American Record Guide
Martin Williamson : February, 1958

In 1949-50 appeared a series of records, (most of them now collected on Capitol T-762) led by Miles Davis and scored for a nine-piece group which announced a style called “cool.” Whatever their ultimate value (and however valuable their progeny), they seem to have confirmed in Davis his growing recognition of the nature of his own solo voice. They also provided an excellent setting for altoist Lee Konitz (among others), and such striking and unique skill as several of their arrangements showed cannot help but be a real stimulus to many jazzmen by their mere presence. The most celebrated of them were arranged by Gil Evans.

I think that this reunion of Davis and Evans dramatizes the danger implicit in the “cool” conception. There are other things that may indicate that it is at a crisis: the fact that many of the most interesting young talents have largely abandoned it; that instrumentally it is now frequently confined to almost genteel imitators of Lester Young‘s 1938 tenor style, to several young men who have picked up Davis’ mannerisms, and that it is so often used by certain derivative arrangers who produce something rather like skilled documentary film scores.

Some of what I hear on this record seems to me an almost precious shifting of breathy tonal and harmonic murmurs. Some of it is about as “functional” in character (if far less banal) than the kind of furniture music Jackie Gleason records for Capitol. Some of it suggests the toys of Raymond Scott and Alec Wilder. And some of it is freshly, authentically, and effectively musical.

Davis is the only soloist. His playing is sometimes more “hard” than we expect from him (perhaps that’s the flugelhorn in for trumpet), and ranges from almost silly runs (which open I Don’t Wanna be Kissed), through a walking from chord to chord, to very good indeed (The Maids of Cadiz, My Ship).

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Billboard : 11/25/1957
Spotlight on… selection

Davis‘ first appearance with a big band is a gas! Not only is the artist at his best, but the arrangements by Gil Evans represent some of the best big band writing in some time. The blend of the two talents forms a set that will flip even Davis’ most devoted fans. Supporting the artist is a group of some of the top names in jazz today. Most buffs will want it, when they’ve heard it.

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Cashbox : 12/07/1957

The disk features the noted trumpeter, complete with ork background, blowing with that lyrical quality that makes him one of jazz’ top musicians. Evans‘ direction of the orchestra is a capable piece of work as he complements Davis on ten items including The Duke, The Meaning Of The Blues, I Don’t Wanna Be Kissed, and Miles Ahead, which is an original composition by Davis and Evans. Polished jazz sessions.

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Chapel Hill Daily Tar Heel
J.Y. : 12/10/1957

Miles Davis, George Avakian, and Gil Evans have combined to produce an album that will take its place among the truly great recorded jazz performances. It is called Miles Ahead and a more descriptive title would be hard to find, for this record surpasses the efforts of almost every jazz artist in reaching new horizons.

Few people are fully aware of the importance of Gil Evans in modern jazz. He arranged a great part of the Claude Thornhill book during the forties, a book that was to have unbounded influence on the formation of what we now call progressive jazz. The band was a dance band, but it did not restrict itself to the stock repertoire of the average dance band. Instead, under Evans’ tutelage, it explored many facets of big band music that had not been considered.

Recalling Evans’ abilities, George Avakian, Columbia artist and repertoire director, signed him to arrange ten tunes for a Miles Davis big band album. The choice could not have been wiser, for this band is one of the most exciting things in many years.

Essentially the album is a showcase for Davis’ trumpet and fluegelhorn in which the band plays the part of a cushion. With artists like Ernie Royal, Frank Rehak, and Paul Chambers, it is an exquisite cushion. It is Davis’ horn, however, which is the final delight. Never has a jazz musician been able to achieve the gentle, other-worldly effect which Davis does so easily here. I finally have heard the personification of the expression “out on Cloud 13.”

Miles Ahead is an emotional experience – as such it cannot be merely listened to; it has to be heard, appreciated, understood. Yet it is the perfect mood record. I cannot think of a better record to give to that special girl or to play when you are alone with her and want something quiet. I might add, however, that you will end up being quite too, for you will feel a compulsion to listen.

The album has been recorded so that each tune runs into the next without interruption. For this reason one tends to think of it as a comprehensive whole rather than a series of individual pieces. If I had to choose any tunes which appealed to me particularly, I would select Dave Brubeck‘s sensitive portrayal of Duke Ellington titled simply The Duke, and the title song.

