Porgy and Bess (CL 1274) is a studio album by the jazz musician Miles Davis, released in March 1959 on Columbia Records. The album features arrangements by Davis and collaborator Gil Evans from George Gershwin's 1935 opera of the same name. The album was recorded in four sessions on July 22, July 29, August 4, and August 18, 1958, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City. It is the third collaboration between Davis and Evans and has garnered much critical acclaim since its release, being acknowledged by some music critics as the best of their collaborations. Jazz critics have regarded the album as historically important.
Background
Conception
In 1958, Davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop, seeing its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering creativity. Five years earlier, in 1953, pianist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which offered an alternative to the practice of improvisation based on chords. Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of classical music, Russell developed a new formulation using scales or a series of scales for improvisations. In a 1958 interview with Nat Hentoff of The Jazz Review, Davis remarked on the modal approach:
In early 1958, Davis began using this approach with his sextet. Influenced by Russell's ideas, Davis implemented his first modal composition with the title track of his 1958 album Milestones, which was based on two modes, recorded in April of that year. Instead of soloing in the straight, conventional, melodic way, Davis's new style of improvisation featured rapid mode and scale changes played against sparse chord changes. led Davis "to see that a lot and that's where I got the idea to do the music".
At the same time the Samuel Goldwyn film adaptation was in production, set for release in June 1959. The advance publicity for the film was considerable, and with the late-1950s vogue for recorded "jazz versions of...", a number of Porgy and Bess jazz interpretations were released. These ranged from an all-star big band version arranged and conducted by Bill Potts to one by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats. Following the first collaboration with Evans, Davis followed up on these efforts with much interest in symphonic readings, which, at the time, jazzmen were not known for, and neither were some classically trained musicians known for interpreting jazz scores. Nevertheless, Davis enlisted members of his sextet, including Cannonball Adderley and Paul Chambers. In his autobiography Davis recalls, that at the time "everyone got tired of Philly's junkie shit" and Davis replaced his dear drummer (since 1955) with Jimmy Cobb, who played once with Davis at the Café Bohemia (sitting in for Art Taylor), and was the drummer of the following Kind of Blue recorded in March and April the following year.
| rev2 = DownBeat
| rev2Score =
| rev3 = The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
| rev3Score =
| rev4 = Entertainment Weekly
| rev4Score = A
| rev5 = The Penguin Guide to Jazz
| rev5Score =
| rev6 = The Rolling Stone Album Guide
| rev6Score =
The second in a series of Davis/Evans collaborations, Porgy and Bess was well received upon its release by music critics and publications, including The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Music writer Bill Kirchner wrote "In this century's American music, three partnerships have been most influential: Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn, Frank Sinatra/Nelson Riddle, and Miles Davis/Gil Evans." As one of Davis' best-selling albums, Porgy and Bess has earned recognition as a landmark album in orchestral jazz. Davis biographer Jack Chambers described the album as "a new score, with its own integrity, order and action".
The album's appeal was more widespread among critics following its reissue in 1997. Robert Gilbert of All About Jazz praised Porgy and Bess, describing it as "one of many great albums that Miles Davis recorded over his lifetime. It reaches a higher plateau than most, though, in its way that it can reach the listener on both a musical and emotional level. That the album is still able to do this after almost forty-five years is a testament to the rare magic that occurred in a New York studio over four days in the summer of 1958."
In August 1997, JazzTimes magazine called Porgy and Bess "possibly the best of the collaborations between Miles and Gil Evans ... Evans is justly regarded as the master of modern orchestration and Porgy and Bess shows him at his best." The album was included in Elvis Costello's "500 Albums You Need" (Vanity Fair, Issue No. 483 11/00) and was ranked No. 785 on the Virgin "All-Time Top 1000 Album" list.
Track listing
All compositions written by George Gershwin, except otherwise noted. (Although Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward wrote lyrics to the opera Porgy and Bess, these recordings are instrumental.)
Side one
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Track || Recorded || Song || Writer || Time
|-
| 1. || 8/4/58 || "Buzzard Song" || George Gershwin || 4:07
|-
| 2. || 7/29/58 || "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" || George Gershwin || 5:10
|-
| 3. || 7/22/58 || "Gone" || Gil Evans || 3:37
|-
| 4. || 7/22/58 || "Gone, Gone, Gone" || George Gershwin || 2:03
|-
| 5. || 8/4/58 || "Summertime" || George Gershwin || 3:17
|-
| 6. || 8/4/58 || "Oh Bess, Oh Where's My Bess" || George Gershwin || 4:18
|}
Side two
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Track || Recorded || Song || Writer || Time
|-
| 1. || 8/4/58 || "Prayer (Oh Doctor Jesus)" || George Gershwin || 4:39
|-
| 2. || 7/29/58 || "Fisherman, Strawberry and Devil Crab" || George Gershwin || 4:06
|-
| 3. || 7/22/58 || "My Man's Gone Now" || George Gershwin || 6:14
|-
| 4. || 7/29/58 || "It Ain't Necessarily So" || George Gershwin || 4:23
|-
| 5. || 7/29/58 || "Here Come de Honey Man" || George Gershwin || 1:18
|-
| 6. || 8/18/58 || "I Wants to Stay Here (a.k.a. I Loves You, Porgy)" || George Gershwin || 3:39
|-
| 7. || 8/4/58 || "There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York" || George Gershwin || 3:23
|}
Bonus tracks
Bonus cuts featured on the 1997 compact disc reissue.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Track || Recorded || Song || Writer || Time
|-
| 14. || 8/18/58 || "I Loves You, Porgy" (take 1, second version) || George Gershwin || 4:14
|-
| 15. || 7/22/58 || "Gone" (take 4) || Gil Evans || 3:40
|}
Personnel
Musicians
- Miles Davis – trumpet, flugelhorn
- Ernie Royal, Bernie Glow, Johnny Coles and Louis Mucci – trumpet
- Dick Hixson, Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland and Joe Bennett – trombone
- Willie Ruff, Julius Watkins and Gunther Schuller – horn
- Bill Barber – tuba
- Jerome Richardson <small>(tracks 1.1, 2.1, 2.7)</small> and Phil Bodner <small>(tracks 1.2–5, 2.2–7)</small>, Romeo Penque – flute, alto flute, clarinet
- Danny Bank – alto flute, bass flute, bass clarinet
- Cannonball Adderley – alto saxophone
- Paul Chambers – bass
- Philly Joe Jones – drums <small>(except tracks 1.2, 2.2, 2.10–11)</small>
- Jimmy Cobb – drums <small>(tracks 1.2, 2.2, 2.10–11)</small>
- Gil Evans – arranger, conductor
Production
- Cal Lampley – production
- Frank Laico – recording engineering
- Teresa Alfieri – cover design
- Roy DeCarava – cover photography
- Don Hunstein – liner photographs of sessions (reissue)
Certifications and sales
References
Further reading
- "The Golden Anniversary of Miles Davis's Porgy & Bess" by Alan Kurtz et al., Jazz.com