If it’s nearly impossible to define jazz, Miles Davis, perhaps inadvertently, gave it a shot in 1956. The context was mundane: His band was fulfilling Davis’ obligations to Prestige, recording several sides’ worth of music that the indie would release mostly over four albums — Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and Steamin’ — while the trumpeter moved on to a bigger deal and wider audience at Columbia. Those recordings, plus another session featuring Sonny Rollins in John Coltrane’s place on saxophone, are chronicled in a new box set from Craft recordings, assembled to celebrate Davis’ centennial.
In the course of those two tossed-off sessions, Davis and his all-star quintet distilled everything that came before them and much…

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