I was traveling last week when the box arrived. This week I've been ripping and listening while I work, work being where I do most of my listening these days (albeit often interrupted listening). The box set is compact and imposing. All the paper sleeves are made to look like mini LPs shrunk down. I like that the artistic impression of the album is maintained. However, the text is tiny and the resolution not well preserved. I suppose its too much to ask that they redo the fonts so they're crisp. There's a nice CD sized booklet to accompany the set and the latter half of the book gives a paragraph about each album then some of the recording details about each track. The details mnake up for the lack of readability on the sleeves.

I figured I'd go through this chronologically and decided to commit to posting something on each album. As above, I'm no expert and certainly this much Miles is overkill for 99.8% of the population. I do not represent the remaining 0.2%. But, it is a cool collection and I think I'll get more out of it if I do this. Hopefully, there's at least one or two of you that might follow along and help me out.

Proceeding chronologically (with clickable album art for limited time sampling on each as I go) the first up is



A 1949 recording that was first released in 1977. The jacket kind of sums it up. "We are of course aware of the fact that the technical quality of these recordings is somewhat below contemporary [1977 -n0] professional standards and that no doctoring could possibly restore the beauty of the live sound of the Quintet those nights. Yet we like to think that the listener will overlook the shortcoming in view of the very high musical standard of the performance "

There's some very good performances here. Certainly tunes that are getting dated by now, but it would've been fun to be there even today. I've always liked "All the things you are" and "Embraceable You" and some of the other tracks. I didn't think Miles himself stood out much. The jacket notes makes a deal about how Miles took the audience by surprise playing forte instead of mezzo forte. I wonder about the constitution of the crowd. What I enjoyed the most was the spirit of [looks at liner notes] James Moody on tenor and Tadd Dameron on piano. However, it's clear that this is a highly functional group and they really played well together. I'll admit that I probably won't come back to this album much simply on the basis of less than stellar recording quality.