Miles Davis: Milestones (mono mix) [COLUMBIA]

Why you'll love it

This 180g Columbia pressing presents Milestones in the mono mix it first came out in. The title track introduced modal jazz to Davis's music, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz put the album in its Core Collection.

This edition

• Original mono mix
• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Etched runouts

About the album

A year before Kind of Blue, Miles Davis was already quietly rewriting the rules. He had John Coltrane back in the band, added Cannonball Adderley on alto, and with Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones the "first great quintet" became a sextet with two very different saxophone voices pushing each other higher.

"Milestones" is the landmark, a tune built on scales rather than chord changes, and the door to everything modal that followed. Elsewhere it swings hard: "Dr. Jekyll" sprints, "Two Bass Hit" punches, Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" stretches out for ten glorious minutes, and "Billy Boy" hands the floor to Garland's block chords. On "Sid's Ahead" Davis even slides over to the piano to comp behind the horns.

Davis later wrote that he knew the band had something special here. Hearing it in mono, the way the 1958 crowd did, is like sitting in the front row; the musicians are all right there, and nobody is hiding in a far speaker.

Also at Kops: more Miles Davis on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia (cat# 88765486031), a reissue of the 1958 album.