Miles Davis All Stars - 1957 - Walkin'

(37:52; Craft Recordings [2025 Edition] )






















The last of the recent Craft Recordings/Concord remastered reissues of Miles Davis are both the newest album and the oldest recordings, as the sessions were from April 1954 and brings together songs which originally appeared on two 10” albums, ‘Miles Davis All-Star Sextet’ and ‘Miles Davis Quintet’, yet this was not released until 1957. Each of the sessions had Miles, Horace Silver (piano), Percy Heath (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums), but the two tracks on side one also had Lucky Thompson (tenor saxophone) and  J. J. Johnson (trombone) while the three tracks on side two had David Schildkraut (alto saxophone). I have no idea why, but David is the only musician not credited in the middle of the cover, which seems somewhat strange unless some art editor decided the text would be too small if he was included.

The title cut is widely regarded as one of the most important early hard bop numbers, and at more than 13 minutes in length is an amazing number which is surely known by anyone into jazz. Compare that to “Blues ‘N’ Boogie” where his technique is simply amazing, showing incredible speed and dexterity. Again this has all five tracks in the correct sequence, and the result is an album which is as fresh and exciting today as the day it was originally released. Wonderful. 

Kev Rowland, November 2025

Links:
https://www.milesdavis.com/
https://craftrecordings.com/

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