Various

★★★★ Directions In Music 1969-1972: Miles Davis, His Musicians, And The Birth Of A New Age Of Jazz ACE/BGP. CD/DL/LP

When Miles Davis shook up the jazz world.

Miles Davis didn’t invent jazz-rock (vibraphonist Gary Burton got there a couple of years before him) but he legitimised it with his landmark albums In A Silent

Way and Bitches Brew, both recorded in 1969. Tired of bebop structures and influenced by both the musical taste and fashion sense of his new young wife, Betty, Davis completely reinvented himself. This tastefully assembled compilation presents key tracks by the trumpeter and several of his young cohorts (including Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea) during a fertile four-year period when they were all crashing through musical boundaries with a synthesis of jazz, rock, and funk that the critics dubbed ‘fusion’. Ranging from ethereal soundscapes (Wayne Shorter’s Sweet Pea) to searing avant-funk (Miles’s Directions), this stupendous retrospective brings an exciting era in music history vividly back to life.