Miles Davis: Walkin' (1954)

(Prestige)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

Though it's not commonly recognized as a breakthrough or landmark, this key collection from Miles Davis and his monstrous mid-'50s rhythm section (Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke, plus Horace Silver on piano) marks a turning point in his rapid maturation during his first decade of performing and recording. Walkin' is anything but the casual stride suggested by its title -- it's an intense, assured, and dramatic set of sides stabbing forth, commanding attention. As with the majority of Davis' Quintet recordings of this period, many will argue this cut-up assortment isn't the best way to hear these sessions, and maybe they're right, but these five cuts present such a flawless argument for Davis as a nearly peerless progenitor of bop that I can't see questioning the resultant package.

The thirteen-minute "Walkin'" itself is one of Davis' earliest true classics, even as it refines and rambles atop a standard blues structure, and it goes a long way toward persuading the novice about his own command over a gifted band. Alto sax player Dave Schildkraut, something of an unknown apart from these and a few other sessions, holds his own, as does a particularly playful Silver whose interpolations are quite delightful, but everyone marches in step according to Davis' own whims, as his dictatorship over the arrangement is such that his trumpet blares come across like announcements from on high. Yet everything is subservient to the curiosity and joy in the entire band's performance; the periodic explosion of that opening fanfare, followed by the sliding triumph of J.J. Johnson trombone fury that launched a thousand spy movie themes. This shares space with swing, introspection, soft and subtle grooving; the recording is everything, a mountain of possibilities.

Johnson reappears on "Blue 'n' Boogie," the yang to the yin of "Walkin'," and enjoys a splendidly complex interplay with Davis, who allows himself to be overtaken a bit by his peers because it's best for the driving, jumping number itself. On the three shorter performances orbiting these two, Davis in turn explores a democratic possibility, sustaining mood and exhibiting a freedom to explore and experiment with wildly divergent solos and tangents -- "Solar" is a conventional piece but its starkness points a subtle way forward, while the pure style evident in Davis' own work on "Love Me or Leave Me" (not on the original release, added in 1957) renders it the forgotten showpiece here. But I return most frequently to the calmly tricky and gloriously romantic "You Don't Know What Love Is," an instance of the sort of classicist yearning that proves as much as Coltrane's Ballads that a true innovator's command of traditional themes and techniques can be as seductive and stirring as his most cutting-edge material.

Within my limited knowledge of jazz, I find myself still attached to some of the recordings I first fell for, and Miles Davis' Prestige albums are paramount among these, which may or may not reflect a bias since it just so happened they were available to me at a crucial point. But I truly believe Walkin' itself is, not counting the undeniable but technically revisionist Birth of the cool, Davis' first great record, a work of art immediate enough to convince a universal swath of people while softly suggesting the sort of subversions and eccentricities that would quickly transform him. There's such an innate magic to these five sides, I have a hard time imagining a better introduction to Davis as a player and bandleader. But is there such a thing as a "bad" introduction to Miles Davis?

[SEE ALSO:]
Birth of the Cool (1950)
Relaxin' (1958)

[This is the last catalog review for a month or so while we participate in highly intensive catchup on the music of 2012, already in progress, with the first examples likely to show up Sunday evening, maybe earlier. Old records will make a return to the blog along with a new, more leisurely but more consistent posting schedule in December.]