words: Charles Waring

If Miles Davis’s musical legacy was judged only on the albums he recorded in the early part of his life – for Capitol, Prestige and Blue Note in the 1950s – and for Warner Bros. at the twilight of his career in the 1980s, there’s no doubt that he would still be regarded as a significant musician in the history of jazz. But while the incipient phase of Davis’s career as a band leader yielded at least three groundbreaking albums that helped define the blueprint for modern jazz – think Birth Of The Cool, Walkin’, and Cookin’ – it was when the trumpeter joined Columbia Records in 1957 that he began to make music that transformed him not only into an iconic superstar but also one of the world’s most influential recording artists.

Despite the undoubted merits of the music he made for other labels, Miles’ prodigious Columbia canon represents by far the greatest phase of his career: spanning four decades, the richly fertile period he spent with the label (from 1957-1985) witnessed the trumpeter move through several dramatic stylistic changes: after the hard bop of his ’57 Columbia debut, Round About Midnight, he explored modal jazz on 1959’s Kind Of Blue and then married jazz with Gil Evans’ classical-influenced orchestrations on Sketches Of Spain. After a period of treading water in the early ‘60s, Miles emerged with a new, young, quintet in 1965 that perfected an edgy, abstract, post-bop jazz style, epitomised by the album E.S.P. By the late-‘60s, Miles had dropped the crisp, chic Italian designer suits for hippie attire and embraced electronic instruments – this change resulting in key rock-inflected albums like In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew. By that time, Miles no longer played in jazz clubs but wowed rock audiences in large auditoriums.

Another radical move away from jazz’s orthodox orbit occurred with the outré 1972 album, On The Corner, which melded astral funk with elements from jazz, rock and non-western music. By 1976, Miles’ career was in limbo due to ill health and although he was still signed with Columbia, he didn’t record again until 1981, when he resumed his recording career. His final Columbia album was 1985’s You’re Under Arrest, which found the trumpeter interpreting pop songs by Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson.

All 52 albums Miles recorded for Columbia can be found attired in mini LP-style sleeves in a nicely-packaged box set that chronicles 28 years of intensive music-making. Of course, this leviathan of a retrospective (70s CDs in all) is not aimed at the casual Miles fan – it’s a heavyweight release ostensibly aimed at serious collectors and released to coincide with an exhibition and tribute to Miles Davis called ‘We Love Miles,’ which opened in October at the Museé de la Musique in Paris and runs until January 17^th 2010.

Although it’s more than likely that most Miles collectors will already own the majority of the key Columbia albums – or at least core titles like Miles Ahead, Porgy & Bess, Kind Of Blue, Bitches Brew et al – the £140 price tag (as presently offered by Amazon UK) is a good incentive for prospective buyers. Even more of an incentive is the presence of some highly desirable unreleased material – such as the complete Isle Of Wight festival performance by Miles and his band from August 1970, which has never been available on CD before. The box set also includes a DVD of previously unseen footage of Miles’ second great quintet (featuring Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and wunderkind drummer Tony Williams) performing on tour in Europe during 1967. Other rarities present are: Miles performing as co-leader of a quintet live in Paris in 1949 alongside Tadd Dameron; a couple of sought-after outtakes from Miles’ final collaboration with arranger Gill Evans, Quiet Nights (one of the rare tracks, ‘Devil May Care,’ is often cited as representing one of Miles’ greatest solos); a new two-CD distillation of unedited performances culled from the now deleted 8-CD box set, The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel; and three tracks taken from the long out-of-print 1981 Japanese-only live album, Miles! Miles! Miles! which have been added to extend the album We Want Miles.

Most of the albums in the set are sourced from Columbia’s expanded remasters of Miles’ work, which the company has been reissuing in several phases during the last decade. To the chagrin of some collectors, though, a handful of Miles’s later Columbia albums have not yet received the remastering treatment – these include the 1975 live in Japan double sets, Agharta (a neglected gem in Miles’ catalogue) and Pangaea; the compilations Circle In The Round and Directions plus ‘80s albums like The Man With The Horn and Star People. Thankfully, though, this box set includes newly remastered versions of the above-mentioned albums, which will certainly aid their re-evaluation by both fans and the critics.

Of course, whether a box set is worth acquiring or not often depends on the accompanying annotation as well as the music content. Happily, this assemblage contains a 250-page book that’s packed with rarely-seen photos, loads of discographical information (which will please the anoraks and Miles cognoscenti) and a lengthy essay entitled ‘Miles Davis – In Perpetual Motion’ by French jazz writer, Frederic Goaty. It all adds up to a stupendous package that attests to the pathfinding genius of Miles Dewey Davis III – but is it worth £140? A resounding “yes!” is the answer. If you do the math, it works out at an insane £1.97 a disc (that’s if you include the DVD in the equation) and even if, like me, you already own many or most of the CDs in the collection, the box set is a must-have because it’s a mini-history of modern jazz and brings together in one convenient format some of the greatest music of the twentieth century. So, at 140 quid this collection represents an incredible bargain.

Better start writing that letter to Santa right now then.