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With a Miles Davis live box set recently back in print to celebrate his centennial, another label, Craft Recordings, is preparing a new compilation to mark the same occasion this spring.

The Best of Miles Davis, to be released on vinyl March 13, is a simple eight-track compilation drawing from Miles’ mid-’50s sessions with his “first great quintet,” released through the rest of that decade on the Prestige label. Primarily comprised of pop and jazz standards (Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine,” Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” and “Well, You Needn’t,” Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo” and “Airegin”) along with “Four,” a Davis original, the material here showcases Davis’ growing stature and development of the hard bop style. (An exclusive variant at Target stores is pressed on aqua blue vinyl and comes with a 5″ x 7″ print of Davis.)

Davis – a Juilliard dropout who’d logged time as a member of groups led by the likes of Charlie Parker, Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie before leading a nonet in landmark 1949-1950 sessions (later released on LP as Birth of the Cool in 1957) – expanded his horizons in the mid-1950s after abandoning the cool jazz and bebop styles of his contemporaries for a more rhythmic, blues-inspired style. (Davis’ playing would become revitalized by the use of a Harmon mute around this time – something he continued utilizing for the rest of his career – while his already-mercurial public image was forever crystalized when, after having polyps removed from his vocal cords, failed to keep silent on his doctor’s orders, getting into an argument that would forever give his voice a distinctive rasp.)

In the summer of 1955, after a fateful gig at the Newport Jazz Festival, Davis was wooed away from Prestige toward Columbia, with whom he’d record for nearly three decades. He still had a year to go on his Prestige contract, but the intersection between labels became mutually beneficial: Columbia’s George Avakian requested Davis form a quintet for an engagement at the Café Bohemia in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. Davis picked pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Philly Joe Jones and – after original pick Sonny Rollins left to kick a heroin habit – John Coltrane on tenor saxophone. That quintet would record three sessions for Prestige at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack, NJ studio – one on November 16, 1955 and two marathon bookings on May 11 and October 26, 1956 – that formed the basis of what’s heard on The Best of Miles Davis, and originally released on half a dozen albums for Prestige across the rest of the decade and beyond, including Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet (1956) and the quartet of Cookin‘, Relaxin’, Workin’ and Steamin’ with The Miles Davis Quartet, issued between 1957 and 1961. (By that point, Davis had broken up the quintet, experimenting with other line-ups like the sextet that played on 1959’s landmark Kind of Blue.)

The Best of Miles Davis is mastered by Paul Blakemore at CMG Mastering, with mastering for vinyl credited to Jeff Powell at Take Out Vinyl. It’s available March 13 and can be ordered below. (As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.)

The Best of Miles Davis (Craft, 2026) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Target (aqua blue with photo print))

Side A

1. Just Squeeze Me
2. Oleo
3. ‘Round Midnight
4. Airegin

Side B

1. My Funny Valentine
2. Well, You Needn’t
3. You’re My Everything
4. Four

Track A1 from Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet – Prestige PRLP 7014, 1956
Tracks A2 and B3 from Relaxin’ with The Miles Davis Quintet – Prestige PRLP 7129, 1958
Track A3 from Miles Davis and The Modern Jazz Giants – Prestige PRLP 7150, 1959
Tracks A4 and B1 from Cookin’ with The Miles Davis Quintet – Prestige PRLP 7094, 1957
Track B2 from Steamin’ with The Miles Davis Quintet – Prestige PRLP 7200, 1961
Track B4 from Workin’ with The Miles Davis Quintet – Prestige PRLP 7166, 1960