In conclusion, I can only offer my heartfelt thanks to George Avakian for producing the record, and to Miles Davis and Gil Evans for doing everything right. This is one you can’t miss. You owe it to yourself.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : February, 1958

Cool jazz, which acquired its keystone in the Miles Davis octet recordings of 1949, moves onto a new level with this disc. Gil Evans, who wrote some of the arrangements for the ’49 session, has now transferred the calm, richly harmonic cool concept to a big band that forms a framework for Davis’ fluegelhorn solos. Evans’ orchestrations are a constant delight, a sinuous kaleidoscope of shifting colors and accents over which Davis plays with much more certainty and direction than he does in less firmly guided circumstances. One might question whether some of these pieces quality as jazz – a beautifully floating arrangement of Kurt Weill’s My Ship, for instance – but, jazz or no, it is lovely music with a haunting, mint-fresh sound.

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Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 12/29/1957

One of the most intriguing albums of the year, Miles Davis, playing flugelhorn, heads a 19-piece band that translates Gil Evans‘ arrangements into a rare and beautiful tonal and rhythmic pattern. There’s an underlying feeling of Ellington and of the Claude Thornhill band, for which Evans did some notable writing. Among the 10 numbers is Dave Brubeck‘s tribute to Mr. E, The Duke. André Hodeir did the liner notes and George Avakian – who deserves congratulations for making the album possible – contributes a bit about Miles.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/17/1957

In a discussion about big bands last spring, John Lewis, the pianist and leader of the Modern Jazz Quartet, wondered when there would emerge a large band “with delicacy.”

That seems to have been taken care of with the release this month of a Miles Davis LP on Columbia, Miles Ahead, which presents Davis playing Fluegelhorn with a 19-piece band under the direction of Gil Evans.

This is one of the most fascinating big band LPs to come along in quite some time. For sheer flexibility, variety in tonal shading and delicate handling of brass, there has been nothing like it since Ellington. In fact, to compare this LP with the other experimental big band offerings such as Shorty Rogers, Johnny Richards and Pete Rugulo is to emphasize the superiority of the Davis group.

Miles himself plays the usually blatant Fluegelhorn in an interesting manner. He has adapted it to his deliberate, prolonged, almost anticipatory style and has managed to extract from it all its warmth and fullness of sound. With the exception of a few short bits by bassist Paul Chambers there are no solos other than Miles’ on the LP.

The numbers, ten of them, are all arranged by Gil Evans and include Dave Brubeck‘s loving tribute to Ellington, The Duke, which is one of the most attractive tracks in the album.

Evans, who rose to fame in jazz circles for his work with the Claude Thornhill band and for his association with the Miles Davis group that recorded for Capitol, has contributed a set of arrangements that are utterly delightful. They are perfectly designed to display the fragile Davis talent to best advantage and they combine the deft handling of rhythm with an imaginative concept of tonal coloration that is rare. It sounds like the best moments of the Thornhill band plus Miles Davis.

The studio orchestra, which cut the date with Davis, had in it some of the best men in the business, including Lee Kontiz, Ernie Royal and Art Taylor. Their sterling performance is a tribute to their musicianship as well as to the arranging skill of Evans who writes everything “the way a soloist would blow it.”

Tunes are by J.J. Johnson, Ahmad Jamal, Evans, John Carisi and Miles (as well as Brubeck) plus several standards. George Avakian was responsible for the date and the engineer was Cal Lampley. Notes are by André Hodeir. All this is given because it is such a superlative album and everyone concerned with it deserves credit.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 01/26/1958

Pinning down a jazz musician as to his recollections of his start in jazz is a lot easier with the old-timers than it is with the newer jazz musicians.

Today’s jazzman is not prone to reminiscence yet. However, Columbia Records recently extracted from trumpeter Miles Davis an excellent autobiographical statement which is quite revealing as to his formative years.

“I started playing trumpet in grade school,” Miles said. “Once a week we would hold notes, Wednesdays at 2:30. Everybody would fight to play best. Lucky for me, I learned to play the chromatic scale right away. A friend of my father’s brought me a book one night and showed me how to do it so I wouldn’t have to sit there and hold that note all the time.

“There was a very good instructor in Alton, IL. ‘Play without any vibrato,’ he used to tell us. ‘You’re gonna get old anyway and start shakin.’ That’s how I tried to play – fast and light – with no vibrato.

