Miles Davis - In Person at the Blackhawk, San Francisco (Friday Night, Volume 1)

If you ever took the time to check out all of Miles Davis’ recordings and looked into how vast it is, you’d be stunned. Wikipedia has it broken down into studio recordings, live recordings, compilations, by record label and so much more and on Allmusic’s site, when you click on either Albums or Compilations, the page takes a good while to load. So it goes without saying that Davis' catalog is deep and still, so much of it is considered essential to this day.

His 1961 performances at the Black Hawk nightclub in San Francisco must have been something special to watch. He performed on a Friday and Saturday on April 21 & 22 with his quintet which consisted of him on trumpet, Hank Mobley on sax, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums – tremendous musicians for sure. Not only was this groundbreaking for a jazz musician to take his combo to a club but the music was a brilliantly rendered thing of beauty. Check out “Bye Bye Blackbird” and its amazing rendition:


The entire set was re-issued on what appears to be an excellent release and recording back in 2003 but sadly, I only own the Friday performance on vinyl. I was fortunate to even find just that first volume because even at just six compositions, you can really sense the unity and cohesiveness in the band. Davis was THE master at surrounding himself with talented musicians that were sometimes, better than him (check out all his stuff with John Coltrane) but in a live setting, he never held back. His rhythm section creates memorable patterns and the type of jazz he was playing at the time (straight ahead and fierce) is truly felt on this live recording. Probably the most important musician in the 20th century, here is another song off the Friday set, “Love, I’ve Found You” – Bryan