Miles Davis

LP version. Recorded in New York in June and July 1967 and released by Columbia in 1968, Nefertiti is the fourth studio album by the quintet Miles Davis led in the mid-sixties. It was also the last one the group made without electric instruments. Davis wrote none of the six pieces: three come from his saxophonist, two from his pianist and one from his drummer. That says a lot about how the band worked by then. The themes are short and often oblique, and the players treat them as material to bend, so the line between written melody and improvisation keeps moving. Heard next to In a Silent Way, recorded less than two years later, the album sounds like the last step before Davis changed direction. It reached number eight on the Billboard jazz chart.

The sessions took place on 7 June, 22 and 23 June and 19 July 1967 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio. Wayne Shorter plays tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock piano, Ron Carter bass and Tony Williams drums, with Teo Macero and Howard Roberts producing. On Shorter's title track the horns repeat the melody again and again without taking solos. Underneath, Williams, Carter and Hancock improvise freely, a reversal of the usual roles that gives the piece its restless, circling quality. Hancock's Madness had been rehearsed as a slow waltz but was recorded at a fast tempo in four. Williams's Hand Jive is the record's most hard bop moment, with a brisk tempo and the soloists in front. Shorter's Fall and Pinocchio close the circle, and he took Pinocchio to Weather Report years later for Mr. Gone in 1978. Hancock recorded Riot again on his own Speak Like a Child in 1968. The album was engineered by Fred Plaut and Ray Moore, and Bob Cato's photograph of Davis is on the cover.

Music On Vinyl issued this 180 gram pressing (MOVLP031) for Sony Music, remastered by Allan Tucker at Tucker Sound in New York, with the red Columbia "360 Sound Stereo" label.