Miles Davis – The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions (Columbia/Legacy) Say what you want about the anal retention behind the endless cataloging, sorting and regurgitation involved with major label reissue programs, but sometimes the subject at hand is worth all the work and worry. Case in point is Columbia’s extensive and encyclopedic efforts in regard to Miles Davis. Davis recorded for Columbia from 1955 until the early 1970’s. In that stretch of time, he evolved/devolved (depending on who you’re talking to) from the godfather of cool jazz into master of modal jazz and again into the godfather (again) of electrified jazz fusion. There are those that look at this progression as sacrilege, and the downfall of one of the true masters of modern jazz. They can’t conceive of someone that could create “Kind of Blue” also creating the challenging (and often difficult) work on Bitches Brew and On The Corner. I used to be one of those people.
However….
Over the years, especially after getting into funk, I decided to explore Miles’ electric period. This search led me to the LP that is often considered the real beginning of this period is ‘In A Silent Way’. Though he had flirted with electric sounds with the post-Coltrane, Herbie Hancock/Wayne Shorter combo on ‘Filles De Kilimanjaro’, ‘In A Silent Way’ was a headlong leap into an instrumentation that few jazz musicians had anything to do with. Here Miles had begun to work with Joe Zawinul (who had played on many of Cannonball Adderley’s great 60’s sessions), Chick Corea, John Mclaughlin and Dave Holland (jn addition to Hancock, Shorter and Tony Williams). The original ‘In A Silent Way’ was, like many of Davis’ 1960’s albums, actually a series of long jams that had been edited and reconstructed by Davis and his producer Teo Macero. Composed of only two tracks ‘In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time’ and ‘Shhh/Peaceful’, the LP was a masterwork of understated, occasionally ambient modern jazz. It is a fairly radical break with much of Davis’s previous work, and the calm before the storm of ‘Bitches Brew’.
Over the years a lot of critics and historians have done a lot of lip service to this work and the albums that followed in the next 6 years being closely related to the work of either James Brown or Jimi Hendrix. These statements are largely the work of people that know little about either of those artists. If you come to Davis’s 1968 to 1974 work looking for ‘Cold Sweat’ or ‘Manic Depression’ you will be disappointed. There are mild, tangential connections to Brown and Hendrix in Davis’s work, but these are only apparent after multiple listens, and then only subtly.
What Michael Cuscuna and Bob Belden have done with ‘The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions’ is -  using music recorded between September of 1968 and February of 1969 – painted a picture of the birth of one of the more distinctive sounds in the Davis canon. Like many prolific 1960’s jazz masters (Ornette Coleman comes to mind) Davis recorded many sessions that while not released at the time of their creation, were chopped up and doled out by the record label years later as compilation tracks or artist retrospectives. As a result linear passages in an artists history were fragmented and dispersed. Sets like this grab those puzzle pieces and reassemble them into a clear, representative picture.
Included are the full, unedited versions of the tracks from the original ‘In A Silent Way’, several previously unissued tracks (including a rehearsal of ‘In A Silent Way’) and numerous tracks that had been issued out of context.
I would suggest that someone unfamiliar with this period, listen to the orginal LP, which appears as the last two tracks on the third disc of this collection. Become familiar with the overall sound and vocabulary of what it is Davis was trying to do. Then go back and listen to those pieces in their original unedited form, and then the ‘surrounding’ tracks for the big picture.
Of all the box sets compiled in this series, this is by far the most affordable, and easiest to get a handle on and the liner notes by Bob Belden are exceptional.
Highly recommended.