Miles Davis - Volume 2 (1977 Japanese Blue Note GXF-3012 Limited Edition Vinyl LP Mono)

Miles Davis - Volume 2 | Vinyl LP Mono - 1977 Japanese Blue Note Limited Edition Reissue (GXF-3012(M), King Record Co. Ltd)

These sessions catch Davis before almost everything he is remembered for. He was 25 at the first of them, five years past the Charlie Parker quintet and four past the Birth of the Cool nonet, and deep enough into heroin addiction that he later wrote that he, Jimmy Heath and Art Blakey were all high in the studio at the 1953 date. The First Great Quintet was still two years away. What the three sessions document is a trumpeter working out what to do with the bebop vocabulary he had learned from Parker and Gillespie, and the results are less consistent than his later records but frequently startling. The May 1952 date, his first for Blue Note, has Jackie McLean a few days short of his twenty-first birthday alongside J.J. Johnson, Gil Coggins, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke, and McLean's own "Donna" is one of two tracks from it here. The April 1953 session swaps in Jimmy Heath on tenor and his brother Percy on bass with Blakey on drums, and the material is drawn from the bebop composer's canon: Bud Powell's "Tempus Fugit," Gillespie and Gil Fuller's "I Waited for You," Ray Brown's "Ray's Idea." Both of the 1953 tracks here are alternate masters, which Lion added to fill the extra space the 12-inch format gave him.

The March 1954 quartet session is where the record settles. No second horn, just Davis with Horace Silver, Percy Heath and Blakey, and it accounts for six of the eleven tracks. "Well You Needn't" is Monk's, and Davis takes it without any of the angularity Monk brought to his own material. "It Never Entered My Mind" is the ballad, played with the Harmon mute and the economy that would define him within two years. "Take-Off," "Weirdo," "The Leap" and "Lazy Susan" fill the rest. Silver was 25 and had joined Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and his comping here is already unmistakable. Alfred Lion produced all three sessions. Doug Hawkins recorded the 1952 and 1953 dates at WOR Studios on Broadway, and Rudy Van Gelder recorded the 1954 session at Hackensack and remastered the earlier material for this compilation. F

This is the 1977 Japanese limited edition on Blue Note GXF-3012(M), manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd.