Record Technology Incorporated (RTI), regarded by many as the world’s leading pressing plant for LP production.

Sixty-three years on, the world is still talking about the Miles Davis Quintet’s Prestige recordings. “These are gems to me,” says Vince Wilburn. “They’re like the Holy Grail.”

His cousin, Erin Davis, echoes his sentiments. “They’re just that good,” he enthuses. “Getting that band together, doing those tracks and immortalising it on tape – I love my dad for that. The tunes are what they are, but those guys make them so much more.”