FREEDOM JAZZ DANCE
by THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET

Studio chatter and partial takes don't add much to the Miles legacy

By Rick Hines, June 20, 2019

This release reminds me of Elvis Presley's "Elvis Having Fun On Stage" album. There was no music on Elvis' album, only his lame between song patter. What was the point?

For this Bootleg Series release, we get a lot of talking. The liner notes indicate we get an incredible look at Miles' creative process. What we get are a bunch of partial takes (and a couple of complete ones) with a lot of laughter, some cursing, requests to hear it played back, but nothing that really changed the way I considered Miles' working process. The real work occurred when the quintet played, and that's where you hear the ideas getting kicked around by the musicians.

Most of these are Wayne Shorter's tunes, and there's a fair amount of Miles just running through the heads with Shorter to get the phrasing down. Most of the soloing they save for the "official take," but once in a while, the rhythm section fires off after the theme and Miles lets loose, like a race horse straining at the gate. The energy is palpable, if under restraint. Most of the experimenting was done on the early sessions. Later on, the band was more prepared, and the rehearsal tapes are simply early takes of the already-worked-out songs.

I took the liberty of editing the rehearsal recordings. I removed the talking, the false starts, and a couple of repetitious spots, then cross-faded the results into a continuous take for each song. As each section fades into the next, you can hear the changes occurring as the band strives to find each tune's approach. I'm not sure who wants to go through all that effort (I rather enjoyed the exercise), but I ended up with about one hour and twenty minutes of previously unheard material, including the couple of alternate full takes included.

So, do you want to hear a bunch of studio chatter, disjointed partial takes, and get additional copies of master takes you probably already own, just to get a couple of alternate takes? You might watch for a good price on a used copy if the answer is "yes."

The master takes are classics, but are available on the original albums. I'm not sure what this collection really adds. I would categorize this as "for Miles collectors/fanatics only."