The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965

The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965
Live album by Miles Davis
Released	July 8, 1995
Recorded	December 22–23, 1965
Genre	Jazz
Length	7:32:03 Highlights disc 73:23
Label	Legacy
Producer	Michael Cuscuna
Miles Davis chronology
1969 Miles – Festiva De Juan Pins (1993) The Complete Live at The Plugged Nickel (1995) Live Around the World (1996)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]

The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 is a compact disc box set of the Miles Davis Quintet, recorded on December 22 and 23, 1965, and released on Legacy Records in July 1995, catalogue CK 66955. 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. Although the physical box-set is currently out of print, the physical sampler and a digital version of the entire box-set remain available.

Background

Although the quintet had already issued the E.S.P. album, consisting of original compositions by members of the band, the repertoire at the club included none of those tunes, except Davis' "Agitation." Instead, the band relied upon standards or items that had been in Davis' live repertoire for several years. Research for a Wayne Shorter biography revealed that drummer Tony Williams, during the plane ride to Chicago, challenged the rest of the band to play anti-jazz, in essence sabotaging the gig by playing whatever one wished rather than the standard versions.^[2] The band kept to the challenge, and the tunes were then radically altered for the Plugged Nickel performances.

Some tracks were available on Miles Davis compilations, but the full recordings were not released until the appearance of this box set. A 1982 double album was released as part of the Contemporary Masters Series on Columbia; this appeared also as Live at the Plugged Nickel (no. 25, discs 30 and 31) in the box set Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection.^[3][4] The ten tracks are the same that together made up the 1976 Japanese releases, At Plugged Nickel, Chicago, Vol. 1 and At Plugged Nickel, Chicago, Vol. 2, but some durations are longer.^[5]

Content

Each disc of the box set of eight discs presents one complete set, with the exception of the second set on the first night of December 22, which is split onto two discs, with the discs in a slimline case and internally numbered accordingly as 2a and 2b. The reasoning for this on the part of Sony is unclear, since the total timing of the music on discs 2a and 2b is under the 80-minute single disc limit. The box set has been awarded a rare crown by the Penguin Guide to Jazz, concluding that "these are genuinely historic recordings."

Track listing

December 22, 1965 — first set (67:51)

December 22, 1965 — second set (42:41)

December 22, 1965 — second set (36:47)

December 22, 1965 — third set (69:19)

December 23, 1965 — first set (52:51)

December 23, 1965 — second set (65:55)

December 23, 1965 — third set (69:44)

December 23, 1965 — fourth set (46:55)

Highlights single disc track listing

Personnel

• Miles Davis — trumpet
• Wayne Shorter — tenor saxophone
• Herbie Hancock — piano
• Ron Carter — bass
• Tony Williams — drums

References