COMPOSERS: Miles Davis Quintet
LABELS: Acrobat
WORKS: All of You: The Last Tour 1960
PERFORMER: Miles Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (saxophone) etc
CATALOGUE NO: ACQCD7076
Here’s another interesting audio document turned into a must-have study resource thanks to the detailed 32-page book by Simon Spillett that comes with these discs. It’s essentially a chronology-in-performance of Miles Davis and his Quintet on their final tour during March and April of 1960.
Even though Coltrane was in the process of detaching himself from his mentor, the sets captured here are full of creative energy. The first disc also includes Swedish musician/journalist Karl-Erik Lindgren’s interview with Coltrane, originally recorded for the former’s Jazz Corner radio series that year. With the benefit of hindsight Lindgren’s technique might be charitably described as unsubtle, but it’s a useful reminder of exactly how provocative some of Coltrane’s ideas seemed at the time. The tracks are drawn from a mixture of broadcasts and private recordings and many are somewhat ‘historical’ in quality, but the music itself more than compensates for this minor (and inevitable) issue.
Roger Thomas