We Want Miles!
Recording & Video Exchange

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Miles Davis (1926 - 1991) was music's greatest existentialist. He became an innovative force in music in the 1940's and remained so for nearly five decades. In order to fully understand his music, especially the later periods, the studio albums may be of far less help than a shelf load of concert tapes. These recordings reveal that Miles continued to change and develop along with his material, always moving in new directions. We are fortunate amatuer recording enthusiasts have documented Miles' concerts, radio broadcasts, and television appearances throughout his career, as most were not professionally recorded and would otherwise have been lost forever.

A writer for a popular audio magazine recalled a summer night in 1984 when Miles gave an outdoor performance in Terni, Italy. "Local authorities had built a small stand in one end of the Piazza Europa for the press, allowing us a raised vantage point from which we could look across the sea of audience to Miles' septet at the other end of the square. Miles attracted a capacity crowd - nothing unusual about that, but when the music started, it was as if someone had flipped a switch, for suddenly hundreds of microphones appeared. Most were held at arm's length, others were affixed to long poles that rose above the crowd, and there were even stereo setups with mikes mounted on each end of a T-shaped frame". Regular followers of European jazz festivals tell me this is common practice. Miles is indeed well documented by amatuer recordists, and represent the only documentation of many of his performances. Plenty of those documents survive in private collections today...

Help Build A Most Comprehensive Miles Davis Collection

I'm a Miles fanatic! I'm seeking all the Miles Davis recordings I can get my hands (and ears) on to add to the Milestones archives. This includes studio recording session reels, live concert recordings, radio broadcasts, television appearances (audio and video) and audience recordings. I am especially interested in recordings that come from "private recording" sources. If you have a recording in your collection that is not listed here, please consider making a copy available. Help me find Miles recordings for my collection. I'm also looking for a couple CDs and LPs.
In exchange, I offer you selections from my vast collection which in total, includes well over 1000 Miles items...

Exchanging Miles Recordings

International trades welcome!

Procedures and equipment:
My duplication (including Audio CD-R) is done in "real-time" (1:1, the same speed you normally hear the music) directly from personal masters, many of which are in excellent sound quality. Please be aware, however, the fact that the technical quality on some of the recordings listed here is somewhat below contemporary professional standards and that some contain defects which reside in the source materials. Many of these recordings are extremely rare often recorded in precarious conditions on amateur equipment and originally intended for purely personal use. Consequently, some listeners may be taken aback by the quality of sound. Seasoned collectors will no doubt appreciate that such constraints have not diverted us from offering these recordings, and that NO doctoring has been attempted to restore or enhance the sound. Moreover, Miles Davis enthusiasts will be so struck by this material that they will easily overlook any technical deficiencies. We offer the best available audio version(s) of material that we have obtained. We list the better/more complete versions (replacing sonically inferior ones) of material. Please refer to the legend for sources and approximate timings.

Equipment includes: