History of a Standard: Milestones, Miles Davis (1958)

Some artists thrive on what is known as “the liberating constraint.” The idea that you are forced to do more with less. You don’t necessarily need the far flung recesses of the galaxy packed with aliens, ray-guns and black holes to make a compelling scene…sometimes you just need two people in a diner drinking coffee and arguing over whether to have another piece of pie.

This was the kind of thinking that got Miles Davis into his modal phase. It was in his mind at around the same time that Miles went to see a show by Ballet Africans in New York which built its performance from a static harmonic base. Miles said: “The challenge here, when you work in the modal way, is to see how inventive you can become melodically…” and “There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them…”

“Milestones” was recorded and released in 1958 (on Columbia Records), pre-dating the most famous jazz album of them all—Kind of Blue—and has been subsequently described as being a “preliminary sketch” of modal improvisation.

It featured the stellar line up of John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. (Although it would be the last time that Miles would play with Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones.)

The album notes claim that “Milestones” “includes one of the most beautiful jobs on muted horn since Leon ‘Bix’ Beiderbecke.” Of the rhythm section, it says that: “only a very few compare with it.” And Miles himself said that “Trane and Cannon were really playing their asses off…”

The track was originally called “Miles” (perhaps to avoid confusion with another tune called “Milestones,” as fast faced bebop recorded in 1947 by Miles Davis, although written by John Lewis) but it soon became known as “Milestones,” so much so that subsequent pressings of the record updated the name.

It has been subsequently covered by Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly and Herbie Hancock, amongst many, many others and is a bona fide jazz standard, having been included in the Penguin Guide to Jazz and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.