Craft Recordings celebrates a pivotal year for Miles Davis with Miles ’54: The Prestige Recordings—a new, 20-track compilation, collecting genre-defining recordings from the music icon’s 1954 output, including music from classic albums Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis Quintet, Miles Davis All Star Sextet, and Miles Davis Quartet (all originally issued via Prestige Records). Featuring an all-star cast of musicians, including Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Horace Silver, Miles ’54 blends originals by the influential jazz icon, with popular ballads and compositions by his legendary sidemen.
Arriving November 22, 2024, Miles ’54 will be available in an array of formats, including 180-gram 4-LP, 2-CD, and hi-res digital. All audio has been newly remastered by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer, Paul Blakemore, with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. Physical editions offer a brand-new essay by GRAMMY®-winning music historian Ashley Kahn (author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, among others) as well as in-depth session notes by GRAMMY-winning writer, Dan Morgenstern. The complete collection is available for pre-order here.
’54 was a watershed year for Miles Davis. Ten years into his celebrated career, the trumpeter, composer, and bandleader was on the precipice of international fame and more focused than ever. Throughout the year, Davis entered Rudy Van Gelder’s studio for five landmark sessions—each of which would find him honing his sound, maturing as a leader, and collaborating with the era’s brightest rising stars. The resulting recordings would catapult Davis’ career to the next level and set the tone for the mid-late ’50s post-bop scene.
The release of Miles ’54 not only coincides with the 70th anniversary of these recordings but also the 75th anniversary of Prestige Records, the venerable independent jazz label founded by producer Bob Weinstock. Launched in 1949, Prestige found itself at the forefront of the genre: ushering in the cutting-edge sounds of bop, hard bop, soul jazz, and beyond, while developing the careers of such iconic artists as John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and, of course, Miles Davis.
