A Modern Guide to Collecting Miles Davis
Sorting through the multitude of current reissues
Last year, when record club Vinyl Me, Please announced their 11LP box set of Miles Davis’ electric period studio albums, I almost immediately preordered it. For hardcore fans, it seemed (and turned out to be) essential: a lavish box set of the albums from In A Silent Way through Get Up With It, cut by Ryan Smith and Joe Nino-Hernes from flat tape copies of the original masters and packaged in laminated tip-on jackets, it’s the perfect document of Miles’ most fascinating era.
…Except for the (now sold-out) box set’s original $399 price for seven albums—prohibitively expensive for most. Despite being a happy customer who never has to buy these albums again, it’s undoubtedly a financial commitment that, even for the most devoted, can seem excessive.
Yet as the vinyl reissue market continually expands, Miles Davis’ discography becomes an increasingly unwieldy, expensive mess. Focus only on his prime era studio LPs for Columbia (1957’s ‘Round About Midnight to 1974’s Get Up With It) and it’s still divided between and duplicated across multiple reissue programs scattered around the world. With so many options, how can one collect all of his work without completely breaking the bank?
The Current Options
Let’s get this out of the way: the “normal” record buyer, whether a novice or an established fan who just isn’t swimming in money, won’t buy five copies of Kind Of Blue. This guide exists in the real world, where wallets and shelves have limits, and where people buy one copy of each album. One copy that’s satisfactory enough to be the only copy this hypothetical normal person ever owns, even if it’s not the absolute cheapest copy (that said, we’ll omit the spectacular UHQR Kind Of Blue and Craft’s one-step Relaxin’ for cost reasons).
For the pre-Columbia catalog, this is rather straightforward. Blue Note’s all-analog Classic series recently reissued Miles Davis’ two Blue Note compilation LPs, and Analogue Productions’ reissues of the Prestige albums are still accessible. Craft’s revitalized Original Jazz Classics series also released a new all-analog Kevin Gray cut of Workin’. There are still a few Miles Prestige albums that haven’t received the lavish treatment, but it’s probably only a matter of time. The name alone sells. (No advice on Birth Of The Cool; the 2019 reissue supposedly sucks. Perhaps stick to hi-res digital unless seeking out an older copy?)
The 1980s Columbia and Warner Brothers catalog (save for Doo Bop) is also easy and fairly cheap to find, as both original pressings and modern reissues. I haven’t bought them in any format, but basic collector/audiophile logic is to get the original US pressings.
Now for the primary Columbia catalog. I don’t have the resources for an album-by-album dissection, but I’ve selected three albums for which to compare pressings. This should give a general idea as to how these reissue labels or series—Mobile Fidelity, Music On Vinyl, Sony Japan, and the 2013 mono editions— compete.
Original pressings are always an option, but good luck finding affordable, playable copies. An early pressing of Bitches Brew is fairly common in VG+ condition for around $30, as long as you pay attention to the matrix numbers and aren’t stuck on getting the 2-eye label. Otherwise, it’s more effort than it’s worth. 6-eye copies of the earlier albums are either beat up or incredibly expensive, originals of the “Second Great Quintet” albums don’t have the highest sonic reputation, and buying a vintage Get Up With It seems dubious considering its half-hour sides.
The three albums I’ve plucked for comparison are 1958’s Milestones, 1968’s Miles In The Sky, and 1970’s Jack Johnson. And if digital sources are a problem, you’re out of luck.
Milestones: 2013 US mono vs. 2021 Japanese mono
Over several Record Store Day events in 2012-2013, Sony/Legacy reissued Miles Davis’ early Columbia albums in mono, mostly cut by Kevin Gray from hi-res digital files. Pressed at RTI on 180g black vinyl and housed in foldover jackets, these pressings remain easily available. You can’t go wrong with any of them.
More recently, however, Sony Japan launched a Miles Davis vinyl series cut at their Japanese mastering facility and pressed in Shizuoka at the state-of-the-art Sony Music Solutions plant. While the series hops around the First and Second Great Quintet periods with no obvious logic, there’s some overlap with the 2013 US reissues, including Milestones, Kind Of Blue, Someday My Prince Will Come, ‘Round About Midnight, and Miles Ahead, the latter with the original boat cover.
First of all, the Shizuoka pressing plant is the absolute best in the world; yes, even better than RTI or QRP or any of them. I have about two dozen of these pressings and almost of all of them are quieter than dead quiet. The average Sony Shizuoka pressing, no matter the color or weight, is generally quieter than UHQR Clarity Vinyl or Neotech VR900 “Supervinyl.”
The Japanese mono Milestones is no exception, and the packaging is similarly sumptuous: an extremely high quality tip-on jacket replicates the original, while the disc comes in a heavy cardboard sleeve (and a poly inner within that) outside of the printed jacket. It’s the closest I’ve seen a mass-produced, less than $30 record get to £350 Electric Recording Company quality. The print resolution also puts the 2013 to shame.
And despite the digital source, the Japanese edition’s sonic coloration sounds a bit like an ERC. It’s not exactly “accurate,” but the smoother, more “seductive” sound—veiled high frequencies and warmer midbass—is certainly pleasing. Kevin Gray’s 2013 cut, perhaps from the same source file, takes the opposite approach: brighter, hotter, more vivid. Both sound equally good, but so different that “better” depends on personal preference. I’d argue that the vastly superior packaging makes the Japanese pressing a better value (especially if you order several of the Sony Japan Miles reissues and save on shipping), but either of these would satisfy. The Japanese series seems like it won’t be over anytime soon, so it’s worth at least keeping an eye on.
Miles In The Sky: Mobile Fidelity vs. Music On Vinyl
Music On Vinyl, the in-house reissue label of Dutch pressing plant Record Industry, boasts about their “180g audiophile vinyl” pressings despite almost always using digital sources. That annoys those who point out that vinyl weight doesn’t guarantee sound quality (true). Others also complain that MOV uses the word “audiophile” to market records cut in-house from digital files.
But after the Mobile Fidelity DSD controversy, are digitally-sourced MOV pressings really any less “audiophile?”
Mobile Fidelity has released a slew of Miles Davis albums, all from DSD transfers of the analog tapes. Some of those transfers are quad-rate DSD256; others are SACD-resolution, single-rate DSD64. Music On Vinyl gets hi-res PCM files presumably mastered at Battery Studios by Mark Wilder, who has decades of experience working with these particular recordings.
In Europe, MOV has reissued almost all of Miles Davis’ Columbia albums, ranging in popularity from Kind Of Blue to Quiet Nights. In the US, imported MOV pressings become the default for many titles without a domestic pressing (or a domestic allocation of a generalized Sony EU pressing). MOV pressings aren’t cheap in the US, but they’re cut and pressed to high standards.
For years, I had MoFi’s 45rpm reissue of Miles In The Sky, an interesting but not exactly great album recorded as Miles transitioned from his Second Great Quintet to the electric period. MoFi used a DSD256 source for their 45, while MOV presumably got a 24bit PCM file and cut their 33rpm reissue at Record Industry. The MOV is still $10-15 cheaper in the US, even though the MoFi has the nicer tip-on gatefold jacket (MOV’s Miles In The Sky comes in a reverse board foldover jacket).
The MOV Miles In The Sky seriously beats the MoFi, which I’ve since sold. MoFi’s 45 is overly compressed and artificially smoothed over. Texture is sucked out, midbass is bloated, and images are holograms with no weight or body, bleeding into each other. Meanwhile, the Music On Vinyl is brighter but with necessary bite, actual texture, and incredibly solid imaging. I’m not trying to join the parade of everyone suddenly dumping on MoFi, but diplomatically speaking, their mastering choices are questionable. (Weirdly enough, MoFi’s jacket scan here is better than the MOV—shocking considering MoFi’s usual crap scans.) Unless you’re already loyal to MoFi’s mastering style, I’d recommend getting the slightly cheaper and more sonically consistent MOV pressings instead.
Jack Johnson: mass-market EU reissue vs. Vinyl Me, Please
In practical terms, this comparison is useless. No one who’s just getting into Miles Davis would immediately spend resale prices on the VMP Anthology Electric Years box set. However, that box set is commonly regarded as the best that those albums will ever sound, and it represents the gold standard against which other pressings should be measured.
Therefore, I got the standard, mass-market reissue of 1971’s A Tribute To Jack Johnson, cut and pressed at Record Industry just like the MOV pressings. This digitally sourced reissue sells for less than $25, and while not as good as Ryan Smith’s all-analog cut for VMP, it’s still quite appealing even if somewhat dry and rolled off on top. Switch from this to the VMP pressing and everything opens up a lot: Miles’ trumpet gets less strident and resolves better, the guitar is a bit more jangly, drums have better attack, and bass is clearer and more rhythmic. But that’s the usual “expensive audiophile reissue” checklist of improvements. The differences are there, yet it’s not a night-and-day revelatory listen. If someone bought the standard $22 Jack Johnson with no comparison point, there is absolutely nothing to complain about, aside from the thin jacket that’s disappointing but not surprising for that price.
Conclusion
No matter what, buying decent vinyl copies of Miles Davis’ complete Columbia studio albums will already cost at least a couple thousand dollars. Still, it’s best to only spend the money on one good copy than cycle through multiple lesser variants. Despite how scattered and confusing the reissue options are, none seem to be completely abominable, aside from those shady European public domain bootlegs which must be avoided. (Music On Vinyl and Sony Japan, when applicable, are tied for my top recommendation. The Legacy mono series isn't my personal favorite but those are still very good and easy to obtain. Don't bother with the MoFi series.) Also worth exploring are the excellent digital options—CDs, SACDs, hi-res downloads—which at times might provide more value for money. Whatever the case, a methodical buyer can indeed obtain good physical copies of Miles Davis’ discography without going bankrupt.
…Just don’t buy everything at once.
