Miles Davis: Walkin' (LP)

Back in New York, having successfully battled his personal demons, and leading the incredible Horace Silver/Percy Heath/Kenny Clarke rhythm section, Miles Davis recorded two sessions in April 1954 that took both his own music and jazz in general in a new direction. The quintet, featuring underground legend Davey Schildkraut on alto saxophone, gave the first hint of the trumpeter's haunting, subdued style and introduced his classic composition "Solar". Even more influential was the sextet session with J.J. Johnson and Lucky Thompson, which took advantage of long-playing record technology with two extended jams that heralded both the return of modern jazz musicians to a focus on the blues and the arrival of the funky hard bop era. Together on the LP Walkin', this music (one of the first recorded by Rudy Van Gelder for Prestige) created one of the first essential albums in the Miles Davis canon. Walkin' is a key album in Miles Davis' discography. It contains the result of two quite different sessions. The first (actually chronologically the second) resulted in only two tracks, long enough to fill one side of an LP. The other session yielded four tracks, three of which ("Solar", "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "I'll Remember April") were originally released on a 10-inch LP. When the normal size for an LP soon became 12 inches, the decision was made to pair both sessions on the now classic album Walkin'. "I'll Remember April" was now too long to fit on an LP side with the other two tracks released. Instead, it was replaced by the shorter "Love Me Or Leave Me". Both tracks are included on this release!