Music Monday: More Miles, Cecil Taylor, and George Russell

I’m started to get invested in unpacking Miles Davis’s mid-1950s recordings. Many of these are the familiar outputs of his first great quintet (Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) who recorded throughout the mid-1950s. Cookin’ (1957) is a particular favorite of mine and was one of my introductions to jazz music in high school. Relaxin’ (1957) was partly recorded at the same time with the same ensemble.

One thing that listening to these albums albums has helped me understand is pace at which Miles and his bandmates accelerated over the mid-1950s. Listening to some of the recordings released as Miles 55: The Prestige Recordings (remastered in 2024) helped me appreciate how much both Miles’s playing and the quartet’s performances transformed between 1955 and 1956 and 1957. In 1955, they were playing advanced hard bop; two years later the seeds of modal jazz were there.   

As readers of this blog know, I’m fascinated by the concept of fragments, and I can’t wait to here the Cecil Taylor album Fragments due to drop on Record Store Day (whenever and whatever that is). Recorded life in Paris in 1969, it features Jimmy Lyons on alto, Sam Rivers on tenor, soprano, and flute, and Andrew Cyrille on bass. Like most Cecil Taylor, it is not chill, but it is vibrant and brilliant:

Finally, as the Formula 1 season approaches, it seems only appropriate to celebrate The Real George Russell ™. I’ve been enjoying his album, The Essence of George Russell (1971) which was recorded in Stockholm in 1966 and 1967. It involved the innovative use of tape and electronic music as well as a fantastic avant-garde jazz musicians such as Jan Garbarek and Stanton Davis and a big band. This album anticipates his other 1971 album Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature which captured the performance of some of this same music in 1969. It’s brilliant even if it has nothing to do with that other George Russell (the younger).