Wayne Shorter / Herbie Hancock / Gary Peacock / Tony Williams - 1965 Set

Lately I've been digging deep into the cataloug of the Second Great Quintet of Miles (both live bootlegs, retail LP:s, stuff like "Times Of The Barracudas" and "Falling Water", and man what a band that were. While moch of the albums they dropped still remain somewhat of a personal pinnacle of what you could do within a a hard-bop setting without following the rules of the day they cleary stands as one of my absolute favorite bands of all-time. Their interplay was just out of this world from day one, and what's interesting about many of the captured live bootlegs is how a throughout and one-minded machine they were especially between 1965 and late 1967. Much thanks to Europeans who had little hindsight of the public service they did recording all those concerts, and in the case of Sweden often with a sound as great as official live recordings by labels like Riverside and Prestige. But when recording officially for Columbia they where tuy left to their own decises, creating the music the group believed in to the fullest. This is a huge testament to producer Teo Macero who also produced excellent albums by Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and many others.

But we wouldn't have a half of the great concerts if it was only or official channels live the live albums recorded and released by CBS. Many private radio broadcasts and audience recordings have truly expanded what we know of these groups today. The imposing bass giant Ron Carter is the only basssit heard on these classic Miles albums (betweem 1963 amd 1968), but at the same time he was highly in demand as a studio musican at the time and started becoming a solo artist on his own term. In an interview.guitarist Joe Beck recalled the December 1967 sessions that produced the extended tone poem Circle in the Round: "I didn't have any information from Wayne and Herbie, and Ron was singly unreceptive to anything I would say - he didn't want to hear any suggestions from the likes of me or anybody else for that matter. I got the sense that he just wanted to get out of that band. And the band did break up shortly afterwards. They had already accomplished what they wanted to accomplish; the best quintet in all time in my opinion" (Interview with Joe Beck, The Last Miles, 2008). That meant that for many gigs during the 1965-1968 days a various of talented bassists subbed in Miles' group, from Gary Peacock, Albert Sinston, Richard Davis, Art Davis, Eddie Gomes, Miroslav Vitous and Buster Williams. Besides Peacock, Gomez, Davis and Vtous all of the other bassists are available to hear on at least one recording or bootleg from the time.

While no concerts of Peacock with Davis has been known to have been recorded or at least  never surface, we do have the next best thing. A quartet performance with the members of Miles Davis Quintet, minus Davis himself and with Peacock subbing for Carter, Performing a set in 1965 most likely at The Showboat in Philadelphia. This particular group also recorded Tony William's sophomore album "Spring" with Sam Rivers as an additional tenorist, on August 12, 1965 (Blue Note, BLP 4216). It's fascinating to hear the Davis group performing originals without their leader more than a decade before the V.S.O.P. craze, and of course to hear what the immaculate Gary Peacock sounded within this context. It's also interesting that the only Davis related joint they perform are "Fran-Dance" (or "Pfrancing" as it was called in its studio version), as it is a song that the mid-'60s Quintet never played together as far as we know (the early 1960 bands with Coltrane and Stitt did however do so on their respective European tours). Quality is not top notch but it's far from one of those unlistenable bootlegs that might just as well not need to exist. This is a must hear for fans of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Gary Peacock and Miles Davis.

Check it out via YouTube above (Peacock scholar R. Sabinas has researched and written an exhaustive piece on this legendary set which makes for a wellworth reading at Robert Sabinas wordpress before you dwelve into this remakrable set. Fun fact is that Sonny Rollins hired Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock and Richard Davis for a gig around the same time, and they played free in the same way they played with Miles but they was off the gig already the next day (you can read about that gig and aftermath in Hancock's autobiography "Possibilites"!