Miles Davis All-Stars - Walkin' (1957 compi of 1954 EPs)

An essential collection of early Miles Davis, from when he was newly cleaned-up and sounding fresh and vital.  This album paired two earlier 10" mini-LPs, recorded at two sessions in April 1954 with slightly different lineups.  The first two sextet tracks are bold, confident settings-out of his hard bop stall that would lead to milestone albums like, er, Milestones.  The title track might have been taken at increasingly breakneck speeds in concert, but here's it's at a perfect swagger, leaving the fast tempos for Dizzy Gillespie's Blue & Boogie.

The three quintet tracks from the other EP are both a throwback to cool jazz and a sign of things to come in Miles' mellower records.  The trumpet mute goes in, and an absolute Miles classic, Solar, is first up before the group relax into two great standards.  Early Miles Davis, just before the First Great Quintet, doesn't get much better than this.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Blue Moods
Bags' Groove
Miles Ahead
Sketches Of Spain
On The Corner
Agharta

Miles Davis - Bags' Groove (1957 compi, rec. 1954)

One of my absolute favourite albums of early, pre-Columbia Miles Davis - and actually a compilation of two 10" mini-albums, Miles Davis With Sonny Rollins recorded in June 1954, and Miles Davis All Stars Vol. 1, recorded on Xmas eve that same year.

It's all about the magnificent, knockout triple-punch of Sonny Rollins compositions for me, all of which would become widely-covered standards.  This inspired collaboration between Davis and Rollins would unfortunately prove to be a one-off (the omnipresent drug problems of 50s jazz, apparently); listen to these tracks and imagine what could've been.  Also recorded was Gershwin's But Not For Me, showing that this quintet were equally versatile with ballads and standards.

The 'All Stars' session from the end of the year featured another rare congress of striking personalities, with Thelonious Monk on piano and Milt 'Bags' Jackson on vibes.  Bags' Groove, the composition, is the very definition of mid-50's cool.  This compilation is rounded out by two alternate takes - of the title track, and But Not For Me.  Prestige seem to have been quite the label for offering value for money - I never knew until today's discogs browse that they'd done 16rpm compilations, offering presumably over an hour of music on one disc decades before the advent of CDs.  Sorry, I love trivia like that...

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