Bonus cuts featured on the 1997 compact disc reissue.
Track Recorded Song Title Writer Time
1. 8/18/58 I Loves You, Porgy (take 1, second version) G. Gershwin 4:14
2. 7/22/58 Gone (take 4) Gil Evans 3:40
Personnel
Musicians
• Miles Davis - trumpet, flugelhorn
• Ernie Royal, Bernie Glow, Johnny Coles and Louis Mucci - trumpet
• Dick Hixon, Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland and Joe Bennett - trombone
• Willie Ruff, Julius Watkins and Gunther Schuller - horn
• Bill Barber - tuba
• Phil Bodner, Jerome Richardson and Romeo Penque - flute, alto flute & clarinet
• Cannonball Adderley - alto saxophone
• Danny Bank - alto flute & bass clarinet
• Paul Chambers - bass
• Jimmy Cobb - drums (except tracks 3,4, 9, & 15)
• Philly Joe Jones - drums (tracks 3, 4, 9, & 15)
• Gil Evans - arranger & conductor
Porgy and Bess 63
Production
• Cal Lampley - producer
• Frank Laico - recording engineer
• Roy DeCarava - cover photo
Notes
[1] Album/Product notes and reviews (http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:f6GHBikMJsAJ:cd.ciao.co.uk/
Porgy_And_Bess_Remastered_Miles_Davis__5969765+JazzTimes+(8/97,+p.106)+-+"...PORGY+AND+BESS&hl=en&ct=clnk&
cd=2&gl=us)
[2] Porgy and Bess Presentation Zankel Hall, NYC (http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=17228)
[3] Larkin, Colin. " Review: Porgy and Bess (http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/Current/A1841.htm)". Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music:
March 1, 2002.
[4] Ashley Kahn (2001). Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (http://books.google.com/?id=6QArFwi9buUC&
pg=PA67&vq="Modal+jazz,"&dq=The+Making+of+Kind+of+Blue:+Miles+Davis+and+His+Masterpiece+bebop). foreword by Jimmy Cobb. Da Capo Press, USA. pp. s. 67–68. ISBN 0-306-81067-0. .
[5] "George Russell - About George" (http://www.georgerussell.com/gr.html). Concept Publishing. . Retrieved 2008-07-27.
[6] Kahn (2001), p16.
[7] Palmer, Robert (1997). "Liner Notes to 1997 Reissue" (http://stupidd.blogspot.com/2008/02/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-flac-master.html).
Kind of Blue (CD). New York, NY: Sony Music Entertainment, Inc./Columbia Records.
[8] Nat Hentoff, "An Afternoon with Miles Davis", The Jazz Review, December 1958.
[9] "allmusic {{{Milestones > Overview}}}" (http://www.allmusic.com/album/r106105). All Media Guide, LLC.. . Retrieved 2008-07-27.
[10] "Miles Davis: Jazz at the Plaza < Music - PopMatters" (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/16671/davismiles-jazzattheplaza).
PopMatters.com. . Retrieved 2008-07-27.
[11] Planer, Lindsay. Review: Porgy and Bess (http://www.allmusic.com/album/r106094). Allmusic. Retrieved on 2009-07-21.
[12] Gilbert, Robert. Review: Porgy and Bess (http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=11204). All About Jazz. Retrieved on 2008-12-21.
[13] Sandow, Greg. Review: Porgy and Bess (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,315776_3,00.html). Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 2009-07-20.
[14] Emmons, Steve. Review: Porgy and Bess (http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-03/news/ol-2119_1_miles-davis). Los Angeles Times:
December 3, 1992.
[15] Columnist. " Review: Porgy and Bess (http://www.tower.com/porgy-bess-miles-davis-cd/wapi/106693134)". JazzTimes: 106. August 1997.
[16] Wilson, John S. " Review: Porgy and Bess (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.
html?res=F70D13FC3F59127A93C5AB1782D85F4D8585F9)". The New York Times: X13. September 27, 1959.
[17] Cook, Richard. "Review: Porgy and Bess". Penguin Guide to Jazz: 376. September 2002.
[18] Hoard, Christian. " Review: Porgy and Bess (http://books.google.com/books?id=lRgtYCC6OUwC&pg=PA214&dq=)". Rolling Stone:
214–217. November 2, 2004.
[19] Morris, Chris. Review: Porgy and Bess (http://www.webcitation.org/5tEuWgxQ0). Yahoo! Music. Retrieved on 2009-07-20.
[20] George, Wally. " Review: Porgy and Bess (http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/485176932.html?dids=485176932:485176932&
FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE:AI&type=historic&date=Jun+07,+1959&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Court+of+Records&
pqatl=google)". Los Angeles Times: J61. June 7, 1959.
[21] Kirchner, Bill. Bill Kirchner's liner notes from the 6-CD box set Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Studio Recordings. Sony Music Entertainment Inc..
