Miles Davis - 1961 [1990] "Someday My Prince Will Come"

Someday My Prince Will Come is the seventh studio album by Miles Davis for Columbia Records, catalogue CL 1656 and CS 8456 in stereo, released in 1961. Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in Manhattan, it marked the only Miles Davis Quintet studio recording session to feature saxophonist Hank Mobley.

Keeping to his standard procedure at Columbia to date of alternating small group records and big band studio projects with Gil Evans, Davis followed up Sketches of Spain with an album by his working quintet. In 1960, however, the jazz world had been in flux. Although Davis had garnered acclaim for Kind of Blue, the entrance of Ornette Coleman and free jazz via his Fall 1959 residency at the Five Spot Café and his albums for Atlantic Records had created controversy, and turned attention away from Davis.

Similarly, Davis' touring band had been in flux. In 1959, Cannonball Adderley left to form his own group with his brother, reducing the sextet to a quintet. Drummer Jimmy Cobb and pianist Wynton Kelly had been hired in 1958, but most difficult for Davis was the departure of John Coltrane, who stayed on for a spring tour of Europe but left to form his own quartet in the summer of 1960. In 1960, Davis went through saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Sonny Stitt before settling on Hank Mobley in December, the band re-stabilizing for the next two years.

Unlike Kind of Blue, which featured nothing but group originals, this album paired equal numbers of Miles Davis tunes and pop standards, including the title song resurrected from the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The titles to all three Davis originals refer to specific individuals: "Pfrancing" to his wife Frances, featured on the album cover; "Teo" to his producer Teo Macero; and "Drad Dog" (Goddard reversed) to Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson. While the cover credits the Miles Davis Sextet, only the title track featured six players, Coltrane making two cameo appearances on the album, taking solos on the title track and "Teo", playing instead of Mobley on the latter. On March 21, ex-Davis drummer Philly Joe Jones made his final contribution to a Davis session, replacing Cobb for the original "Blues No. 2", which was not used on the album.

On June 8, 1999, Legacy Records reissued the album for compact disc with two bonus tracks including the unused "Blues No. 2" and an alternative take of "Someday My Prince Will Come".

In a contemporary review for Down Beat, Ira Gitler praised Coltrane's solo on the title track while finding Kelly equally exceptional as both a soloist and comping musician. "His single-lines are simultaneously hard and soft. Cobb and Chambers groove perfectly together and with Kelly", Gitler wrote. "The rhythm section, individually and as a whole, is very well-recorded."[9] The magazine's Howard Mandel later viewed Someday My Prince Will Come as "a commercial realization rather than an artistic exploration" but nonetheless "lovely", highlighted by each musicians' careful attention to notes and dynamics, and among Davis' most "romantic, bluesy and intentionally seductive programs".

After both John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley left Miles Davis' quintet, he was caught in the web of seeking suitable replacements. It was a period of trial and error for him that nonetheless yielded some legendary recordings (Sketches of Spain, for one). One of those is Someday My Prince Will Come. The lineup is Davis, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and alternating drummers Jimmy Cobb and Philly Jo Jones. The saxophonist was Hank Mobley on all but two tracks. John Coltrane returns for the title track and "Teo." The set opens with the title, a lilting waltz that nonetheless gets an original treatment here, despite having been recorded by Dave Brubeck.

Kelly is in keen form, playing a bit sprightlier than the tempo would allow, and slips flourishes in the high register inside the melody for an "elfin" feel. Davis waxes light and lyrical with his Harmon mute, playing glissando throughout. Mobley plays a strictly journeyman solo, and then Coltrane blows the pack away with a solo so deep inside the harmony it sounds like it's coming from somewhere else. Mobley's real moment on the album is on the next track, "Old Folks," when he doesn't have Coltrane breathing down his neck. Mobley's soul-stationed lyricism is well-suited to his soloing here, and is for the rest of the album except, of course, on "Teo," where Coltrane takes him out again. The closer on the set, "Blues No. 2," is a vamp on "All Blues," from Kind of Blue, and features Kelly and Chambers playing counterpoint around an eight bar figure then transposing it to 12. Jones collapses the beat, strides it out, and then erects it again for the solos of Davis and Mobley. This is relaxed session; there are no burning tracks here, but there is much in the way of precision playing and a fine exposition of Miles' expansive lyricism.

The album is ranked number 994 in All-Time Top 1000 Albums (3rd. edition, 2000).

Track listing:

1. Someday My Prince Will Come 9:06
2. Old Folks 5:16
3. Pfrancing 8:32
4. Drad-Dog 4:30
5. Teo 9:35
6. I Thought About You 4:30

Personnel:

Miles Davis – trumpet
Hank Mobley – tenor saxophone on all tracks except "Teo"
John Coltrane – tenor saxophone on "Someday My Prince Will Come" (master) and "Teo"
Wynton Kelly – piano
Paul Chambers – bass