Miles Davis on Vinyl: A Guide to Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew and the Electric Years

Miles Dewey Davis III was born on May 26, 1926 in Alton, Illinois, outside St. Louis, and grew up in East St. Louis. He played in Charlie Parker's quintet in the mid 1940s, led the Capitol nonet sessions known as the birth of the cool around 1949 and 1950, and had a hard bop band on Prestige by 1954. He died in Santa Monica, California on September 28, 1991, at 65.

What makes the catalog unusual is how many times he started over. Modal playing arrives with Milestones in 1958 and Kind of Blue in 1959. The electric band runs from In a Silent Way in 1969 to Agharta in 1975. Then he stopped for five years, until a 1980 session brought him back with a younger group built on electric bass and guitar. He left Columbia in the mid 1980s and spent his last years on Warner Bros.

So buying Miles Davis on vinyl means picking a period first: the acoustic groups, the electric bands and the 1980s quintet barely sound like the same musician. GOOD TASTE carries ten distinct Miles Davis albums across all of it, from the 1954 Prestige dates to a record built from his samples long after he died, in session order below.

Miles Davis All-Stars - Solar

A reissue of the Prestige material credited to the Miles Davis All-Stars, cut at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio on April 3 and April 29, 1954 and gathered as Walkin' in March 1957. Solar, named for a tune from the April 3 quintet date, puts J. J. Johnson, Lucky Thompson, Horace Silver, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke behind him.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the earliest Davis in our racks.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Silver, Heath and Clarke on both dates.
• Why it's worth purchasing: a 180 gram cut of sessions most collections skip.

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio on March 2 and April 22, 1959 and out that August 17, Kind of Blue is the sextet with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, and Bill Evans at the piano except on "Freddie Freeloader." The story that it went down in one pass is not true: only "Flamenco Sketches" was finished on a first take.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the record that moved improvising off chords, onto scales.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Coltrane and Adderley in one front line.
• Why it's worth purchasing: five pieces, forty five minutes, nothing that needs explaining.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

Cut August 19 to 21, 1969 and out on March 30, 1970, Bitches Brew is a double album assembled as much in the edit as on the floor, Davis and the producer Teo Macero building the long pieces out of tape. Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, Bennie Maupin and Joe Zawinul are among the players, two bassists and more than one drummer at once.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the door every fusion band afterward walked through.
• Why it's worth purchasing: a gatefold double, how the long pieces want to be heard.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Mati Klarwein's cover painting at twelve inch size.

Miles Davis - On the Corner

Recorded June 1, June 6 and July 7, 1972 and out that October 11, On the Corner is Davis playing through a wah pedal over a rhythm that never resolves. Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea both appear on Fender Rhodes, with John McLaughlin on guitar, Michael Henderson on bass, Badal Roy on tabla and electric sitar from Khalil Balakrishna and Collin Walcott. The sleeve credited no musicians, which Davis said he did on purpose.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the funk and dub side of Davis, decades early.
• Why it's worth purchasing: tabla, electric sitar and two Rhodes players at once.
• Why it's worth purchasing: the Music on Vinyl cut, on 180 gram.

Miles Davis - The Man With the Horn

His first album after the silence, The Man With the Horn was recorded between June 1980 and May 1981 and out that July on Columbia, Teo Macero producing. The band is the new one: Bill Evans on soprano saxophone, Marcus Miller and Felton Crews on electric bass, Mike Stern and Barry Finnerty on guitar, Al Foster and Vince Wilburn Jr. on drums.

• Why it's worth purchasing: the comeback record, and his final band's first sound.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Marcus Miller and Mike Stern before either was a name.
• Why it's worth purchasing: crystal clear vinyl with an obi strip.

Miles Davis - Decoy

Out in June 1984, Decoy was the first album Davis produced himself, with Robert Irving III co-producing, after more than twenty years of Teo Macero sessions. It mixes 1983 studio work at A&R and the Record Plant with two pieces taped live in Montreal, and brings in Branford Marsalis, John Scofield, Darryl Jones and Al Foster. Gil Evans arranged "That's Right," his last credit on a Davis record.

• Why it's worth purchasing: Davis producing himself, synthesizers in his own hands.
• Why it's worth purchasing: Scofield, Darryl Jones and a young Branford Marsalis.
• Why it's worth purchasing: the Music on Vinyl smokey color pressing.

Miles Davis - The Very Best Of: The Warner Bros. Sessions 1985-1991

The last chapter has no one album everybody agrees on, which is what makes a collection useful. The Very Best Of: The Warner Bros. Sessions 1985-1991 draws on the years after Columbia: Tutu in 1986, the Siesta soundtrack in 1987, Amandla in 1989, the Dingo soundtrack in 1991. Marcus Miller wrote, played and produced much of it, around a trumpet sound that had turned spare.

• Why it's worth purchasing: one LP for a stretch that is otherwise four records.
• Why it's worth purchasing: the Marcus Miller productions, his most composed music.
• Why it's worth purchasing: the simplest way to hear where he ended up.

Where else to look

The 1981 band was also taped live for the double LP We Want Miles, out in May 1982, from the Kix club in Boston, Avery Fisher Hall in New York and an outdoor stage in Shinjuku, Tokyo, here on opaque yellow vinyl with an obi strip. One carried record sits outside his lifetime: Everything's Beautiful, out May 27, 2016 on Blue Note with Legacy and Columbia, on which Robert Glasper builds new tracks from Davis samples, with Erykah Badu, Bilal, Ledisi, Laura Mvula and Stevie Wonder among the guests. We also carry Copenhagen Live 1969, a Record Store Day Black Friday title from the band between the acoustic quintet and Bitches Brew. Several albums come in more than one pressing: Kind of Blue in mono 180 gram and stereo 180 gram, Bitches Brew in a Sony Legacy remaster, and Decoy in clear color with an obi.

If You Like Miles Davis

• John Coltrane: the tenor player from the 1955 quintet and the Kind of Blue sextet, deep on his own.
• Herbie Hancock: pianist in the 1960s quintet, and one of the Rhodes players on On the Corner.
• Wayne Shorter: wrote for the 1960s band, then played the Bitches Brew sessions on soprano.
• Art Blakey: the hard bop engine room Davis came out of.
• Chet Baker: the other trumpet voice of the cool years, same quiet register.

Where to Go From Here

All of this sits in Jazz, with the acoustic sides in 1950's Vinyl Albums and the electric ones in 1970's Vinyl Albums. Our John Coltrane guide covers the other half of the 1950s story and the Herbie Hancock guide the keyboard lineage. Not on our shelf: Birth of the Cool, Milestones, Sketches of Spain, Nefertiti and In a Silent Way. To browse every Miles Davis title we stock, visit the Miles Davis collection.