This new collection features the great trumpeter's three Blue Note 10-inch albums, Young Man With A Horn, along with Miles Davis Vol. 2 and Vol. 3.
CD 2 features the latter LP and also showcases eight alternate takes, being a total of 26 tracks recorded for Blue Note Records on three dates in 1952, 1953 and 1954.
Miles is joined on these records by the legendary JJ Johnson on trombone, Jackie McClean and Jimmy Heath on alto saxophone, Gil Coggins and Horace Silver on piano, with Oscar Pettiford and Percy Heath on bass. Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey were the drummers. The impressive production includes a 32-page booklet with an essay by jazz writer Kirk Silsbee.
Young man With a Horn opens with the uptempo, and light-filled Dear Old Stockholm. But what is it about Davis that lurking somewhere in his chipper, sunnier outings there always is the sound of a lonely note? Take Off opens the Vol 3 album, genial and racy, the clear trumpet making a very pleasing sound indeed as it pirouettes above the basket weave of the accompanying music.
The Leap is vibrant and bouncy, while the ballad, It Never Entered My Mind, with its muted trumpet prefigures the moodiness and tone management that Davis would become a master of on Kind of Blue.
But that was five years or so away, that classic album employs a different language compared to these amiable, almost innocent pieces.
Paddy Kehoe
