Sometime in 1984, shortly after I'd bought Miles' Directions, I mentioned to you that I wasn't sure where to start with Miles. You told me which album to get, but I didn't write the title down. Next time I was in a record shop, I flicked through the Miles albums, hoping that one of the titles would trigger my memory. Psychology of memory, principle number one: Recollection is better than recall. You can see where this is heading, can't you…? Yep, I came to this record. The cover didn't look promising; it didn't communicate "landmark album". But then there was an issue of Mingus Ah Um with a similar cover, and that's a landmark, so… And this one had "Blue" in the title — I was almost certain that the one you'd recommended to me was something to do with Blue…
Shortly afterwards, you corrected my error, and I found the right album in another shop. After that, I may never have listened to this record again.
Notwithstanding the grim I ♥ Jazz cover, this isn't one of those rip-off cheaply-licenced compilations. It's on Columbia/CBS after all. The back cover explains, "Blue Christmas brings together for the first time eight pieces which, although previously published in several miscellaneous records, were not to be found until now in any of Miles Davis albums issued in Europe." They're all culled from sessions of the mid fifties through to the early sixties, a few years either side of Kind of Blue
You can't buy Blue Christmas in Europe, but the recordings must be available on one or more of the 965 releases in Amazon's Miles Davis Store (I remember being gobsmacked at the start of this decade when Amazon listed 200 Miles releases).
| Buy from eil.com, subject to availability |
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