Collectors' Items
| Collectors' Items | ||||
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| Studio album by Miles Davis | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Prestige Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP / CD |
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Title (number) |
7th |
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running time |
44:05 |
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| occupation |
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Ira Gitler (1–4) |
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Studio (s) |
New York City |
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Collectors' Items is a jazz album by Miles Davis . It contains material from two different studio sessions in 1953 and 1956, including the last joint recordings with Charlie Parker ; it was also the only studio encounter between Parker and Sonny Rollins . The LP was released in 1956 by Prestige Records .
Background of the recordings
Collectors' Items combines two sessions of the trumpeter from two different work phases; on the first session Davis played on January 30, 1953 the tracks Compulsion, The Serpent's Tooth (two takes) and first the Thelonious Monk classic 'Round About Midnight . They took place between Davis' first Blue Note session (May 1952, Miles Davis Volume 1 ) and his recordings with Al Cohn / Zoot Sims ( Miles Davis and Horns ) a month later. In addition to Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker (whom the record company referred to as "Charlie Chan" on the LP cover for contractual reasons) Miles Davis played with Walter Bishop junior (piano), Percy Heath (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums); The latter was to belong to the rhythm section of the first Miles Davis Quintet (with John Coltrane ) in 1955 . Miles Davis commented on the studio encounter with Parker in his autobiography:
- “The year 1953 started very well for me. I made a record for Prestige with Sonny Rollins (who was out of jail) [and] Bird. [...] He had stopped pushing because since Red Rodney was arrested and put back in Lexington jail , Bird thought the police were watching him. Instead of his huge dose of heroin, he was now drinking insane amounts of alcohol. I still remember that he spilled more than a liter of vodka during the rehearsal and when the sound engineer ran the tape, Bird was already completely out of the way. "
Miles Davis went on to report that Parker treated him "like his son or like a member of his band." When Parker fell asleep during the session and producer Ira Gitler asked him about the poor quality of the previous recordings, Miles Davis wanted to leave the recording studio, exasperated. When Parker took note of this, they managed to bring the session to a satisfactory conclusion.
The second session included on the LP was on March 16, 1956, shortly after Davis had already made the first recordings with his first quintet in November 1955 ( Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet ). At the March 1956 session, however, Miles played again (and for the last time) with Sonny Rollins; the rhythm section was formed by Tommy Flanagan (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Art Taylor (drums). During the session in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack (New Jersey) , three tracks were created, In Your Own Sweet Way , a (just released) composition by Dave Brubeck and Davis' own compositions Vierd Blues and No Line . According to Ira Gitler in the original liner notes , the 1953 session was the second time Charlie Parker played a tenor saxophone , and the only time he recorded with Sonny Rollins. For Parker, Collectors' Items was a posthumous publication; the LP was released a year after Parker's death in March 1955.
Track list
- Miles Davis: Collectors' Items (Prestige PRLP 7044)
- A1 Serpent's Tooth [Take 1] (Davis) - 7:08
- A2 Serpent's Tooth [Take 2] (Davis) - 6:24
- A3 'Round Midnight ( Cootie Williams / Monk) - 7:12
- A4 Compulsion (Davis) - 5:53
- B1 No Line (Davis) - 5:48
- B2 Vierd Blues (Davis) - 7:00
- B3 In Your Own Sweet Way (Brubeck) - 4:40
reception
Peter Wießmüller praised the two compositional contributions by Miles Davis in the first session; they “cleverly combine a cool design with the improvisational passion of bebop .” While Parker's contributions on the tenor saxophone, which he was not used to, were “extremely unfortunate”, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins presented themselves with vitality in the hectic compulsion and the experimental number The Serpent's Tooth . Wißemüller also emphasizes the great support of Philly Joe Jones, who was signed for the first time in a Davis combo.
Commenting on the second session in 1956, the author praised the trumpeter's concentrated harmon mute mute playing in the up tempo in the blues number No Line , the atmospheric improvisations in Brubeck's In Your Own Sweet Way and Rollins' successful playing in medium tempo im Vierd Blues , which shows "his fully developed talent for melodic design". "With a similar intention to Miles, he builds paraphrased runs on rhythmic variations in which the pause shift is a central stylistic element."
The Rough Guide: Jazz (2004) noted that Sonny Rollins was in better shape than Charlie Parker.
Scott Yanow gave the album four (out of five) stars in Allmusic and said that this set lived up to its title with interesting sessions; the highlights of the album are No Line, Vierd Blues, In Your Own Sweet Way and the titles Nature Boy and There's No You (from the Mingus / Davis session in 1955, released on Blue Moods ) Yanow (included in the extended CD version ) came to the conclusion: It's classic if often overlooked music from a variety of immortal jazzmen .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe : Miles Davis. The autobiography. Heyne, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-453-17177-2 , p. 216 f.
- ^ A b Peter Wießmüller: Miles Davis. Oreos, (Collection Jazz), Schaftlach around 1985.
- ^ Ian Carr , Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : The Rough Guide to Jazz , 2004 - page xcix
- ↑ Review of the album Collector's Items by Scott Yanow at Allmusic (English). Retrieved December 31, 2013.