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REVIEW    DownBeat  /  May 30, 1956


Miles Davis
The New Miles Davis Quintet

Prestige 7014

★★★★

Rudy Van Gelder Remasters


The New Miles Davis Quintet is the unit with which he’s been traveling for several months — tenor John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones. Miles is in wonderfully cohesive form here, blowing with characteristically personal, eggshell tone, muted on the standards, open on the originals. And he continues to grow in his searching quality of being able to get so inside a song that he makes it fit him as if to order without injuring the essence of the work as first written. Coltrane, as Ira Gitler notes accurately, “is a mixture of Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt.” But so far there’s very little Coltrane. His general lack of individuality lowers the rating.

Garland plays some of his best choruses on record here, combining imaginative sensitivity with relaxed light-fingered swing. Chambers lays down a support that could carry an army band. His tone is full and never flabby and his time is right. He has only one solo, a building one on “The Theme.” His bass is somewhat over-recorded in places.

Philly Joe is pulsatingly crisp as usual, and he has apparently curbed a previous tendency to play too loudly too often. The last tune, a uniquely attractive original, is by Philadelphian Benny Golson. A very good set, particularly worth absorbing for Miles. He himself deserves a five. —Nat Hentoff


Squeeze Me; There Is No Greater Love; How Am I To Know?; S’posin’; The Theme; Stablemates


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