Miles Davis Classic Albums Timeline

Birth of the Cool

We know Miles changed the course of Jazz five times - because he told us! This was arguably the first with a nonet (9 piece) that existed just for this album.

Sarah Vaughan In Hi Fi

Miles played on tracks 1-8 and 15-21. He was also arrested on narcotics charges in LA September 1950, which impacted his career, even though he was later aquitted.

The New Sounds of Miles Davis

The New Sounds is the debut solo studio album

Blue Period

The start of the Prestige records era. The third studio album. Similar to previous two albums. A return to a more blowing style

Birdland 1951

Live at Birdland on Blue Note Records

Miles Davis Plays the Compositions of Al Cohn

Miles Davis Quartet

Miles kicks his drug dependency by going cold turkey locking himsrlf in a guest house on his fathers farm

Young Man With a Horn

Young Man with a Horn, also known as Miles Davis, Vol. 1

Miles Davis, Vol. 2

compilation

Miles Davis Quintet

Miles Davis, Vol. 3

compilation

Miles Davis With Sonny Rollins

As Miles’ star rose at Prestige, so he was able to take on a de facto A and R role, urging his label to record younger players, and even offering to record with them including Sonny Rollins’ turn—he was Miles’ preferred saxophonist at this time

Miles Davis Quartet Blue Haze

Blue Moods

Miles was fresh from his triumph at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival when he agreed to record for his old friend Charles Mingus’ label

Miles Davis All Stars, Vol. 1

n the final week of 1954, Miles pulled together another top-tier lineup—this time billed as his all stars—to record four lengthy tracks that would yield his final two 10” titles for Prestige: Miles Davis All Stars, Vol. 1 and 2. The group lived up to the promise of the title; Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson and the same bass/drums combination off Walkin’- Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke.

Miles Davis Quintet

The Musings of Miles

This was a forerunner of the Miles Davis Quintet By the fall, John Coltrane and Paul Chambers would come aboard to help form the first of a continuum of great Davis working groups

Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet Sextet

Recorded in the summer of 1955, this session was a half-year after the famed meeting of Davis and Jackson with Thelonious Monk on Christmas Eve 1954

Miles

The first great Quintet Clltrane, Garland, Chambers, and Jones

Circle in the Round

October this year Miles has polyps surgery. Told to rest his voice he argues with the manager of Birdland, which permanently damges his voice"

'Round About Midnight

his debut for CBS -- is more than solid but just a shade less than essential

Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet

Miles Davis And Horns

The sextet tracks with Sonny Rollins and Bennie Green were the first recordings Miles made after his affiliation with Capitol ended, a hiatus of approximately 10 months.

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud

Miles Ahead

As The Birth of the Cool of 1949 and 1951 revealed how effective post-bop jazz and 20th Century classical sonorities could work together—and also how Miles and arranger Gil Evans were such an effective match—Miles Ahead was the album that allowed that fusion and that team to reach full maturity

Relaxin' With the Miles Davis Quintet

The Miles Davis Quintet of 1955-’57 was a phenomenon that left many jaws dropping. 1958 saw Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Red Chambers and Philly Joe Jones

Porgy and Bess

George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess performed by Miles and Gil Evans. Miles’ and Evans’ A sensitive reworking of the over-worked tunes from the Gershwin brothers’ jazz opera

Milestones

The post-bop way of handling harmony and rhythm, with some of Miles’ mainstay sidemen

Kind of Blue

The all-time greatest jazz album? Top 3. Consistently in the top 10 jazz charts ever since! Lineup; ‘Cannonball’ Adderley (alto saxophone), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Bill Evans (piano) or Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums)

Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet

all the 'with the Miles Davis Quintet' albums were recorded in 1956 then released years later

Sketches of Spain

Miles plays Spanish Keys - geddit? Another Gil Evans era collab

Steamin' With the Miles Davis Quintet

Someday My Prince Will Come

the switch back to a small-group effort following the big-band project Sketches of Spain. An early collab with producer Teo Macero. That's Miles' wife, dancer Frances Taylor Davis, on the cover.

Quiet Nights

Sorcerer

the third studio album featuring Miles with his Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams lineup

Seven Steps to Heaven

Recorded in two sessions a month apart in early 1963—each with a different quintet—Seven Steps is proof positive that by this point of Miles’ career, any group he assembled was going to yield top-level music

My Funny Valentine

[live] On February 12, 1964, Miles recorded at New York’s Philharmonic Hall, then just two years old and Valentine’s Day two days away. The concert was a benefit for not one, but three African-American NAACP

E.S.P.

