About

Miles Davis wasn’t always the jazz icon the public know and revere today. In fact, his superstar status only came in the wake of his catalytic appearance at the second-ever Newport Jazz Festival, held in July 1955, which transformed him from a talented musician into jazz’s man of the moment. It was coming off the back of this success that the trumpeter formed a stable band and entered a new phase of his recording career, with the 1956 album Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet.

“That group really put me on the map.” - Miles Davis

Prestige released Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet in an unusual and slightly garish, green-tinted cover (later editions were blue) depicting a stark winter scene. That incongruous image didn’t put off jazz fans, however, who regarded Davis’ quintet as one of the coolest new bands in jazz.

“The group I had with Coltrane made me and him a legend,” the trumpeter later wrote in Miles: The Autobiography, recalling the impact of the Coltrane-Garland-Chambers-Jones lineup. “That group really put me on the map in the musical world.”

It certainly did. Neither Miles Davis nor jazz were ever the same again. – U Discover Music