October 1, 1964
'Newport in Paris',
1st Paris Jazz Festival,
Salle Pleyel, Paris, France

MILES DAVIS QUINTET
Miles Davis- trumpet
Wayne Shorter- tenor saxophone
Herbie Hancock- piano
Ron Carter- bass
Tony Williams- drums

1st set
Autumn Leaves (Jacques Prévert-Johnny Mercer-Joseph Kosma) 0:00
So What (Miles Davis) 13:00
Stella by Starlight (Ned Washington-Victor Young) 22:51
Walkin' (Richard Carpenter) 34:05
The Theme (Miles Davis) 43:19
announcement 43:55

2nd set
My Funny Valentine (R. Rodgers-L. Hart) 44:10
No Blues (M. Davis) 57:16
The Theme (Miles Davis) 1:10:31
end credits 1:11:28

From various radio broadcasts


One of the first shows I posted to the channel back in 2015 (!) was the first set from the Second Great Quintet's 1964 appearance at the 2000 seater Salle Pleyel in Paris. That audio, taken from a grey market CD, was in very poor sound and off-speed. This new version comes from a different audio source and includes extra music.

By October 1964 the Hancock/ Carter/ Williams team had been together some 17 months, proving themselves to be a solid, inventive, inspired, and challenging creative partnership, although the in-demand Carter had taken leave for a spell with Sonny Rollins. Miles had found the saxophone chair harder to fill- George Coleman had quit the band earlier in the year and a Japanese tour with Sam Rivers proved to be a clash of styles, albeit an intriguing one. There were even press reports that Miles was replacing the saxophone in his band in favour of guitarist Grant Green. Finally, in September, Miles got the man he wanted when the tenor saxophonist from Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Wayne Shorter, joined the band. Davis now had a compelling front line partner and the line up for what is often regarded as one of the finest groups in jazz history, The Second Great Quintet, was complete.

Shorter had only been in the band a few weeks when Miles led them on a tour of Europe, including a date in West Germany that was released as Miles In Berlin (CBS, 1967), followed by this appearance at the first Paris Jazz Festival, billed as 'Newport In Paris', an attempt by promoter George Wein to recreate the famous festival in Europe. Also on the bill were the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Roland Kirk, Howard McGhee, J.J. Johnson, Ruby Braff and many more (the tour program lists Sam Rivers, presumably as he'd been playing with Davis that summer, but had now been replaced by Shorter). The quintet played two sets, at 8pm and 10.30pm and we have the complete first set and half of the second. We also have photos from the show- all of the photos in the video, with the exception of the shot of Herbie Hancock, come from the actual concert.

According to Peter Losin's discography neither set has been broadcast in its entirety, consequently the circulating tapes have been compiled from different broadcasts, with different running speeds, different missing sections, and different radio announcements. The first set was released as Paris, France (Moon, 1990), in very poor sound; all tracks were running too fast, and by different amounts (the CD also included a track titled Miles Improv, which was actualy an excerpt of Joshua taken from a different concert two days later in Stockholm- you can hear that here:    • Video   ). This new source had better sound and running speed, but did not include the opening three minutes of Autumn Leaves. There are two extra tunes (plus theme) from the second set, not included in the original post. Apparently there are recordings circulating of the missing pieces from the second set, All Of You and Joshua, which I have never found- a version purporting to include these in fact had duplicates of So What and Walkin', again at different speeds, suggesting they came from still further broadcasts. All a bit confusing.

I've edited together all the available music, adjusting the speeds to be consistent across all three versions used in compiling this post, and worked on improving the sound (the opening three minutes are still fairly poor). The most complete version has had some kind of compression applied somewhere along the line and the signal was boosted to the point of distortion- the recording, while in mono, had more distortion in the right hand channel, so I took the audio from the left and folded it out to mono. So, this is the best version I have for now, until a more definitive tape can be located or- we hope- there is a re-broadcast, as with the recent update of the 1964 Helsinki show. A lot of effort but, as always with the Second Great Quintet, more than worthwhile.

If you enjoy these posts and would like to thank us for our efforts you can buy us a coffee:
https://ko-fi.com/milestonesarchive
Thank you!