“By the time I was 16 I was playing in a band – the Blue Devils – in East St. Louis. We always used to try to play like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. When we heard they were coming to town my friend and I were the first people in the hall, me with a trumpet under my arm. Diz walked up to me and said, ‘Kid, do you have a union card?’ I said ‘Sure,’ so I sat in with the band that night. I couldn’t read a thing from listening to Diz and Bird. Then the third trumpet man got sick. I loved the music so much that I knew the third part by heart. So I played with the band a couple of weeks. I had to go to New York then.

“I spent my first week in New York and my first month’s allowance looking for Charlie Parker. I roomed with Charlie Parker for a year. I used to follow him around, down to 52nd Street where he used to play. Then he used to get me to play. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he used to tell me, ‘go ahead and play.’ Every night I’d write down chords I heard on matchbox covers. Everybody helped me. Next day I’d play those chords all day in the practice room at Julliard, instead of going to classes.

“If you can hear a note, you can play it. The note I hit that sounds high, that’s the only one I can play right then, the only note I can think of to play that would fit. You don’t learn to play the blues. You just play. I don’t even think about harmony. It just comes. You learn where to put notes so they’ll sound right. You don’t just do it because it’s a funny chord.

“The only records of my own I really like are the one I just made with Gil Evans (Miles Ahead), the one I made with J.J. Johnson on my Blue Note date about four years ago and a date I made with Charlie Parker.

“If you play good for eight bars, it’s enough. For yourself. And I don’t tell anybody.”

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Virginian-Pilot
Robert C. Smith : 02/23/1958

Gil Evans is another large talent among the small. For Columbia and Miles Davis, he has written and arranged the best big band album to come off the presses in an age. Miles Ahead utilizes a 20-piece band which is a conscious extension of the famous Davis Octet of the early 50s. Davis plays with skill and sensitivity and Evans’ own compositions. Blues for Pablo and Miles Ahead, are bolstered by J.J. Johnson‘s Lament, and Dave Brubeck‘s lovely The Duke.

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Washington Post
Paul Sherman : 12/01/1957

In this LP, Davis plays flugel horn instead of trumpet with a large band directed by Gil Evans, who wrote the arrangements. Evans, one of the most skilled jazz writers, has created intriguing instrumental voicings, a variety of tone colors, interesting harmonies and an overall mellow sound. The accompaniment compliments Davis’ lyricism, providing an appropriate setting for his buttery horn. Recommended.

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Down Beat : 12/12/1957
Ralph J. Gleason : 5 stars

This is an extraordinarily well done album with absolutely no point at which you can wish for more if you, like John Lewis and so many others, have wished for a big band with delicacy. If so, here it is, playing 10 beautifully arranged (by Gil Evans) selections and sounding a good deal like the best of Claude Thornhill with Miles.

Miles’ use of the flugelhorn on this album does not in the slightest detract from his communication. Rather, it lends a certain spice to it, as he extracts from this sometimes blatant instrument all its mellowness and fullness. There is no piano, but this is not noticeable at all, because what occurs here is a remarkably flexible set of scores, written with a suppleness, fluidity, and skill that should immediately bring Gil Evans to the front rank of contemporary jazz writers. And long due.

With the exception of Miles and an occasional bit of Paul Chambers, there is no one else on this album who can be said to solo. It is interesting to consider this effort – for which all thanks, not only to Miles and Evans and the band, but to Columbia and George Avakian for making it possible – in comparison to other big band experimental albums in recent years.

Some of them, notably the recent Johnny Richards and now and then a flash from Shorty Rogers, have had a quality of excitement that this album does not have, deliberately I am sure. But aside from that, the tonal effects, the coloration, the subtlety, the lack of tension and the pure, lyrical quality is comparable only to Duke and Ralph Burns‘ Summer Sequence. This is not, by intention, an LP to raise you off your chair screaming. It is one to bring you close to almost unbearable delights in music in much the same way the Modern Jazz Quartet does, and which only Duke has consistently been able to do with a big band. The handling of the brass, with its muttering, spouting, rolling figures is a thing of liveliness that grows with each hearing.

Miles’ solos throughout have an almost ascetic purity about them. They are deliberate, unhurried, and almost inevitable in their time. On Miles Ahead he comes bouncing and skipping in almost as though he were the legendary Piper, dancing his way along leading everyone. The brass figures that follow Miles on this side are so Thornhillish it’s startling.

One of the most exquisite numbers on this album, and that is a good word to apply to all of them by the way, is Dave Brubeck‘s tribute to Ellington, The Duke. It’s a bit of pure description that immediately calls up Duke and remains in your mind after the LP is through.

