Miles Davis Gets Balladic on My Funny Valentine: Live Set Is Distinguished with Deep Emotions, Spontaneous Brilliance, Poetic Elegance, and Sensitive Beauty

Mastered at MoFi’s Studio and Pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl in Honor of Album's 60th Anniversary: Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 33RPM SuperVinyl LP Plays with Lifelike Clarity

1/4" / 15 IPS analog copy to DSD 64 to analog console to lathe

My Funny Valentine: Miles Davis in Concert marks several historic turning points. For Davis, the live album represents the final time on record he'd perform standards rather than original compositions. It also stands as one of the last documents made by the same band that created Seven Steps to Heaven. As such, the work teems with bebop melodicism yet steers clear of Davis’ oft-controversial avant-garde leanings. 

Most significantly, the richly textured set — the bookend to the fast-paced Four & More — captures the warm ballads and delicate pieces performed at a February 12, 1964 benefit concert at New York’s then-new Philharmonic Hall that occurred just months after President Kennedy’s assassination. Seemingly channeling divine inspiration, Davis never sounded more elegant or poetic, particularly given the uniqueness of this 60th Anniversary Edition pressing. 

Mastered at MoFi’s California studio, housed in a Stoughton jacket, pressed at Fideltiy Record Pressing on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 33RPM SuperVinyl LP plays with stunning depth, presence, dynamics, clarity, and ambience. Benefitting from SuperVinyl’s low-as-possible noise floor and superb groove definition, this audiophile LP boasts balances, tonalities, and airiness that duplicate the experience of witnessing live jazz in an acoustically ideal hall. The images of each individual instrument, the decay of the notes, the inner reaches of the piano, and symmetry of the horns are rendered with palpable detail. 

Held as a benefit to support voter registration in the South — and a fundraiser for NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality, and SNCC — the concert came amidst the height of the Civil Rights movement, a cause dear to Davis' heart. The unforeseen circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s death further raised the stakes. Having professed admiration for Kennedy years prior, Davis appears to approach the compositions on My Funny Valentine (in particular, the title track) as an homage to the fallen leader.

Nearing their one-year anniversary together, he and his band turned half the event into a collective soliloquy comprised of pieces shot through with deeply emotional passages, spontaneous brilliance, sensitive beauty, and sublime poignancy. Elegiac moods permeate these performances; Davis and his Harmon mute paint with intricate brushstrokes. 

Pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams are their leader’s equal. They would continue with Davis until later in the decade, helping form his Second Great Quintet. But the secret weapon on My Funny Valentine arrives in the form of tenor saxophonist George Coleman, whom jazz experts Brian Morton and Richard Cook deem “one of the unsung heroes of modern jazz.” His lines are subtle and sophisticated, straight-ahead but capable of unanticipated direction. Here, Coleman comes into his own.

The combination of introspective chemistry, lyrical reach, and telepathic communication demonstrated by the group on My Funny Valentine exceeds that of any of Davis' live 1960s efforts. One listen confirms something special transpiring. And on this breathtaking reissue, those properties are rendered in a manner that’s as transparent to the source. Here’s your chance to experience them again and again.