By 1955 Rhythm and Blues encroached on jazz’s long-held place of honor, especially in black communities. In black Baltimore, in fact, during early March that year, the Royal Theatre – an iconic jazz venue — welcomed Al Hibbler, La Vern Baker, and others for an “all-star” rhythm and blues show. But jazz was not finished yet. Just as Baltimore blacks expanded their footprint, pushing into new places, jazz pushed itself too. Serendipitously, in the new areas the new sounds were heard.
On a Tuesday night in late-September 1955, the day’s fastest rising new jazz star, trumpeter Miles Davis, brought the earliest iteration of his best quintet to Baltimore. If he had slipped into to town unnoticed, despite advance advertisements in the Afro, it was to be understood. For weeks prior to the night of his first set, Afro readers had been riveted to other sections of the newspaper and coverage of the trial going on in Mississippi following the lynching of Emmett Till. The Afro had covered the event since the boy’s body had been pulled from the Tallahatchie River. Like JET more famously, the Afro published horrific photographs of the boy’s mutilated corpse. Seeing those images became a time-marker of sorts for millions of Americans of the day. On the Friday before Miles Davis and his Quintet arrived in Baltimore, the Afro had to report that an all white jury had acquitted the two murder suspects of all charges. Even for a story about race and violence in jim crow Mississippi a pall of anguish hung over that weekend. “I won’t forget them [sic] pictures of that young boy as long as I live,” Miles Davis later wrote.[1]
Davis and his men arrived in town to play a club called Las Vegas – “one of Baltimore’s Most Intimate Jazz Rooms,” or so its ad claimed (pictured here). Club Las Vegas sat within a landscape of residences and light industry, far away from the lights and majesty of Pennsylvania Avenue. Davis’s quintet included Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, “Philly” Joe Jones on drums, and a relative newcomer, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone. Though he had had some sporadic experience with Davis and Jones in the past, Coltrane was a last minute addition to the group. Davis had a gut feeling, and asked Jones to summon the young saxophonist from his home in Philadelphia. Coltrane met the group in Baltimore and they played for the first time together on September 27th. The engagement at Club Las Vegas would be memorable for Coltrane in another way as well. On their last night at Club Las Vegas, October 3, 1955, John and his fiancé’, Naima Austin, who had come to town with him, were married in a small ceremony. As Miles Davis recalled, “with all of us standing up there as best men. . . the band, man!”[2]
Together, the “new” Miles Davis Quintet – and historians have since captured them — constituted “a group that was at the fulcrum of a pivotal moment in jazz and its evolution.” Whatever else they played that over that week-long engagement in Baltimore listeners doubtlessly heard jazz standards like “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “All of You,” and also, perhaps, Ellington’s “Just Squeeze Me.” The Davis Quintet also likely covered several new be-bop standards as well, such as Dizzy Gillespie’s “Two Bass Hit,” and Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight.” Davis may have even offered his signature jazz movement, “The Theme.” Whatever the new Miles Davis Quintet black in Baltimore during its week’s stay in late-September 1955, those sets at Club Las Vegas were the first time the historic group would perform together in public. [3]
After a few weeks spent fine-tuning their sound, first at Club Las Vegas, then on to Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis, by mid-fall 1955, the new Miles Davis Quintet was back in New York at their first studio dates since coming together. They would lay the first tracks for the hard-bop masterpiece for Columbia Records, ‘Round About Midnight. And, because of an expiring contractual obligation to Prestige Records, a second studio date a few weeks later produced the first complete album that the new Miles Davis Quintet actually released, Miles.[4]
The section of town where Club Las Vegas sat — where Baltimoreans saw the “new” Miles Davis Quintet in 1955 — was still largely white. Yet, by placing ads in the Afro, club ownership sought to attract those blacks and whites already coming into each other’s spaces.
NOTES
[1] Miles Davis w/ Quincy Troupe, Miles: the Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 194.
[2] Afro-American, September 24, 1955; Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins, M.D., Coltrane: A Biography (Baltimore: Black Classics Press, 1975), 50 – 51; Eric Nisenson, Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993), 31 – 35; Miles Davis w/ Quincy Troupe, Miles: the Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 196. Syntax is mine.
[3] The songs mentioned here were all among those recorded by the quintet in the two recording dates for Miles (Prestige PRLP 7014, 1956), and ‘Round About Midnight (Columbia CL-949, 1957), occurred just after its brief tour which began in Baltimore. See: Eric Nisenson, Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993), 16; Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: the Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (New York: Da Capo, 2000), 49 – 50.
[4] Miles Davis w/ Quincy Troupe, Miles: the Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 194 – 6; Prestige, PRLP 7014; Columbia, CL-949.
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