Miles Davis - Milestones (1969 Japanese Pressing, CBS/Sony Mono Vinyl LP)

Miles Davis - Milestones | Vinyl LP - 1969 CBS/Sony Japanese Pressing (SONP-50087, mono)

Miles Davis recorded Milestones across two sessions in early 1958 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in Manhattan. He'd been working with a quintet of Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums and John Coltrane on tenor saxophone since 1955, and for these sessions he added Cannonball Adderley on alto, expanding the group to a sextet for the first time. The album that resulted is the hinge between two eras in Davis's music. Five of the six tracks work on conventional hard bop harmony: Jackie McLean's "Dr. Jekyll" swings with an easy confidence, Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" stretches past ten minutes with solos from everyone, and Dizzy Gillespie and John Lewis's "Two Bass Hit" opens with a blazing unison statement from the three horns. But the title track, Davis's own composition, uses two scales and nothing else as its harmonic foundation. The band plays over modes rather than moving through chord changes, and the effect is open, spacious and unlike anything else Davis had recorded. He took the idea to its conclusion fourteen months later on Kind of Blue with a partly different band. Chambers and Coltrane came along; Garland and Jones did not. "Billy Boy" is the one track without the horns, a trio feature for Garland, Chambers and Jones that shows why Davis's rhythm section was the most sought-after in jazz.

This is the 1969 CBS/Sony Japanese pressing (SONP-50087), manufactured by CBS/Sony Records Inc. during the first year of the joint venture between Columbia Broadcasting System and Sony Corporation. It is a mono pressing, which reflects the original 1958 mono release (Columbia CL 1193) rather than the stereo edition (CS 8123). This pressing was issued without a Japanese liner note insert.