The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 is a live box set of the Miles Davis Quintet, recorded on December 22 and 23, 1965. First released in Japan in March 1992 by Sony Records as a 7 disc set (catalogue SRCS 5766~5772), it was re-released on Legacy Records in July 1995 as an 8 disc set (catalogue CK 66955). In conjunction with Legacy, Mosaic Records released a 10 LP set (catalogue MQ10-158). It was re-released as an SA-CD Box in October 2023 in a limited edition of 1500 by Sony Japan for Tower Records Japan. It comprises recordings of seven performance sets over the two nights by the second great Davis quintet at the now-defunct Plugged Nickel nightclub in Chicago. A single-disc sampler, Highlights from the Plugged Nickel (catalogue CK 67377) was released by Legacy on November 14, 1995, and was reissued on February 1, 2008.
The box set provides the complete recordings to the concerts originally released as At Plugged Nickel, Chicago, Vol. 1 and At Plugged Nickel, Chicago, Vol. 2 in Japan and rereleased as Live at the Plugged Nickel by Columbia; this appeared also as At Plugged Nickel, Chicago (Album No. 25 / Discs 30 & 31) in the box set Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection. Some tracks were available on Miles Davis compilations, but the full recordings were not released until the appearance of this box set.
Background
The Plugged Nickel concerts came at the end of a difficult year for Davis. In April 1965, roughly three months after the recording of E.S.P., he underwent hip surgery, and was hospitalized until July. In August, while wrestling with one of his sons, he broke his leg, which required further hospitalization followed by the implantation of a plastic hip joint. By late fall, the quintet was finally back together, playing gigs in Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, and Washington, D.C., then travelling to Chicago for a 2 week engagement (December 21 to January 2) at the Plugged Nickel.
According to Wayne Shorter, by this point the group had "settle[d] back into a groove," causing the musicians to become restless and dissatisfied. Herbie Hancock stated: "we'd gotten so cohesive as a band that it had become easy to play together. We had figured out a formula for making it work, but of course playing by formula was exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do. We needed to put the challenge back in, to figure out ways to take more risks." He recalled: "everybody did things according to certain kinds of expectations. I knew if I did this, Ron would do that, or Tony knew that if he did this, I would do that. It became so easy to do that it was almost boring." On the flight to Chicago, Tony Williams came up with a solution, proposing that the group make "anti-music": "whatever someone expects you to play, that's the last thing you play..." After some discussion, the musicians agreed, but decided not to tell Davis. During these sets, tempos were shifted and tunes were stretched to the verge of unrecognizability. At the conclusion of the concerts, according to Shorter, "we were raising so much hell [musically] that when we came off we couldn't say nothing to each other. We were lethargic in a princely way. We weren't trying to put on airs... it was like, 'let's not touch this.' You were in the royalty of the moment, and such royalty need never be tampered with." Hancock wrote that when he finally mustered the courage to listen to the recordings, he was surprised: "There was so much going on, and it sounded so little like what I remembered, that I was shocked. I really liked it, but I'm not even sure I could explain why. I would call it profound, except that the word 'profound,' to me, implies something that's deep and elegant. This was not elegant. This was naked and had guts. It was raw. To this day, when I hear recordings from the Plugged Nickel, I'm knocked out by their sheer raw intensity and honesty."
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The box set has been awarded a rare crown by the Penguin Guide to Jazz, concluding that "these are genuinely historic recordings." AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow awarded the album 5 stars, calling the music "continually fascinating" and "[o]ne of the top releases of 1995".
Don Heckman, in a review for the Los Angeles Times, wrote "What makes this collection... arresting is the manner in which Davis and his sidemen reached into such expansive improvisational areas while performing a program that, with the exception of 'Agitation,' consisted of standards and material from earlier repertoire... This two-night window on Davis, performing at the peak of his skills in partnership with one of his finest groups, provides both an invaluable historical document and a constantly mesmerizing listening experience." In a column reviewing Davis' "20 best albums", John Fordham ranked the Plugged Nickel recordings #6, and called them "[m]aybe the best-ever representation of 'the second great quintet' at work. Superbly recorded... the set finds Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams reinventing small-band jazz with an all-but-psychic flexibility of timing and on-the-fly harmonising."
The authors of Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History stated that the Plugged Nickel recordings "capture the Quintet in full flight, ranging through Miles' catalog and playing with such extraordinary grace that many aficionados consider the rhythm section of Williams–Carter–Hancock jazz's finest ever." Keith Waters wrote that the tracks "show the group moving even further towards free jazz and abstraction in the context of standard tune improvisation. Ever exploratory, these recordings made even the innovations of the previous work seem confining... the Plugged Nickel recordings... appeared to the members as a significant moment in the group's evolution."
Pianist Jodie Christian, one of the founders of the AACM, was in the audience, and recalled: "Technically, they listened to one another and played together unlike any other band I'd ever heard... Everybody heard each other and was able to respond to the same thing. At intermission everybody in the audience would talk excitedly about what we were hearing, because they were playing both free-form and conventional. I don't think I ever heard anything like that again." Trumpeter Dave Douglas expressed his admiration for Shorter's solo on "On Green Dolphin Street", writing: "it's the counterintuitive choices Shorter makes in this solo that really get me. By counterintuitive I mean: Shorter seems to use the unusual notes in a chord or voice-leading moment to connote other harmonic areas, keys and scales, and somehow always manages to resolve the dissonance tunefully but almost never in the way you expect. It helps that his dialogue with the rest of the band is telepathic, with each interesting harmonic, melodic and rhythmic choice leading to an intelligent and emotive response. The deeper you listen, the more profound those choices seem. That makes a great improvisation, no matter the music or style."
When the 1982 Plugged Nickel recording came out, Wynton Marsalis visited Shorter at his home and asked if they could listen to the music together while Marsalis watched Shorter's facial expressions.