Of these three Miles Davis albums, the 2-CD from Storyville must be seen as the most valuable because of the range and variety of the anthology, comprising five sessions in all. The album begins with the now legendary jam session at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 with the likes of Monk, Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims that convinced producer George Avakian to sign Davis to the Columbia label, having made a powerful impression with his solo on ‘’Round About Midnight’. The previous five years had seen Davis fall prey to drug addiction, and although word had it he was now ‘clean’, his professional reputation had suffered. What Avakian saw at Freebody Park on 17 July was enough to convince him Davis was on track, and as a result of his subsequent association with Columbia, his career flowered in spectacular fashion, so these tracks have particular significance in the Davis biography. Also included are three tracks from Davis' 1956 visit to Europe as a member of Morris Levy's ‘Birdland 1956’ tour, with a European rhythm section and Lester Young guesting on ‘Oh! Lady Be Good’. Two tracks come from Davis' October 1957 Birdland residency with Bobby Jaspar on tenor, just prior to Cannonball Adderley joining the group. In December that year, Davis was in Europe to provide the music for Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, and on 18 December played a hitherto unknown date with the Erwin Lehn Orchestra in Stuttgart which yields three fascinating tracks with Horst ‘A Walk in the Black Forrest’ Jankowski on piano. The second CD is confined to Davis' 8 April 1960 appearance at the Kongresshaus in Zurich, as part of Norman Granz' Jazz at the Philharmonic tour. Coltrane had handed in his notice prior to the tour, but Davis persuaded him to stay, and he quit after the tour. A reluctant Coltrane famously said to have grumbled throughout the tour, so it is tempting to say a certain frisson attends these tracks, which include two compositions from Kind of Blue – ‘All Blues’ and ‘So What’. This concert is duplicated, plus Norman Granz's introduction, in its entirety on the TCB release, which boasts slightly better sound. From the same tour, albeit one day later, comes Davis' appearance at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen on Miles Davis Quintet Live in Den Haag. Other than ‘So What’, the band play a different repertoire and yes, there is a certain tension in the air here, in what would be the penultimate date Coltrane would play with Davis (the following night they played two houses in Stuttgart before returning home and Coltrane famously going out on his own). There are four bonus tracks: from Davis' 1955 Tonight Show appearance, and from the Blue Note Club in Philadelphia from December 1956 that are also included in the four CD box set The Miles Davis Quintet: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions.