Miles Davis’ ‘Plugged Nickel’ Box Gets Reissued for Jazz Icon’s Centennial

January 22, 2026 By Mike Duquette — 1 Comment
Miles Davis Plugged Nickel CD box
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Miles Davis’ upcoming centennial will be honored in part with a reissue of a box set collecting some of his greatest live recordings: seven sets at Chicago’s Plugged Nickel nightclub with his second great quintet line-up, recorded just before Christmas 1965.

The near-mythic The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965 was originally released in full by Sony Music in Japan in 1992, after two 1976 Japan-only LPs offering a small sample of the performances. (Those LPs were released as one set in America in 1982, with a disc of alternates, Cookin’ At the Plugged Nickel, arriving five years later.) In 1998, an 8CD (from Columbia/Legacy) and 10LP (from Mosaic) edition hit stores, telling the story to an even wider audience. Largely featuring assorted standards played by Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams, these sets shine anew with a new pressing on each format (with the vinyl box retaining Mosaic’s original mastering and a slightly out-of-order sequence on one show). The redesigned package offers each disc in its own new gatefold jacket, housed in a gold foil-embossed slipcase with a 44-page booklet (perfect bound for the CD set and smyth-sewn binding on the 12″ square vinyl package) that features rare photos and Bob Blumenthal’s original 1998 liner notes alongside new track-by-track commentary by Syd Schwartz.

Davis and his quintet’s Plugged Nickel dates arrived amid periods of slight upheaval. They’d only been playing together since late 1964, with the fruits of a January 1965 studio session released later that year as E.S.P.; by the time they headed to Chicago for a two week engagement at the now-shuttered nightclub, Davis had endured two hospital stays that year after a hip replacement and subsequent periods of recovery. While Miles was in good spirits, his younger bandmates felt they’d done something none of them wanted: they’d gotten complacent onstage. “We’d gotten so cohesive as a band that it had become easy to play together,” Hancock later wrote in his memoirs. “We had figured out a formula for making it work, but of course playing by formula was exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do. We needed to put the challenge back in, to figure out ways to take more risks.”

Williams – who’d only turned 20 weeks before – reportedly was the one to suggest his bandmates attempt “anti-music,” working with each other to present unpredictable dynamics and even odd structures in the standards-packed set lists. They did so without clueing in their often mercurial bandleader, but – just as the title of E.S.P. suggested a telepathic link between the quintet – Davis didn’t miss a step, leading to some of the most charged performances of this period. The quintet continued to play together through 1968 (by which point Davis was pursuing a more fusion-inspired electric sound), but the Plugged Nickel performances remained unreleased until 1976, when longtime producer Teo Macero assembled two volumes of material for CBS/Sony during the trumpeter’s extended performing hiatus. (When the discs were released stateside as a double LP, Wynton Marsalis reportedly brought over a copy to Shorter’s home to play, just so he could observe the saxophonist’s reactions to what was captured.)

The new pressings of Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965 – which hopefully mark the start of an exciting year for Miles fans as we approach what would have been his 100th birthday on May 26 – are available Friday, January 30 and can be pre-ordered below. As an Amazon associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965 (originally released as Sony SRCS 5766-5772 (JP), 1992 and Columbia/Legacy CXK 66955, 1998 – reissued Columbia/Legacy 19802 94125-2, 2026)

8CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
10LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

CD 1/LP 1-2 (Side C): First Set – 12/22/1965

  1. If I Were a Bell
  2. Stella by Starlight
  3. Walkin’
  4. I Fall in Love Too Easily
  5. The Theme

CD 2-3/LP 2 (Side D)-4 (Tracks G1-2): Second Set – 12/22/1965

  1. My Funny Valentine
  2. Four
  3. When I Fall in Love
  1. Agitation
  2. ‘Round Midnight
  3. Milestones
  4. The Theme

CD 4/LP 4 (Track G3)-5: Third Set – 12/22/1965

  1. All of You
  2. Oleo
  3. I Fall in Love Too Easily
  4. No Blues
  5. I Thought About You
  6. The Theme

CD 5/LP 6: First Set – 12/23/1965

  1. If I Were a Bell
  2. Stella by Starlight
  3. Walkin’
  4. I Fall in Love Too Easily
  5. The Theme

CD 6/LP 7-8 (Side O): Second Set – 12/23/1965

  1. All of You
  2. Agitation
  3. My Funny Valentine
  4. On Green Dolphin Street
  5. So What
  6. The Theme

CD 7/LP 8 (Side P)-9: Third Set – 12/23/1965

  1. When I Fall in Love
  2. Milestones
  3. Autumn Leaves
  4. I Fall in Love Too Easily
  5. No Blues
  6. The Theme

CD 8/LP 10: Fourth Set – 12/23/1965

  1. Stella by Starlight
  2. All Blues
  3. Yesterdays
  4. The Theme

Disc 5, Track 3 and Disc 6, Tracks 2, 4 (edit) and 5-6 released as At Plugged Nickel, Chicago – CBS/Sony 25AP 1 (JP), 1976
Disc 3, Track 2; Disc 5, Track 2; and Disc 10, Tracks 2, 3 (edit) and 4 (edit) released as At Plugged Nickel, Chicago Vol. 2 – CBS Sony 25AP 291 (JP), 1976
Above material also released as Live At The Plugged Nickel – Columbia C2 38266, 1982
Disc 1, Tracks 1-2 and 3 (edit) and Disc 7, Track 2 released on Cookin’ At The Plugged Nickel – Columbia CJ 40645, 1987

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Mike Duquette
Mike Duquette

Mike Duquette (Founder) was fascinated with catalog music ever since he was a teenager. A 2009 graduate of Seton Hall University with a B.A. in journalism, Mike paired his profession with his passion through The Second Disc, one of the first sites to focus on all reissue labels great and small. His passion for reissues turned into a career, having written at and worked for all three major catalogue music labels and contributing to Allmusic, Billboard, Discogs, City Pages and Ultimate Classic Rock. He's penned liner notes for Verve, Chess, Mondo and Soul Music Records.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Mike lives in Astoria, Queens with his wife, a cat named Ravioli, twin daughters and a large yet tasteful collection of music.

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