Miles Smiles

Very nice clean vinyl with a good crisp cover.

Miles Smiles is an album by jazz musician Miles Davis, released in January 1967 on Columbia Records. It was recorded by Davis and his second quintet at Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York City on October 24 and October 25, 1966.^[4] It is the second of five albums recorded by Davis's second great quintet, which featured saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams.^[4]

Miles Smiles showcases Davis' deeper exploration of modal performance with looser forms, tempos, and meters. Although the album did not follow the conventions of bop, neither did it follow the formlessness of free jazz.^[3] According to musicologist Jeremy Yudkin, Miles Smiles falls under the post-bop subgenre, which he defines as "an approach that is abstract and intense in the extreme, with space created for rhythmic and coloristic independence of the drummer—an approach that incorporated modal and chordal harmonies, flexible form, structured choruses, melodic variation, and free improvisation."^[2] Music theorist Keith Waters writes that the album "accentuated the quintet's connections to both the hard bop tradition and the avant-garde."^[3]

On three tracks from this album ("Orbits", "Dolores", "Ginger Bread Boy"), pianist Herbie Hancock takes the unusual step of dispensing with left-hand chords and playing only right-hand lines.