1958 Miles is a compilation album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released in 1974 on CBS/Sony. Recording sessions for tracks that appear on the album took place on May 26, 1958, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio and September 9, 1958, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 1958 Miles consists of three songs featured on side two of the LP album Jazz Track, which was released in November 1959, one song from the same session not appearing in the album ("Love for Sale"), and three recordings from Davis' live performance at the Plaza Hotel with his ensemble sextet. The recording date at 30th Street Studio served as the first documented session to feature pianist Bill Evans performing in Davis' group.
The sessions for tracks on the album in mid-1958, along with the Milestones sessions from earlier that year, were seen by many music writers as elemental in Miles Davis' transition from bebop to the modal style of jazz and were viewed as precursors to his best-known work, Kind of Blue. Following audio engineering and digital restoration by engineer Larry Keyes at Sony Music New York Studio, the album was reissued on compact disc in 1991 as part of Columbia's Jazz Masterpieces Series. For later reissues, the album was retitled as '58 Sessions Featuring Stella by Starlight or 58 Miles Featuring Stella by Starlight. The complete 1958 sessions for Columbia were issued on the box set The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis with John Coltrane, and Jazz at the Plaza was reissued in 2001. The first four tracks were also released on a bonus disc of the 50 Anniversary Collector's Edition of Kind of Blue.
Background
In 1958, Miles Davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop, seeing its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering musical creativity. Five years earlier, jazz pianist, composer and theorist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953), which offered an alternative to the practice of musical improvisation based on chords. Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of classical music, Russell developed a new formulation using musical scales, or a series of scales, for improvisations. Russell's approach to improvisation came to be known as modal in jazz. Davis viewed Russell's methods of composition as a means of getting away from the dense chord-laden compositions of his time, which Davis had labeled as "thick".
In contrast to the conventional method of composing during the time, modal compositions were to be written as a series of sketches in which each performer is given a set of scales that defines the parameters of their improvisation. Modal composition, with its reliance on musical scales and modes, represented, as Davis called it, "a return to melody". According to Davis, "Classical composers—some of them—have been writing this way for years, but jazz musicians seldom have". In early 1958, Davis began using this approach with his sextet, a jazz ensemble made up of alto sax player Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. Influenced by Russell's ideas, Davis implemented his first modal composition with the title track of Milestones (1958), which was based on two modes, recorded in April of that year. Instead of soloing in the straight, conventional, melodic way, Davis's new style of improvisation featured rapid mode and scale changes played against sparse chord changes. Davis' acclaimed collaboration with Gil Evans on Porgy and Bess gave him an opportunity to experiment with Russell's concept, as Evans' third stream compositions for Davis contained only a musical scale and no chords, the basis for modality.
The sextet
Following the Milestones sessions, Davis made significant personnel changes. By the time Coltrane had returned from Thelonious Monk's quartet to Davis's sextet, pianist Red Garland and drummer Philly Joe Jones were replaced by Bill Evans and Jimmy Cobb. Problems with money, tardiness, attitude and heroin preceding the Milestones sessions troubled Garland and Jones. During one of these sessions, an incident occurred between Davis and Garland when he was playing piano on the song "Sid's Ahead". Apparently, Davis leaned over his pianist's shoulder, commenting on his piano playing. What was said by Davis is still unknown, but it was enough to make Garland leave the studio, leaving Davis to play piano on the track and straining the friendship between the two musicians.