Just Squeeze Me: Craft Collects Miles Davis’ 1955 Prestige Sessions on “Miles ’55”
Following last year’s release of Miles ’54: The Prestige Recordings, collecting the legendary trumpeter’s 1954 sessions, Craft Recordings is turning the clock forward to Miles Davis’ 1955 with – what else? – Miles ’55. Due on August 22 in various formats including 3 LPs, 2 CDs, and both standard and high-resolution digital, Miles ’55 will bring together sixteen recordings cut by Davis at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Hackensack, New Jersey for the Prestige label.
Ashley Kahn (author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece) observes in the new liner notes for this release, “There was a particular sound that had defined the ’50s. It was an approach that balanced a modern, post-bop feel with echoes of a simpler time. And it belonged to one trumpet player in particular.” Though Davis would famously go on to break new ground in jazz and popular music at Columbia Records, his Prestige period was far from just a warm-up or footnote.
1955 found a newly clean-and-sober Davis forming the group that would later become known as his First Great Quintet. Comprising Sonny Rollins (with whom he had recorded in 1954 at Prestige and whom would soon be replaced by the young John Coltrane) on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums, this all-star aggregation debuted at New York’s storied Birdland in April. Months later, Davis would make an even bigger splash at the second-ever Newport Jazz Festival. But it’s the studio recordings that have endured, remaining consistently in print over the last 70 years in various formats and configurations.
Davis found time for three Prestige studio sessions in 1955, all of which are chronicled on Miles ’55. The first date, on June 7, was a quartet date with Davis, Jones, and Garland joined by bassist Oscar Pettiford. Initially issued as The Musings of Miles, the session featured both original compositions (“I Didn’t”) and (“Green Haze:”) and standards (Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia,” Arthur Schwartz and Leo Robin’s “A Gal in Calico,” Schwartz and Howard Dietz’s “I See Your Face Before Me,” and Matt Dennis and Tom Adair’s “Will You Still Be Mine?”).
The trumpeter returned to the studio, this time with Modern Jazz Quartet vibraphonist Milt Jackson (who had also memorably recorded with Davis in 1954), pianist Ray Bryant, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Art Taylor. Tenor sax man Jackie McLean appeared on two of his own songs, “Dr. Jackie” and “Minor March.” The original 1956 Prestige album Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet/Sextet had just four songs – those two McLean originals plus Thad Jones’ “Bitty Ditty” and Bryant’s “Changes.”
Miles’ third and final session of 1955, from November 16, introduced the full First Great Quintet on records (with John Coltrane having replaced Sonny Rollins). By this time, Davis had already signed to Columbia, and his first session for the label took place in New York in October. Columbia couldn’t release the material, however, until the expiration of his Prestige contract; ‘Round About Midnight would arrive in stores in March 1957.
The November session saw release in 1956 on Prestige as Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet. In addition to boasting the trumpeter’s soon-to-be-standard “The Theme,” it offered a rendition of Benny Golson’s “Stablemates” as well as a host of standards by Dorothy Parker and Jack King (“How Am I to Know?”), Duke Ellington and Lee Gaines (“Just Squeeze Me”), Andy Razaf and Paul Denniker (“S’posin'”), and Isham Jones and Marty Symes’ “There Is No Greater Love.” Even though both Davis and especially Coltrane were still finding their truest voices, Miles remains a landmark recording in Davis’ voluminous discography.
Though all of this material has been issued previously, all audio has been remastered from the original analog tapes by Paul Blakemore, with lacquers cut for vinyl by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. Both the CD and LP iterations have Ashley Kahn’s liner notes as well a commentary from late jazz historian Dan Morgenstern, who passed away last year at the age of 94. The newly remastered “There Is No Greater Love” is now streaming.
You’ll find the track listing and pre-order links below. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
Miles Davis, Miles ’55: The Prestige Recordings (Prestige/Craft Recordings) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)
CD 1
- I Didn’t
- Will You Still Be Mine?
- Green Haze
- I See Your Face Before Me
- A Night In Tunisia
- A Gal In Calico
- Jackle
- Bitty Ditty
CD 2
- Minor March
- Changes
- Stablemates
- How Am I To Know?
- Just Squeeze Me
- There Is No Greater Love
- The Theme
- S’posin’
CD 1, Tracks 1-6 from The Musings of Miles, Prestige PRLP-7007, 1955
CD 1, Tracks 7-8 & CD 2, Tracks 1-2 from Quintet/Sextet, Prestige PRLP-7034, 1956
CD 2, Tracks 3-8 from Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet, Prestige PRLP-7014, 1956
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1 thought on “Just Squeeze Me: Craft Collects Miles Davis’ 1955 Prestige Sessions on “Miles ’55””
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Hello Joe,
This couldn’t have been an easy review to write, given the “previously published” nature of the material.
Let’s see if I got this straight. LP1 is exactly the same in every respect as Craft’s recent release of THE MUSINGS OF MILES; LP3 is the same as Craft’s MILES, while only LP2, Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet/Sextet, has no audiophile reissue counterparts . . . yet.
So the 3-disc set buys you the book and one (for now) new pressing. If Craft were clear about this when they issued “MILES” and “MUSINGS OF MILES,” I wouldn’t have duplicated the records by buying both.
How’d I do?
Thanks.
Leonard