Miles Davis - Bags' Groove (1974 Japanese Prestige Mono Vinyl LP)

Miles Davis - Bags' Groove | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese Prestige Mono Reissue (LPR-8865, Toshiba-EMI)

Bags' Groove pulls together two 1954 sessions Miles Davis cut for Prestige, both recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at his studio in Hackensack. The first, from June, has him leading a young Sonny Rollins on tenor, Horace Silver on piano, Percy Heath on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums, and it is where three Rollins tunes that became standards first appeared: "Airegin", "Oleo" and "Doxy". The second, cut on Christmas Eve, swaps in Milt Jackson's vibraphone and Thelonious Monk's piano for two long, unhurried takes of Jackson's blues "Bags' Groove". That date is famous for its friction: Miles, it is said, asked Monk to lay out behind his solos, and you can hear the two circling each other. Whatever passed between them, the music is superb, Miles spare and lyrical over one of the great rhythm sections.

The record catches Miles in the middle of the 1950s, a couple of years before he formed his first great quintet, already playing with the economy that would define him. Prestige gathered the sessions onto a single LP in 1957 and named it after the Milt Jackson blues, and it has been a staple of his catalogue ever since, as much for the Rollins tunes as for Miles himself.

This is the 1974 Japanese pressing on Prestige, manufactured by Toshiba-EMI in mono, with a Japanese insert carrying Ira Gitler's original notes alongside new ones by Masamichi Okazaki.