Cookin' With the Miles Davis Quintet

*****
Wonderful music 28 Oct 2007

1956 was a good year for Miles Davis. In two days in the studio he fulfilled the requirements of his contract with Prestige, and produced four brilliant albums to boot. The band - the first "great quintet" of Davis, Coltrane, Garland, Jones and Chambers - was playing supremely well, and the material was an exciting mix of perfectly-delivered standards and newer jazz compositions.

It would be wrong to argue that any one of the four albums recorded in 1956 (the others are Relaxin', Workin' and Steamin' all "with the Miles Davis Quintet") is better than the others, as each demonstrates moments of inspired genius in different ways, but this is for me one to which I turn more frequently than the others. There is one obvious reason for this, which is Paul Chambers' bass playing on "My Funny Valentine", yet the overall effect is important too. This feels like a club set, with its mix of easy swing and straightahead workouts, and the final pairing of Tune-Up and When Lights are Low works brilliantly.

As I suggested in my review of Relaxin, this is an album that every lover of jazz music simply must own, but its appeal will stretch far beyond this one corner of the musical world. Anyone with a serious interest in music will find here imagination, musicianship and playing of the very highest order, and one of the great albums of the 20th century.