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Music CD - Miles Davis: The Essential Miles Davis
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Music CD: The Essential Miles Davis
Artist: Miles Davis
List Price: $24.98
Our Price: $9.62
Your Save: $ 15.36 ( 61% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Sony
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Now's the Time
2. Jeru
3. Compulsion
4. Tempus Fugit
5. Walkin'
6. 'Round About Midnight
7. Bye Bye Blackbird
8. New Rhumba
9. Generique
10. Summertime
11. So What
12. The Pan Piper
13. Someday My Prince Will Come
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0696998547520
Label: Sony
Manufacturer: Sony
Number Of Discs: 2
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: 2001-05-15
Studio: Sony
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Satisfiying Intro For Neophytes
Comment: I first read about Miles in Mojo (the UK music mag). Their article, "How To Buy... Miles Davis" noted that this was a perfect starting point for the curious. I made a note of this. Then, after scanning the net for suggestions for music that resembled early Chicago's jazz-rock, I ran across some tracks from Bitches Brew and Tribute to Jack Johnson. Man, that stuff blew my mind! I wanted to try out Miles' material. Rather than starting out by purachising his late 60s/70s electric work,I decided to begin with this set to get a better sense of the man's career.
Disc 1, in my humble view, is a rather conservative affair. It's jazz, and I can't particlarly fault that. But for someone yearning for electric disorderly conduct, it's like the calm before a storm. Disc 2 begins in the same vein as the first disc, but tracks get progressively jumpier (like "E.S.P."). For me, there real treasure consisted of the structureless romps that Miles toots over in the late 60s and 70s. After that rousing anarchy, its fitting that the set mellows out in a collected 80s manner.
After listening to the set, I concluded that this man had a career that encompassed a broad array of jazz styles. While I may not be able to differntiate hard bop from modal jazz, I can see a gradual shift within his sound. Although I'll end buying On The Corner before Sketches of Spain, at least now I know the breadth that a four decade-long career can encompass.
For neophytes with only a vague idea of Miles and his work, this set is a perfect starting point; you'll get a sample of what each period entails and you'll be able to see which phase best suits your tastes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: quint-essential miles
Comment: AN EXCELLENT COMPENDIUM OF VINTAGE MILES DAVIS. SHORT OF PURCHASING EVERY ONE OF DAVIS'S RECORDINGS, THIS IS A GREAT CONDENSED PACKAGE FOR MILES AFFICIANADOS AND NEWBIES TO THE WORLD OF CLASSIC JAZZ. THE DOUBLE CD SET SPANS 5 DECADES OF WHAT IS THE GENIUS OF MILES DAVIS.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ANYTIME IS THE TIME FOR MILES DAVIS-NOW IS EVEN BETTER!
Comment: This collection draws from the ASTONISHING recording career of the great Miles Davis when he was among the best cool jazz trumpet players of them all, performing with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Muligan and Gil Evans, among other great jazz like minded players of the day. His impressionistic colors and harmonies are very much like bandleader Claude Thornhill's sound, yet all his own, a very "cool" jazz sound indeed. The listener will be in for a treat on this CD as it showcases some of the best jazz players of the 50s: Philly Joe Jones (drummer), Lucky Thompson (tenor solo), Horace Silver (pianist) among the signature Davis quintet of Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. Davis liked to take his band through a 2/4 tempo on to a straight swing beat in its approach. This CD is a DOUBLE CD so the listener gets twice the jazz for their $$. In this CD one can hear how Davis was constantly redefining musical "possibilities and excellence". For people just getting in touch with jazz, this CD capitized on some of Miles Davis's BEST jazz creations. My favorites from this CD include "Walkin'", "'Round Midnight", & "Black Satin". On each cut, the sound and mood changes...and it's like walking into a new room open to the creative genius of Harlem in the 50s. Now's The Time to Take A Listen To Miles Davis. Add this CD to your collection. This CD will never grow old...Davis gave us a great gift in his musical creations -- music that has its own distictive emotions and a legacy that is meant to last. A BIG HIGH FIVE STARS!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: The album that started my life as a jazz fanatic.
