Miles Davis: Relaxin' (1958)

(Prestige)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This wonderful LP collects some of the best material recorded in two legendary sessions by the peerless Miles Davis Quintet in 1956. Despite its luxurious sound and adorably calm art deco cover, this music is anything but complacent. Davis' most celebrated album, with a subsequent band, is of course Kind of Blue; the contrast is fascinating because Blue consisted of performances by a band who'd never played those songs before. On the four albums from the incredibly fruitful '56 Quintet sessions, we're getting utter precision: the band knew these songs back to front, having gathered them from their live repertoire at this point. So if Kind of Blue gives us art and detail and beauty copped from feeling through new ideas, this is pure virtuosity from a supremely well-practiced unit.

And the reason that's so interesting is that in sonic terms, you'd assume the opposite, which speaks to Davis' magic skill as arranger -- you get a feeling of genuine scrappiness and fascinated fixation on Relaxin', despite the overwhelming beauty of Davis and John Coltrane's solos throughout. "If I Were a Bell" has such a splendidly celebratory feeling it seems to jump off the record, opening with the intense concentration on those lovely first notes that proceed into eight minutes of preoccupations with the song's possibilities, something that would lead to both Davis' performing it live for the remainder of his career and to the formation of the Guys and Dolls showtune as a jazz standard. But it's the version of Sonny Rollins' "Oleo" that seems the most stunning showcase of the band's interplay, opening the second half with six minutes of bliss. Still, the entire record reflects a perfect concentration of mood and genius. As befits its title, it works well enough as background music, but pay close attention and the seduction will be complete, the cohesion impressive (even if Walkin' remains the masterpiece of this group of albums, "Walkin'" the top song of the collection).

Hard bop as a genre peaks here, the moody sense of knocked-off magic a complete triumph, and really the Quintet is astoundingly thorough. They exercise so many of the possibilities of the music they're playing here that there was scarcely anywhere left to go with this branch of jazz afterward; Davis was always restless, always moving, and there is perhaps nothing else in his catalog so open, so inviting as these hard bop Quintet records, so they are to be savored. It's always a thrill to hear Davis and Coltrane together, but mention must be made of Red Garland's superb piano work (particularly on the two October '56 cuts that close the record), Philly Joe Jones' drums, and especially Paul Chambers' momentous bass playing. The Miles Davis Quintet was a truly complete band, and we're lucky to have so much of their work on record.

[SEE ALSO:]
Birth of the Cool (1950)