Blue Miles

1	'Round Midnight 5:57
2	Blues for Pablo 5:22
3	Blue in Green 5:35
4	The Pan Piper 3:54
5	Drad Dog 4:51
6	Basin Street Blues 10:30
7	Circle 5:50
8	Sweet Pea 7:59

Barnes & Noble

Blue Miles cherrypicks eight of Miles Davis's most effective evocations of blueness via open horn or Harmon mute; it doesn't really matter that several of the selections have nothing to do with the blues as such. Davis could break your heart with his tone, full of minute gradations of timbre and inflection, and over the 50 minutes of this collection you get the gamut of emotion -- he tears wistfully into the heart of Thelonious Monk's iconic torch song "Round Midnight" (1956), jumps from depression to optimism on Gil Evans's kaleidoscopic composition "Blues for Pablo" (1957), evokes funereal desolation over Evans' shimmering orchestration on "The Pan Piper" (1960), limns the fluid tonalities of Bill Evans's "Blue in Green" (1959), picks his way through the lonely landscape of "Drad Dog" (1961), pays homage to Louis Armstrong on "Basin Street Blues" (1962), states delicate/tensile moods on "Circle" (1967), and posits resolutions to the harmonic conundrums of Wayne Shorter on "Sweet Pea" (1967). Intelligently selected and paced, Blue Miles presents the Prince of Darkness at his most transparent. Ted Panken

All Music Guide

Sure, the serious jazz collector will have no particular need to pay this release any mind. It has eight 1956-1967 Davis ballads, encompassing "'Round Midnight," orchestrated pieces with Gil Evans, and tracks with stellar sidemen like John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, and Herbie Hancock. The selections are ones that highlight Davis' more sultry and melancholy horn tones, played on the trumpet with the exception of "Blues for Pablo" on which he plays flügelhorn. What this probably does have its value for -- and it's a reasonable value -- is as a token Davis collection for moderate jazz and/or Davis fans or as a gift for someone who likes quality mellow jazz but never really bothers to buy it. Toward that end, it's a fair bet that more than one guy will be giving this to a girlfriend to get her in the mood, so to speak. It's good music (whether used as make-out ambience or not), just not something that fits snugly into the usual "recommended listening" or "picks" sections of discographies. Richie Unterberger