Vinyl Me, Please, the Miles Davis Estate; and the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, Legacy Recordings, have announced the 17th entry in VMP’s Grammy-nominated Anthology series: Miles Davis: The Electric Years.
Collecting seven albums from one of the most fertile, daring eras of Miles Davis’ career, The Electric Years is meant to preserve these albums on vinyl for a new generation of people ready to have their minds blown by Miles’ blending
of electronic, rock, jazz, and everything else he felt like experimenting with.
The seven albums — In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On The Corner, Big Fun, and Get Up With It — have all been mastered AAA from 1-to-1 tape transfers of the master tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound. With Grammy award-winning Steve Berkowitz supervising and consulting, the 11 LPs featured in the box come on 180g black vinyl pressed at GZ, and will be limited in the first edition to 2,000 units. These albums have not been reissued AAA in many years and, in some cases, ever.
Starting in 1969 and ending in 1974, this box tells the story of a fertile period in Miles’ career, the third or fourth time he blew up the rules of jazz and made it again in his own image.
Endlessly influential, these albums impacted basically every genre of music to follow in their wake. You can learn the story of these albums via an extensive Listening Notes booklet written by jazz historian and critic Ben Ratliff.
“Doing a box dedicated to Miles Davis has been a goal and dream for us since we started VMP Anthology in 2019,” said Electric Years executive producer and VMP Director of Music, Andrew Winistorfer.
“It took us a while to decide on how to narrow it down; Miles has something like four or five different eras you could put into a box like this. But the electric period is one of his least explored. The big titles get all the attention, and we thought there was a way to show people how groundbreaking and incredible this time
in Miles’ career was by doing all of his studio albums of this period. What emerges is a picture of an artist in his third professional decade, refusing to rest on his laurels and inventing a new future in real time.”
The Electric Years is available now on Vinyl Me, Please’s website for $399. VMP Members get a $50 discount on this box set. It’s expected to ship in the fall.
Related reading: Starting with Miles Davis and Kind of Blue
ORT
March 29, 2023 at 3:23 pm
Not my druthers but nice all the same.
Ian White
March 29, 2023 at 4:35 pm
ORT,
This was when Miles got all weird. The music is definitely different.
They will sell all 2,000 box sets very quickly.
I did get advance Record Store Day copies of Chet Baker and Violent Femmes on vinyl from Craft Recordings and they are really good. The Chet Baker is excellent.
Best,
Ian White
ORT
March 29, 2023 at 7:56 pm
Ian I must admit to really enjoying Chet Baker’s playing and singing. I have “Chet Baker Sings” in permanent rotation here in the Bat Cave be it vinyl or CD. 😉
As probably the whole world knows, I can not abide blowing notes for the sake of blowing notes and if memory serves Miles was really guilty of that in his early “musical dotage”.
After I hit the “post comment” I am going to watch one of the finest Jazz performances ever:
“The Three Little Bops”
So let it be written. So let it be FUN!
ORT
Ian White
March 29, 2023 at 8:15 pm
ORT,
Passover isn’t until next week. I did already spend almost $1,400 on “food.”
So let it be written. So let Pesach be done.
Rabbi Ian
Steven Denfeld
May 30, 2023 at 11:34 pm
This is an outstanding period of Miles’ creative output to spotlight and every one of these albums offers some tracks that are seriously at the peak of musical achievement, and two of these are, imo, his very finest albums he ever did. Bravo to VMP for the intelligent focus on this release. I won’t be chasing this release myself as I already have excellent copies of the albums that mean the most and am hunting for a few of the others. Awesome release, though!