Tripping Through the Past

MILES DAVIS
'Round About Midnight (Columbia/Legacy)
Milestones (Columbia/Legacy)
Since American music giant Miles Davis would be 75 this year if the universe hadn't fucked up in 1991 and taken him out instead of Michael Bolton, Columbia (not the only label he recorded with but the one with whom he was most prolific) has undertaken a new round of reissues, remasters, compilations, etc. We'll get to the concert albums and comps in future issues; for now, we'll deal only with the two most recently remastered studio albums: 1956's 'Round About Midnight and 1958's Milestones.

'Round About Midnight was Davis' first album for Columbia and the clearest portrait yet of the Miles Davis Quintet, which included pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Philly Joe Jones and a soon-to-be legendary tenor man, John Coltrane. In what was becoming typical jazz style by this time, the album is a mix of jazz originals and popular standards, put through the standard bop wringer. The Quintet swings hard on Cole Porter's "All of You" and the traditional "Dear Old Stockholm;" despite snazzy solos from Davis, Coltrane and Garland, it's the finger-popping rhythms of Chambers and Jones that own these tracks. The two hornmen display their keen sense of improvisation and manifest their near-telepathic call-and-response riffing on Tadd Dameron's "Tadd's Delight" and former Davis bandmate Charlie Parker's "Ah-Leu-Cha." But the most penetrating performance is the lyrical take on Thelonious Monk's classic "'Round Midnight," on which Davis' muted tone incisively conjures up a late-night mood of resigned melancholy. It's this performance that forever branded the tune as a jazz standard. This reissue adds several bonus tracks culled from other 50s sessions, including sharp takes of Dizzy Gillespie's "Two Bass Hit" (a song Davis would return to numerous times) and the standard "Sweet Sue, Just You."

Milestones brings back the same lineup, adding frenetic altoist Cannonball Adderly to make up a Sextet, but that's not the most important aspect of this record. While Milestones still fits comfortably in the hard bop mold (see the supercharged version of "Two Bass Hit" found here), Davis introduces the modal approach that would dominate his next album, the watershed Kind of Blue. The title track and the long, spiraling "Sid's Ahead" (a tribute to DJ Symphony Sid) proficiently weave the kind of modalities Davis would put to such good use on Blue into high energy bop, an influential move that seems common now but was revolutionary at the time. You can hear the aural building blocks of not only Davis' future endeavors, but Coltrane's as well. (Though it should be noted that Coltrane was a star in his own right by this time.) The traditional "Billy Boy" lightens the tone a bit, and is primarily a showcase for Garland's playful keyboard solos, and the Sextet ends the record proper with a relaxed, bluesy swing through another Monk staple, the ubiquitous "Straight, No Chaser." This edition adds alternate takes of that number, "Milestones" and "Two Bass Hit" (that's the third version, for those keeping score—Davis must've really loved this tune), which add little to the preceding tour de force, but don't detract from it either. Michael Toland

For fans of: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie. (more Miles Davis albums can be found here)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Soulful Sounds From Soulville!
(Get Hip)
Before Gamble & Huff took their Philadelphia International label to prominence in the 70s, singer Bobby Fulton and DJ Toby Young started Soulville in an attempt to document Pennsylvanian R&B. Nobody in Soulville's no-star roster qualifies as a lost genius or anything, but they all assay raw, traditional soul music as well as any of their contemporaries not named Otis, Marvin or James. From the rough-hewn balladry of Donald Lee & the Executioners' "Bring Your Love Here to Me" to the James Brown cop of Wee Willie Mason's "Funky Funky (Hot Pants)," from the Stax stylings of Ray Gant & the Arabian Knights to the Motown mastery of the Mastermen, the Harrisburg/Philadelphia/Pittsburgh soul men (and they're almost all men, strangely) prove themselves equal to the better-known stars of the day, at least in short, single-length bursts. Derivative, yes, but it's like discovering a good oldies station playing songs you've never heard. If you're partial to pre-disco R&B, you'll want to hear this. Michael Toland

For fans of: Stax Records, Wilson Pickett, James Brown