Album Review: The Miles Davis Quintet Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5 (2016)

Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5, by the Miles Davis Quintet, 2016.

Miles Davis with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.

Miles Davis died in 1991, and since then numerous box sets of previously unreleased material have been issued. Columbia’s excellent Bootleg Series, which began in 2011, has added greatly in presenting us with a fuller picture of Davis’ recording career. Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5, released in 2016, is the first of the series to focus on Davis’ studio recordings. 

Freedom Jazz Dance presents the listener with the full session tapes from the two days in October of 1966 that produced the seminal album Miles Smiles. Davis’ group in 1966, now called the “Second Classic Quintet,” is considered one of the greatest in jazz history. It featured Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. Hancock, Carter, and Williams had joined Davis in 1963, with Shorter joining the ensemble towards the end of 1964. Davis had suffered from a number of health issues in the mid 1960’s, and in 1965 he underwent a hip replacement. The Quintet had only recorded one studio album together, 1965’s excellent E.S.P., before the sessions for Miles Smiles. 

The box set opens with the longest track, the 23-minute long session reel for Eddie Harris’ song “Freedom Jazz Dance.” You get to hear the band working out the introduction to the song, and trying to figure out how to approach the song. As the liner notes warn, you’ll want to listen to this on headphones, and with the transcriptions of the studio chatter close at hand, so you can follow along. Since this was a song that the members of the group hadn’t performed live before, they were learning it in the studio, and so you get to hear them figure out the song. Throughout the 23 minutes the group attempts numerous times to get the introduction the way they want it, but they don’t perform a complete take—the first complete take was the master issued on Miles Smiles. Depending on how big a fan you are of the Second Classic Quintet, this will either be a fascinating and revelatory listen, or it will be mind-numbingly boring. Of course, if you’re not a huge fan of the Second Classic Quintet, you’re probably not going to be buying Freedom Jazz Dance in the first place. 

Of perhaps greater interest is an alternate take of the great ballad “Circle,” which is a treat to hear. While I appreciate having these session reels available, as it sheds interesting light on the creative process, how many times am I really going to listen to the studio chatter and breakdowns as the group perfects the intro? The answer: probably not more than once or twice. 

After the Miles Smiles sessions, Freedom Jazz Dance then gives us some other session reels and alternate takes from other albums the quintet made. We get a nice alternate take of “Masqualero,” from the album Sorcerer, and a very interesting session reel for “Nefertiti,” in which Davis and the group figure out the idea behind the song—that Davis and Shorter will play a theme the entire way through the song, and the rhythm section will take solos. The third disc features the session reel for “Fall,” released on the Nefertiti album, and “Water Babies,” recorded in 1967, but unreleased until the 1976 album of the same name, a random collection of late 1960’s material that sat in the vaults until Miles’ retirement from music, which lasted from 1975-1980. There’s also a rhythm section rehearsal for “Country Son,” a track from Miles in the Sky, and “Blues in F (My Ding)” an informal tape recorded in Davis’ apartment that features him playing piano and chatting with Wayne Shorter.

As I wrote above, Freedom Jazz Dance is definitely for the hard-core Miles Davis fan. If you’re coming to the music his Second Classic Quintet created for the first time, you’ll want to start with the studio albums themselves, which are all amazing, or perhaps the superb 1967 live recordings featured in 2011’s Bootleg Series Vol. 1. If you’re a serious fan of Davis’ music, you’ll find Freedom Jazz Dance very interesting.