Miles Ahead in images

Some time ago, I put together Dennis Stock's photos from the first session for Miles Davis's Milestones record.

We now turn to one of the sessions for Miles Ahead, the first Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaboration for Columbia, a relevant LP in Miles Davis's career for its commercial success (the infamous change of covers was made easier by the speed at which runs of prints sold out). The photographs were taken in May 1957 at Columbia's studio on 30th St, Manhattan, and they come from Miles Davis's official website, where they do not carry information on location, date or personnel. From the credits in the Complete Miles/Evans Sony set, we know they were taken by Don Hunstein, Columbia's staff photographer.

Second and final LP cover (source)

The most significant image is the one showing the ensemble (except bass and drums), because it shows the positions of musicians and microphones (a grand total of four were used) to record an orchestra out of balance between the brass (one microphone in the middle for five trumpets, four trombones, two French horns and one tuba) and the "reeds" (one microphone for four chairs sharing alto sax/clarinets/flutes/oboe). As the (almost) only soloist, Davis has his own microphone, and I guess the fourth was for bass and drums, out of frame (click on the images to enlarge them).

Paul Chambers plays the mambo (sort of)

Paul Chambers in 1958
 by Dennis Stock

Boxed multi-disk sets are wonderful, but they can be a challenge to assimilate. Case in point, the sensational Miles Davis - Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, released in 1996. It comprises six CDs full of music that gave us four albums, so you do the math: it contains a lot of music with a lot of repetition.

However, some attentive listening with the appropriate equipment—enough sound on all frequencies, particularly the bass—can unveil treasures such as Paul Chambers's bass line on take 5 of "New Rhumba".

For the love of George

George Avakian, Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins
Newport Jazz Festival, July 6, 1963
©Burt Goldblatt/CTS Images

George Avakian has died. He was 98. He lived a long, good life. For us, music lovers, the important bit is that he was a record producer, and a pioneer at that. Trying to give a fair overview of his whole career is almost impossible, and you will notice that, more often than not, the focus is on less than a decade, from 1950—when he produced Benny Goodmanʼs Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert—till 1958, when he left Columbia Records. Not all eras deserve the same attention, and those years were very intense for Avakian: he signed Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner and a certain Miles Davis into the big time, and relaunched the careers of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But before that, he established, or helped establish, the concepts of the jazz album and the reissues of older recordings, a paradigm still extant. After those heady times at Columbia, he produced Sonny Rollinsʼs comeback in the sixties, beginning with The Bridge, all the studio recordings of Paul Desmond with Jim Hall—one LP for Warner Bros., the rest for RCA—and launched the careers of Charles Lloyd and Keith Jarrett. And still, this doesnʼt make him justice (Discogs.com, as good as it is, barely scratches the surface).