Miles Davis' Greatest Hits

This 1969 compilation is a weird curio, but one worth seeking out. It was released in 1969, when Miles Davis was about to begin a radically new phase in his career with the album In A Silent Way, and a new, loud live band featuring Chick Corea’s electric keyboards and Jack DeJohnette’s thundering drums. But the tracks all come from between 1956 (“’Round Midnight,” from his Columbia debut) and 1965 (“E.S.P.”, from the album of the same name that introduced his quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams). So it was clearly an attempt by his label, Columbia, to hedge their bets. But it’s hard to understand it even in that context. Davis didn’t really have any “hits,” because he didn’t release jukebox-friendly singles like the artists on Blue Note. And the album is a nearly 50/50 mix of studio and live tracks. We get “Seven Steps to Heaven” and “Someday My Prince Will Come” from those albums, along with the aforementioned “E.S.P.” and “’Round Midnight.” But there’s also a version of “Walkin’” from 1963’s Miles Davis In Europe and two tracks, “All Blues” and “My Funny Valentine,” from the 1964 Carnegie Hall concert that was split across two live LPs, My Funny Valentine and “Four” and More. And it ends with a live orchestral version of “So What,” the opening track from 1959’s Kind of Blue. But here’s where it gets really interesting. In order to fit all this material onto a single LP, “Walkin’” and “My Funny Valentine” had to be chopped down to five minutes each from their original 12- to 16-minute run times, and “So What” is reduced from 12 minutes to eight. The edits are seamless, a tribute to the brilliance of producer Teo Macero, who gets plenty of credit for his groundbreaking work on Davis’s electric albums but does something much more subtle here. Also, those edits are only available on the original 1969 vinyl release. When Greatest Hits was reissued on CD in 1997, the track listing was changed substantially.