Comment: If you don't have this album, pick it up. You will either a) become engrossed in jazz or b) hate it for the rest of your life, but it's worth buying just the same. Disc one is an example of Miles in his prime, with tunes such as Now's the Time, Walkin', 'Round Midnight, Bye Bye Blackbird, So What and Someday My Prince Will Come. Disc Two is also good. ESP, Petits Machins, Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, Jean Pierre and Portia are all examples of the wideness of jazz. But I hate Little Church and have to wonder why Miles covered a Cydni Lauper song.
I would've liked to see some material from Kind of Blue and Milestones. Kind of Blue is only represented by So What (Miles' best song) and Milestones isn't represented at all. They should've thrown on All Blues, Freddie Freeloader, Milestones and Straight No Chaser, not to mention the missing Dear Old Stockholm, Surrey with a Fringe on top of It, and Salt Peanuts. This may have involved a third disc, but Miles' career is too broad to be covered in two discs.
No compilation is perfect, but this is highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: see for Miles
Comment: I suppose I first was alerted to the wondrous and varied world of jazz - a world so many seem nervous of entering, for some reason (come on in, we won`t bite, and the water`s lovely, if a touch dark and deep at times) - when as a teenager I heard some of the 60s album ESP - still one of Miles`s best, most cohesive efforts, to my mind - coming out of someone`s radio. I was hooked.
The `Essential` series has so far been a sensible and worthwhile project from CBS. One thinks of the Leonard Cohen and Springsteen collections as exemplary. This one gives us about two-and-a-half hours of a musical journey one could compare to Dylan`s, Ellington`s or Van Morrison`s for its sheer diversity in contemporary music.
From his debut with Bird to his more minimalist utterings of the 80s, taking in such lovely numbers as Little Church (from the album Live-Evil), Generique (from a French movie soundtrack), So What (Kind of Blue`s opener) and the delightful Time After Time (from You`re Under Arrest) this is a musical odyssey as gripping as it is fascinating. This man rarely rested on any laurels, was always testing himself, and others, not content with the compromises that must surely have been suggested to him throughout his astonishing career. (One thinks, again, of Dylan as a comparable artist.)
Miles is not the only kind of jazz - and sometimes I need to bask in the beauties of Bechet or early Armstrong; or go into seclusion with Monk - but here is a reasonable introduction to a troubling genius of twentieth century music. Miles, we miss you.
Thankyou, as they say, for the music.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis was a major catalyst for the evolution of modern music. This two-CD set--with tracks from the Savoy, Capitol, Blue Note, Prestige, Columbia, and Warner Bros. labels from 1945 to 1986--is an excellent sampler of his limitless creative genius. It features a who's who of the greatest names in the music: drummers Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, and Jimmy Cobb; bassists Paul Chambers and Ron Carter; pianists Red Garland, Bill Evans, and Herbie Hancock; and alto and tenor saxophonists Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, and Wayne Shorter. Davis's middle-register trumpet accommodated a myriad of styles, from the bebop classic "Now's the Time" to the Snow White waltz "Someday My Prince Will Come" to the modal masterpiece "So What" (from Kind of Blue). Just as Duke Ellington had Billy Strayhorn, Davis had the gifted arranger Gil Evans. Evans created ingenious stringless orchestral soundscapes around Davis's pithy and personal sound on Ahmad Jamal's "New Rhumba" from Miles Ahead, the in-the-pocket swing of Gershwin's "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess, and the Moorish melodies of "The Pan Piper" from Sketches of Spain. Other classic tracks include the sophisticated classicism of "Jeru" from the 1949-50 Birth of the Cool nonets, the spectral and spare "Générique" from the soundtrack to the 1957 French film Ascenseur pour L'Echafaud, and his romantic rendition of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time." Simply put, Miles lives. --Eugene Holley Jr.
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