There are five records that, if I had to save five records, I would grab on the way out of the house — and Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet is one of them.
It was May 1956. Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey — a converted living room in Rudy Van Gelder’s parents’ house, with ceilings that seemed purpose-built for catching the bloom of a trumpet bell. Miles was under contract with Prestige while also trying to fulfill his new deal with Columbia. So Bob Weinstock sat him down and knocked out four albums’ worth of material in two marathon sessions, May and October, the quintet playing their regular book as if it were just another Tuesday night at the club.
That quintet. Let’s be specific about this. John Coltrane on tenor, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums. Miles called Philly Joe the greatest drummer he’d ever heard, then spent years complaining about his heroin habit in almost the same breath.
The Sound of Five People in a Room
Van Gelder recorded this ensemble so close that you can hear the breath before the note. You can hear Red Garland’s left hand settle into a chord like someone sitting down in a familiar chair. Philly Joe’s hi-hat has a paper-and-metal texture that you simply do not hear anymore, and I am not sure modern recording would even know what to do with it.
The opening track, “If I Were a Bell,” starts with Miles already mid-thought, like you walked in through the back door and the music has been going for a while without you. That’s the effect the whole record produces.
Coltrane was twenty-nine and not yet Coltrane — or rather, he was becoming Coltrane, right here, audibly, in real time. His solo on “Woody’n You” has that quality of controlled pressure building behind a door. Miles heard it and kept him anyway. That tells you something about Miles’s ears.
What Weinstock Knew
Bob Weinstock’s Prestige label was famously lean. No overdubs. No retakes if Miles didn’t want them. On “I Could Write a Book,” Miles blows the opening melody so casually it sounds accidental, and then Garland plays a solo so elegant you might miss it if you’re doing something else. Don’t do something else.
These weren’t sessions built around perfectionism. They were built around the quintet’s working reality — the tempos they actually played, the arrangements they actually used, the mistakes they actually left in. There’s a moment early in the session where someone miscounts and they just keep going. That’s the whole philosophy.
The record ends with “Oleo,” Sonny Rollins’s contrafact on “I Got Rhythm,” and by then you understand why this thing has survived sixty-something years without needing any help. It’s complete. It doesn’t ask anything of you except time.
Put it on after ten o’clock. Pour something with some age on it. Let Philly Joe count you in.