Various Artists: Miles Davis On Film

Rating: ★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Miles Davis (t)

Label:

Essential Jazz Classics

Feb/2019

Catalogue Number:

EJC55730 2CD

RecordDate:

various dates

An almost identical release to last year’s The Cinema of Miles Davis on él Records and equally as pointless. So there’s the momentous, yet widely available, original score to his French film soundtrack Lift to the Scaffold on one disc. CD2 is largely made up of a selection of public domain material, 13 classic Miles recordings from the 1950-60s that’s previously been used as incidental music for a string of American films. Additional tracks, such as ‘Miles Ahead’ and ‘So What’, which were used in Don Cheadle’s 2015 Miles Ahead, hardly qualify as an update of any substance. The other difference from the él release is the two cuts (one a medley) from the 1959 TV film The Sound of Miles Davis, but I prefer to watch it on DVD or YouTube with the same average sound quality, but some classic film archive of Miles and Gil in the studio. The sleeve notes by the suitably monikered Aaron Bland are about as informed as the él issue, though to presumably fill space Bland details info about soundtracks that are not even on here, such as the Miles-Legrand 1991 Australia-located movie collaboration Dingo. As with its predecessor, to be avoided at all costs.

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