[22] Chambers, Jack. Porgy and Bess album liner notes. Sony Music Entertainment Inc..
[23] Elvis Costello’s 500 Albums You Need at rocklist.net (http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/elvis_costello.htm) [24] top 1000 album list (http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/virgin_1000.htm)
Porgy and Bess 64
References
• "The Golden Anniversary of Miles Davis's 'Porgy & Bess'" (http://www.jazz.com/dozens/
the-dozens-the-golden-anniversary-of-porgy-and-bess) by Alan Kurtz et al., ( Jazz.com (http://www.jazz.com))
• Nathan Brackett, Christian Hoard (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-74320-169-8.
• Richard Cook, Brian Morton (2002). The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. Edition 6. Penguin. ISBN 0140515216.
• Porgy and Bess liner notes by Charles Edward Smith & Bill Kirchner. Sony Music Entertainment Inc..
• Colin Larkin (2002). Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Edition 4. Virgin Books. ISBN 1852279230.
External links
• Porgy and Bess (http://www.discogs.com/Miles-Davis-Porgy-And-Bess/master/65105) at Discogs
• Accolades: Porgy and Bess (http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/Current/A1841.htm) at Acclaimed Music
1958 Miles 65
1958 Miles
1958 Miles
Studio album by Miles Davis
Released 1958
(see release history) Recorded September 9 and May 26,
1958
30th Street Studio, Plaza Hotel
(New York, New York) Genre Jazz, hard bop, modal jazz
Length 63:50
Label Columbia
SL-1268
Producer Teo Macero
Miles Davis chronology
Porgy and Bess (1958)
1958 Miles (1958)
Kind of Blue (1959)
Reissue cover
1958 Miles 66
Davis' sextet performing at the Plaza Hotel
1958 Miles is an album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released in 1958 on Columbia Records.[1] [2]
Recording sessions for the album took place on May 26, 1958 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio and September 9, 1958 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 1958 Miles consists of three songs featured on the A-side of the LP album Jazz Track, which was released earlier in 1958, and three recordings from Davis' live performance at the Plaza Hotel with his ensemble sextet.[2] [3] The recording date at 30th Street Studio served as the first documented session to feature pianist Bill Evans performing in Davis' group.
The sessions for the album in mid-1958, along with the Milestones sessions from earlier that year, were seen by many music writers as elemental in Miles Davis' transition from bebop to the modal style of jazz and were viewed as precursors to his most well-known work, Kind of Blue.[2][4] Following audio engineering and digital restoration by engineer Larry Keyes at Sony Music New York Studio, the album was reissued on compact disc in 1991 as part of Columbia's Jazz Masterpieces Series.[5] For later reissues, the album was retitled as '58 Sessions Featuring Stella by Starlight or '58 Miles Featuring Stella by Starlight.[5][6] The complete 1958 sessions for Columbia were issued on the box set The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis with John Coltrane, and Jazz at the Plaza was reissued in 2001.[7]
Background
Conception
"No chords... gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things. When you go this way, you can go on forever. You don't have to worry about changes and you can do more with the [melody] line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you can be... fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.
Miles Davis, on using musical modes rather than chord progression as a harmonic framework, October 1958, The Jazz Review[8]
In 1958, Miles Davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop, seeing its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering musical creativity.[8] Five years earlier, jazz pianist, composer and theorist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953), which offered an alternative to the practice of musical improvisation based on chords.[9] Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of classical music, Russell developed a new formulation using musical scales, or a series of scales, for improvisations.[9] Russell's approach to improvisation came to be known as modal in jazz.[9] Davis viewed Russell's methods of composition as a means of getting away from the dense chord-laden compositions of his time, which Davis had labeled as "thick."[10]
In contrast to the conventional method of composing during the time, modal compositions were to be written as a series of sketches in which each performer is given a set of scales that defines the parameters of their
1958 Miles 67
improvisation.[11] Modal composition, with its reliance on musical scales and modes, represented, as Davis called it,[8] "a return to melody."[11] According to Davis, "Classical composer—some of them—have been writing this way for years, but jazz musicians seldom have".[8] In early 1958, Davis began using this approach with his sextet, a jazz ensemble made up of alto sax player Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones.[12] Influenced by Russell's ideas, Davis implemented his first modal composition with the title track of Milestones (1958), which was based on two modes, recorded in April of that year.[12] Instead of soloing in the straight, conventional, melodic way, Davis’s new style of improvisation featured rapid mode and scale changes played against sparse chord changes.[13][9] Davis' acclaimed collaboration with Gil Evans on Porgy and Bess gave him an opportunity to experiment with Russell's concept, as Evans' third stream compositions for Davis contained only a musical scale and no chords, the basis for modality.[8]