Miles in the Sky [Remaster]

Performer: Miles Davis
Artist: Wayne Shorter; Herbie Hancock; George Benson; Ron Carter; Tony Williams
Engineer: Frank Laico; Arthur Kendy
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Personnel: Miles Davis (trumpet); Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone); Herbie Hancock (acoustic & electric pianos); George Benson (guitar); Ron Carter (bass); Tony Williams (drums). Producer: Teo Macero. Reissue producers: Michael Cuscuna, Bob Belden. Recorded at Columbia Studio B, New York, New York on January 16 and from May 15-17, 1968. Originally released on Columbia (9628). Includes liner notes by Bob Belden. Digitally remastered using 20-bit technology by Mark Wilder and Rob Schwarz (Sony Music Studios, New York, New York). This is part of Sony's Columbia Jazz Masterpieces series. With the 1968 album Miles in the Sky, Miles Davis explicitly pushed his second great quintet away from conventional jazz, pushing them toward the jazz-rock hybrid that would later become known as fusion. Here, the music is still in its formative stages, and it's a little more earth-bound than you might expect, especially following on the heels of the shape-shifting, elusive Nefertiti. On Miles in the Sky, much of the rhythms are straightforward, picking up on the direct 4/4 beats of rock, and these are illuminated by Herbie Hancock's electric piano -- one of the very first sounds on the record, as a matter of fact -- and the guest appearance of guitarist George Benson on "Paraphernalia." All of these additions are tangible and identifiable, and they do result in intriguing music, but the form of the music itself is surprisingly direct, playing as extended grooves. This meanders considerable more than Nefertiti, even if it is significantly less elliptical in its form, because it's primarily four long jams. Intriguing, successful jams in many respects, but even with the notable additions of electric instruments, and with the deliberately noisy "Country Son," this is less visionary than its predecessor and feels like a transitional album -- and, like many transitional albums, it's intriguing and frustrating in equal measures. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine With MILES IN THE SKY, Davis began to consciously incorporate elements of popular music and blues into the quintet's open-ended style of group improvisation. This was an attempt to reach out, not sell out. By 1968, groups such as the Beatles had stretched the parameters of the pop song form way beyond their humble harmonic beginnings, while the blues trio Cream significantly elevated the level of musicianship and added a bold improvisational dimension to live performances. It was impossible to ignore these developments. And as Miles indicated in his autobiography, he was already becoming enamored of musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Sly Stone and Muddy Waters (elements of soul jazz had already crept into the quintet's repertoire with "Eighty-One" from E.S.P.). On MILES FROM THE SKY, the trumpeter's "Stuff" juxtaposes a long elliptical blues line over a harmonically varied Ron Carter bass vamp, as Herbie Hancock pumps out billowy turqoise clouds of Fender/Rhodes chords and Tony Williams alternatingly locks in and deconstructs the eighth note pulse. On Shorter's "Paraphernalia" the horns play harmonic cat and mouse with a swinging vamp, resolving tension in cyclical chord progression, as George Benson's electric guitar offers a teasing suggestion of things to come. Tony Williams' "Black Comedy" and Davis' "Country Son" offer a series of radical tempo and textural changes: The former does so in a, more or less, straight ahead groove, while the latter intersperses swing beats with abstract gospel and ballad moods, culminating in an epic Shorter solo, and a Davis solo which hints at the newer style of phrasing he'd reveal on IN A SILENT WAY.

Down Beat (10/3/68) - 4 1/2 Stars - Very Good Plus - "...[MILES IN THE SKY], one of the best [recordings] that Miles has made with his present group, shows the effect of the Coleman-Coltrane revolution even as Miles denies it, for their assault on the popular song has pushed Miles along the only path that seems open to him, an increasingly ironic detachment from sentiment and prettiness...."

Few musicians have managed to change the course of music--trumpeter Miles Davis did it several times. An early disciple of Charlie Parker, Davis created an austere, understated approach that became the model for cool. His superb albums in the 1950s made him a star, and in the following decade, he brought small-group jazz to the limit before he unapologetically (and, for some, unforgivably) took on jazz-rock. After a break, he re-emerged in the '80s with a mixture of pop and dense, bristling funk. All the while, his refusal to follow anyone but his own muse made him both a hero and an enigma--either way, he was one of the most magnetic, influential figures in American music.

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