André Hodeir, in his excellent notes, says, “I don’t have room enough to point out all the beauties that I have discovered while listening over and over to the orchestration of these 10 little concertos assembled in a vast fresco.” It cannot be expressed better than that as far as I am concerned.

The 10 selections are, by the way, arranged as a program of continuous music, each following without pause. This makes it doubly pleasurable to hear; but it is not alone the sort of jazz that demands full attention. This is some of the best mood music produced since Duke.

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Liner Notes by George Avakian

About Miles Davis and how this album came to be…

Of all the young musicians who came out of the immediate post-war jazz period, Miles Davis is perhaps the most lyrical and most instantly communicating. In certain contexts, he has proved to be an artist of enormous appeal to people who know nothing about jazz. This album, while deliberately “significant” from the musical point of view, is also an album which we feel is a delight to anyone who simply wants to hear good music, beautifully and richly performed.

Recognized today as one of the giants of the modern jazz era, Miles Davis first came to New York in 1945 to study at the Julliard School of Music. He had met Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker when they had pass through St. Louis with the Billy Eckstine band; these two took a personal as well as musical interest in the 19-year-old trumpeter, and helped him grow as a musician to the point where Miles was soon working in Parker’s small combo on 52nd Street. Miles has always had unusual and strong ideas of his own, and the nine-piece band referred to by André Hodeir made a profound impression on his fellow musicians; it has been described as the most important group in the development of new tonal colors and in the freeing of the jazz arranger. The present album represents, in a way, a summation of the developments inaugurated by that original Davis band, while at the same time pointing still more new directions in the treatment of the jazz orchestra.

When Miles Davis signed with Columbia, we found in each other in a mutual interest in furthering the ideals of the nine-piece band. What direction this desire would take was uncertain, beyond the conviction that Gil Evans was the arranger we wanted. A series of discussions with Gil followed, out of which grew the basic conception (largely Miles’) of this album; within the framework he wanted, Gil developed the details which produce the remarkable texture of a large jazz orchestra, a texture unique in tonal quality and breaking away from the roots which are to be found in the Davis group of the late forties. The Music For Brass album (CL 941), in which he appeared as soloist, had created a deep impression on Miles; without it, the budget for the present album might have been much smaller (but perhaps its sound might have been less exciting!).

Perhaps what makes for the best in jazz (or any other kind of music) is a blending of talents and a conviction concerning the end toward which one strives. Whatever else is in this album, it is something we all believed in and saw through to a conclusion which time will weight – and weight, we believe, in terms of a keystone in orchestral jazz of the past and of the future.

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Liner Notes by By André Hodeir (translated by David Noakes)

However high the quality of some of the albums Miles Davis has recorded with small groups during the last few years (up to his recent ‘Round Midnight, CL 949), one finds oneself occasionally missing the extraordinary effort dating from 1948 to 1950 and still associated with his name that renewed the language of jazz bands. The resulting works, which have become classics, were due to the coming together of a group of players and a group of arrangers. If Miles Davis’ wonderful solos have won a place in everyone’s memory, people haven’t forgotten the new light shed by the writing of such scores as Boplicity and Moon Dreams either. Why is it that the author of these masterpieces, the composer-arranger Gil Evans, has remained almost unknown to the by the jazz public – so much so, in fact, that you often hear connoisseurs attribute the paternity of these two arrangements to John Lewis or Gerry Mulligan? John and Gerry have their own claims to fame; I also know how much esteem and respect these great arrangers have for Gil Evans. Gerry Mulligan has said: “Not many people really heard Gil; those who did, those who came up through the Claude Thornhill band, were tremendously affected, and they in affected others.” (Cited by Nat Hentoff in Down Beat, May 2, 1957).

Eight years after Boplicity, seven after Moon Dreams, what was going to emerge from the new reunion of the two great master of the “cool” school, arrange Gil Evans and soloist Miles Davis? Miles has not changed his opinion since then. For him, Gil Evans “is the best. I haven’t heard anything that knocks me out as consistently as he does since I first heard Charlie Parker.” (Quoted by Nat Hentoff in the same issue of Down Beat.) And now that this album is here, with its high points and its not so highs, its extraordinary moments and its inevitable imperfections, once again it seems perfectly obvious that Gil Evans is the ideal arranger for Miles Davis. These two artists have a rare way of feeling things alike.

