The latest offering in Columbia/Legacy's "Miles Davis Bootleg Series" focuses on the 1980s, an underrated period of the musician's restless career.
The 3-CD set includes two discs of previously unreleased studio material, from the "Star People," "Decoy" and "You're Under Arrest" recording sessions. A third disc showcases Miles Davis live in Montreal on July 7, 1983.
The collection features liner notes by Marcus J. Moore and new interviews with the musicians who worked with Davis in the 1980s, including drummer Vince Wilburn, Jr., guitarists John Scofield and Mike Stern, and bassists Darryl Jones and Marcus Miller.
Eight of the ten tracks on the first CD are unreleased studio tracks from the sessions that resulted in 1983's "Star People," the second studio album released after Davis' six-year hiatus from recordings and performing. "Star People" was the last album to feature the studio work of the trumpeter's longtime producer and collaborator Teo Macero.
The first CD's other two tracks were recorded in the 1983 "Decoy" sessions, and this previously unreleased cassette recording comes from the collection of guitarist John Scofield.
The second CD contains unreleased studio recordings from the sessions that ended up as 1985's "You're Under Arrest," the album that turned contemporary hits like Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" and Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" into jazz standards.
The third CD features Davis live at the Theatre St. Denis in Montreal, Canada and the set was released for the first time on Record Store Day in April as a 2-LP 12" vinyl title, "Miles Davis - What It Is: Montreal 7/7/83." This album features liner notes by music journalist Greg Tate, who died on December 7, 2021.
One of Tate's final pieces of writing, the liner noted provide some insight into Davis' ever-changing artistic process.
"Asked in the 1980s why he changed his music so many times, Miles replied 'You don't change music, music changes you,'" Tate wrote. "He also stridently stated: 'You don't play what the critics tell you to play, you play what your body tells you to play.'"
