Although he bookended the decade with two revolutionary albums? 1959’s emblematic Kind Of Blue and the electric fusion of 1969’s Bitches Brew?Miles Davis cut a quiet, cool figure in the ’60s, apparently aloof from the free jazz and rock detonations going on around him. These seven CDs see him build on the pensive, spacious, elegant style he’d developed with players like John Coltrane and Bill Evans.
Containing seven previously unissued performances as well as the sequence of Miles albums from Seven Steps To Heaven to Miles In Berlin, this is not obviously radical fare but a trove for the connoisseur nonetheless. This is jazz unaffected either by traditionalism or the avantgarde, with Miles speaking in a voice of sweet, civilised longing that contrasts with the much less engaging character he could be in real life.