Music Monday: Miles Davis

There’s a bunch of very good music that’s come out over the last few weeks. Blue Note records, under the leadership of the estimable Don Was has been responsible for more that it’s share. 

Last week, I mentioned Mile Davis’s first studio album, The New Sounds (1951) which Craft Records recently remastered. I’m sharing a video of someone playing a version of the album on a 10-inch microgroove “LP”. The New Sounds features Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Walter Bishop on piano, Tommy Potter on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. This was recorded for Bob Weinstock’s Prestige Records at Apex Studios in New York. One of the fascinating things about Weinstock’s work at Apex was that Rudy Van Gelder (who would go on to become Blue Note’s house engineer) recorded many of the sessions. I find that these Apex Studio Prestige dates have a distinctive sound (with some recordings — such as those on January 17th (see below) suggesting a different set up and possibly a different engineer).

Miles second studio 10-inch album came out from Blue Note, rather than Prestige, as Davis didn’t have an exclusive contract. Young Man with a Horn released in 1953 is one of the albums shaped (evidently) by Davis’s (and most of the other musicians) struggles with heroin. There is a kind of raggedness to it that I find appealing and vibrant, but may reflect the less than sharp mental state of the performers.

Heroin abuse also shaped Davis’s album, Blue Period, another 10-inch from Prestige, which appeared in 1953 and it included three tracks recorded in 1951. I wasn’t able to find this album on Youtube, but it is not hard to reconstruct on a streaming service by combining its three tracks which appeared on later 12-inch albums (notable Dig and Miles Davis and Horns). I’ve always wondered why “Blue Room (Take 1)” recorded on January 17, 1951 sounded so different from the other tracks on this album with far more studio sound and reverb. The mics, I assume were set further from the musicians picking up more echo.