Milestones

Very smart clean vinyl housed in a nice crisp cover.

Milestones (CL 1193) is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis, recorded with his "first great quintet" augmented as a sextet. It was released in 1958 by Columbia Records.^[4]

Tenor saxophonist John Coltrane's return to Davis' group in 1958 coincided with the "modal phase" albums: Milestones  and Kind of Blue (1959) are both considered essential examples of 1950s modern jazz. Davis at this point was experimenting with modes – scale patterns other than major and minor.^[5]

"Sid's Ahead" sounds at first like a re-working of the highly successful "Walkin'" (previously released on the Prestige label), minus the opening passage (and the trombone) but here is interpreted (by different musicians) with much greater musical freedom in the solos.  Davis plays both trumpet and piano on "Sid's Ahead". He plays trumpet in the ensemble passages and solos on trumpet but switches to piano to accompany the saxophonists in Garland's absence. "Billy Boy" is a solo feature for Garland and the rhythm section.^[6]