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Someday My Prince Will Come
Miles Davis
Someday My Prince Will Come
Genres: Jazz, Broadway & Vocalists
 
Miles Davis's best work often created ambiguous zones between passionate expression and cool, reflective distance. When these sessions were recorded in March 1961, he hadn't taken a small group into a recording studio in t...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Miles Davis
Title: Someday My Prince Will Come
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Columbia
Album Type: Original recording remastered
Genres: Jazz, Broadway & Vocalists
Styles: Cool Jazz, Bebop, Cabaret
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 074644094725

Synopsis

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Miles Davis's best work often created ambiguous zones between passionate expression and cool, reflective distance. When these sessions were recorded in March 1961, he hadn't taken a small group into a recording studio in two years; however, he had been developing new techniques with overdubbing during his orchestral sessions with Gil Evans for Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain. Davis decided to apply the technique here as well and invited John Coltrane, who had left the trumpeter's working group a year before, to overdub additional solos. The results include a heightened contrast between the emotional storm of Coltrane's tenor and the measured restraint of the vamping rhythm section, especially on the title tune taken from Disney's Snow White. The gentler, warmer sound of tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, actually playing his solos with the rhythm section, provides a further study in contrast. Though the ultimate structures may be new, Davis sounds secure and masterful throughout. --Stuart Broomer

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CD Reviews

Davis and Mobley were great together
rash67 | USA | 04/30/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)

"The underrated Hank Mobley spent so much of his life in the shadow of John Coltrane, who certainly blew more notes...



Mobley and Miles Davis should have been soul-mates, prior to '64, Davis often played solos close to the melodic line (see his solo on Round Midnight). John Coltrane thought so, he recommended Mobley to Davis as his replacement. Mobley has a wonderful lyric sound to his sax, despite the indifference of Miles Davis and much of the hardbop world to his work during his life. Thoughtful Mobley played complex music, occationally just behind the beat (like Billie Holiday).



In the song "Someday my Prince", Miles starts the solos and lays down the general tempo. Hank Mobley listens very carefully, comes in next, with a mirror image solo, similar structure, similar tempo, thoughtful lyrical, just like Davis. Then Coltrane comes in, much too hard and much too loud, with a solo completely unlike what anyone else in the group was playing. Like throwing battery acid over the whole recording...(Other reviewers have called Mobley "tentative" because he listened to what Davis was playing and didn't jump in, blowing as hard as he could. I disagree.)



For the rest of the album you hear the interplay of Mobley and Davis who fit together hand-in-glove, instead of fighting each other (in "Blackhawk - Live" - hear "Bye Bye Blackbird"). Coltrane was unhappy the MD group and soon to leave (it shows).



Davis and Mobley were great together. Mobley listened better than nearly anyone else, to Miles Davis and other trumpeters. Why they didn't play together more is a mystery to me. The only sense I can make of it is that Coltrane was a mustard-contrast to Davis honey. Mobley was his mirror/shadow; Davis prefered contrast.



This (underrated) album is one of the ten best by Miles Davis.



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