So let’s listen to the fruits of this much-awaited collaboration.

This groups differs from the old Miles Davis band in two essential ways: first, here Miles (who plays flugelhorn instead of his customary trumpet) is, so to speak, the only soloist, and second, the band is a big one, made up of Bernie Glow, Ernie Royal, Louis Mucci, Taft Jordan, and John Carisi (trumpets); Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland, and Joe Bennett (trombones); Tom Mitchell (bass trombone); Willie Ruff and Tony Miranda (horns, with Jimmy Buffington replacing Miranda on one session); Bill Barber (tuba); Lee Kontiz (alto sax); Danny Bank (bass clarinet); Romeo Penque and Sid Cooper (flute and clarinet, with Edwin Caine replacing Cooper on one session); Paul Chambers (bass); Art Taylor (drums). Finally, by an interesting innovation, Gil Evans has combined the ten pieces that make up the album in a kind of Suite, each following the preceding one without interruption.

For the first time since Duke Ellington, we are faced here with a kind of big-band writing that is logical and makes use of the many possibilities of such a group. For that matter, whether intentionally or not, Gil Evans has taken as his point of departure what Ellington was doing in the early 1940s. A number of passages represent real homages to Duke’s art. As examples I have only to cite the winning theme of the Dave Brubeck composition The Duke, which has a melody and a kind of orchestration that might have come from the pen of Ellington in his best days; or the variety of timbres and rhythms in the background of The Maids of Cadiz; or the final ensemble of I Don’t Wanna Be Kissed, which has a thoroughly Ellingtonian verve. Of course, there is no plagiarism here, but a flirtation which, when all is said and done, honor Miles and Gil, for creators often define themselves by the choices of their sources.

I don’t have room enough to point out all the beauties that I have discovered while listening over and over to the orchestration of these ten little concertos assemble in a vast fresco. Happy finds in writing technique, such as those ensembles of Miles Ahead which recall the voicing of Boplicity, and those brass solos in which a greater mobility and a more apparent concern for accentuation are manifested (this concern is found again in Kurt Weill‘s My Ship, where the accents are admirably worked into the “group phrasing”); such as that introductory motif of The Maids of Cadiz, which is so delicately harmonized; such as those beautiful ensemble phrases of The Duke which alternate with such a personal use of the tuba, or those brilliant outbursts of the brasses in Carisi’s Springsville – all that is Gil Evans at his best.

Happy finds in matters of form, too, such as that riff in Ahmed Jamal‘s New Rhumba, which has always the same structure but a constantly varied instrumental presentation; such as Blues for Pablo (which Gil Evans had given us recently in a version for small band), in which a latent conflict gradually takes shape between the Spanish-type theme in minor and the blues theme in major, with the latter putting in a brief four-bar appearance before predominating throughout three choruses. (It will be noticed that Evans breaks away here at a few points from the four-bar unit of construction and thus destroys the symmetrical form of the traditional blues, which is something that very few arranges dare to do.)

Miles Davis, in this album, confirms what we already knew about him – that he is the most lyrical of modern jazzmen. But whereas the lyricism of a Charlie Parker, in his great moments, seemed to want to burst open the gates of delirium, Miles’ lyricism tends rather toward a discovery of ecstasy. This is particularly perceptible in slow tempos. The most beautiful solos of this album are found, I think, in the ballads (even though Miles plays with his unique “detachment” in the medium tempo of Miles Ahead and gives us, in New Rhumba, a highly successful “stop chorus”). In slow tempos, Evans’ lyricism is even more closely tied up with Davis’. The exposition of My Ship is proof of this. The discreet flight of the theme played by the band prepares the way for Davis’ type of ecstasy; the almost motionless background prolongs it. The effect is still more striking in The Meaning of the Blues and J.J. Johnson‘s Lament. Here Miles uses the seductiveness of his allusive style and it is the band that tells us, in its infrequent interventions, what the soloist lets us only guess at.

Last of all, note the perfection of those written-out passages in which Miles’ horn is called on to lead an ensemble. “Gil,” says Mulligan, “is the one arranger I’ve ever played who can really notate a thing the way the soloist would blow it.”

The first experiment of Miles Davis with a big band has been looked forward to and is, we believe, conclusive. Representing also as it does Gil Evans’ brilliant reappearance, it is a happy event for the history of jazz, and one for which unreserved congratulations are due the men behind it, George Avakian and Cal Lampley.