Miles Davis - The New Sounds (1951)

Aside for being famous for being John Coltrane, John Coltrane was first famous for his remarkable collaboration with Miles Davis.  Miles Davis picked up the trumpet at 13 and trained classically.  Three years later, he was playing professionally as a freelance jazz trumpeter.  Two years after that (in 1944), he got the chance to play with two of his greatest influences when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker came to town and a third chair trumpeter got sick.

Miles would graduate high school and attend Juilliard to soon drop out after learning a thing or two.  He jammed regularly with the upcoming crowd of New York jazz artists and sought to reconnect with Charlie Parker.  He worked as a sideman and eventually joined both Dizzy's and Charlie's bands for a time.  Although Miles was a comfortably slower and more reflective soloist, he naturally adapted to what was most popular at the time: bebop.  His unique style, however, would eventually give birth to Cool (but more on that in a later update).

Besides revering Charlie Parker, he also took after Bird's heroin abuse.  He was not as reliable as he would be after he kicked the drug, but he did begin recording under his own name and band (usually a sextet) starting in 1947.  This led the release of his first 10" The New Sounds in 1951.  (It is very important to note that this was not his first major recording session.  A nonet he and composer Gil Evans formed recorded a different kind of jazz in the late forties.  They played live shows to gauge audience interest but were met with an outspoken negativity that made sure the recordings would not be released until years later.)

Here is the discography surrounding Miles Davis's debut album:

Milestones (1946 single)
Half Nelson (1947 single)
Little Willie Leaps (1948 single)
Jeru (1949 single)
Move (1949 single)
Boplicity (1949 single)
Venus de Milo (1950 single)
Modern Jazz Trumpets (1951 compilation album)
Morpheus (1951 single)
Down (1951 single)
Dig (1951 single)
Conception (1951 single)
The New Sounds

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