Miles’ Second Great Quintet hit the ground running—perhaps skating more accurately describes the fluidity they achieved among them at an amazingly rapid rate. Wayne Shorter joined in September of 1964

Miles Smiles

If there is one studio recording that truly captures the Second Great Quintet establishing its identity, Miles Smiles—recorded over two days in October 1966—is it. Miles insisted Herbie Hancock stop playing chords with his left hand, on only use his right, effectively liberating the music from being locked into harmonic patterns. It worked!

Nefertiti

By 1966, the producers at CBS Records—that was most often Teo Macero—had learned to roll tape early and often at a Miles Davis session, catching rehearsal and first-takes as well as the final sessions. In some cases, like the title track of Nefertiti in the first week of June 1967, it truly paid off. Miles would do this again on Jack Johnson.

Miles in the Sky

One of Miles' first forays into fusion. Recorded in January and May of 1968—four lengthy tunes that began to explore the use of electric piano and electric bass

Filles de Kilimanjaro

Behind Filles de Kilimanjaro, and also on its cover, is a woman who greatly influenced Miles. They were married briefly in 1968, the year the album was recorded, in June and September. She was 23, Miles was 42. Betty Mabry was her name

In a Silent Way

Probably #2 in the Top 3 Miles albums. Miles could not wait to record this Joe Zawinul composition. Features a white British guitarist called John McLaughlin who went on to play on seveal subsequent albums.

Bitches Brew

A landmark album. It is dissonant at times. Chaotic, but changed the course of Jazz.

Big Fun

Another testament to Teo Macero's magic editing process. It features a sitar and alludes to eastern mysticism. I rate it highly.

Black Beauty

Live at the Fillmore West auditorium, San Francisco

A Tribute to Jack Johnson

My #1 Miles album, the best horn solo ever, a total groove that was accidental. Miles walked in on a Jam with Billy Cobham and John McLaughlin, he started playing, Ted Maceo pressed record and the rest is History!

Live-Evil

Another somewhat dissonant album in the mold of Bitches Brew but that's mot a bad thing!

On the Corner

80's funk taken to the next level. Inspired by electronic composer and tape-music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen and produced by Paul Buckmaster—the British producer and arranger

Get Up With It

Tracks come from sessions between 1970 and 1974 and a bit variable quality

Dark Magus

Live - Al Foster’s powerful drumming, Michael Henderson’s deep grooves, James “Mtume” Forman’s Afro percussion and, at first, two and then three guitars. Pete Cosey—a habitué of the blues and the Chicago Black avant-garde—revisited Jimi Hendrix’s legacy

Pangaea

Double disc live recording

Agharta

Another double disc live recording contemporary to Pangaea

Water Babies

Directions

In 1976, when Miles’ withdrawal from the scene seemed to go on forever, Columbia released an album bringing together two different periods on each side of a single LP - recordings from 1967 and 68.

We Want Miles

The album combines recordings from the first live appearances by Davis in more than five years, at Boston's Kix Club, on June 27, 1981. Mike Stern, Marcus Miller and Al Foster

The Man with the Horn

Miles’ nephew Vince Wilburn persuaded his uncle in New York to join his band in the studio. He also met the saxophonist Bill Evans, the bass guitarist Marcus Miller (for the first time?), and called the drummer Al Foster back.

Star People

Tom Barney temporarily replaced Marcus Miller, and John Scofield was called in to assist Mike Stern. Wow!

Decoy

The same Chicago band as on The Man With The Horn

You're Under Arrest

first outing for covers of “Human Nature, recorded by the group Toto for Michael Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”

Tutu

The third time Miles changed the course of music? I've lost count! A 'finished' Marcus Miller album that Miels, who knew a good thing, made his own.

Siesta

A soundtrack album using the same concept and band as Tutu primarily Marcus Miller.

Amandla

Another child of Tutu and Miles’ final collaboration with bassist/producer Marcus Miller

Aura

Miles’ last album on the Columbia label were recorded in 1985 but not released until 1989

Dingo

Dingo was the film in which Miles chose to play himself and this is its soundtrack

Doo-Bop

Miles’ died on September 28, 1991 leaving this album unfinished.

Panthalassa

Intelligent compilation of the fusion era

Rubberband

Long after Miles has passed, and music went digital some bright spark record exec thought there would be money in this. Rubberband is the lost Miles Davis album he recorded as soon as he signed to Warner Bros. Recorded in Los Angeles from October 1985 to January 1986