Miles Davis signed with Prestige Records in 1951, when he was 25. Four years later, he was ready to move on to Columbia, but he still owed Prestige several albums. So he booked three recording sessions over the course of a year, which ultimately yielded five and a half albums’ worth of material. The first to be released, Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet, will stand in for all of them (the rest are Cookin’ … , Relaxin’ … , Steamin’ … and Workin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet, and Miles Davis And The Modern Jazz Giants, all released in 1956-57. The material is almost all pulled from the repertoire the band — Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums — was performing in clubs. So, a bunch of old Broadway show tunes transformed via substitute chord changes (aka “standards”), and a few basic variations on the blues.

Here’s the thing, though: This was an amazing band. Coltrane wasn’t yet the lightning-speed note-spewing machine he’d become in a few years, on his own 1960 album Giant Steps, but he had a thick, torso-vibrating tone that gave his solos more muscle than just about anybody else around. Garland was a swinging, bluesy pianist who brought a barroom energy to uptempo numbers and a romantic delicacy to ballads. Chambers’ bass work was all power and energy (he was a teenager when he joined the band), but he could pick up the bow and create surprisingly dark-toned moods. And Jones was an absolute jackhammer on the drums, driving the band mercilessly but with a greater crispness than more explosive players like Art Blakey or Roy Haynes. And Davis led them all, playing some of his cleanest and most beautiful solos. His style at this time was all about restraint; he never erupted into screaming high notes like Dizzy Gillespie. Instead, he made simple, but emotionally powerful statements, knowing just when to step away, having said exactly enough. This material, recorded in big batches, is all of a piece, and it’s all killer.