Vinyl Me, Please, the Miles Davis Estate and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, are excited to announce the 17th entry in VMP’s Grammy-nominated Anthology series: Miles Davis: The Electric Years. Collecting seven albums from one of the most fertile, daring eras of Miles Davis’ career, The Electric Years is meant to preserve these albums on vinyl for a new generation of people ready to have their minds blown by Miles’ blending of electronic, rock, jazz and everything else he felt like experimenting with.
The seven albums — In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On The Corner, Big Fun and Get Up With It — have all been mastered AAA from 1-to-1 tape transfers of the master tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound. With Grammy Award winning Steve Berkowitz supervising and consulting, the 11 LPs featured in the box come on 180g black vinyl, pressed at GZ, and will be limited in the first edition to 2,000 units. These albums have not been reissued AAA in many years, and in some cases, ever.
Starting in 1969 and ending in 1974, this box tells the story of a fertile period in Miles’ career, the third or fourth time he basically blew up the rules of jazz and made it again in his own image. Endlessly influential, these albums impacted basically every genre of music to follow in their wake. You can learn the story of these albums via an extensive Listening Notes booklet written by jazz historian and critic Ben Ratliff.
“Doing a box dedicated to Miles Davis has been a goal and dream for us since we started VMP Anthology in 2019,” said Electric Years executive producer and VMP Director of Music Andrew Winistorfer. “It took us a while to decide on how to narrow it down; Miles has something like four or five different eras you could put into a box like this. But the electric period is one of his least explored. The big titles get all the attention, and we thought there was a way to show people how groundbreaking and incredible this time in Miles’ career was by doing all of his studio albums of this period. What emerges is a picture of an artist in his third professional decade, refusing to rest on his laurels and inventing a new future in real time.”
The Electric Years is available now on Vinyl Me, Please’s website. VMP Members get a discount on this box. It’s expected to ship in late summer.
About VMP Anthology:
VMP Anthology is a reinvented, immersive box set experience for music fans willing to journey beyond the liner notes. Each Anthology features expert storytelling, a new podcast telling the story of the albums in the box, exclusive inserts and a collectors-edition vinyl box set. Miles Davis: The Electric Years is the 17th VMP Anthology release. Prior to this, VMP released Anthologies honoring The Grateful Dead, Blue Note Records, the Women of Motown, Ghostly International, Stax Records, Zamrock, Tribe Records, Herbie Hancock, Metal Blade Records, Vanguard Records, Philadelphia International Records, Quincy Jones, Willie Nelson, Ghetto Records, the Comedy Store and Cadet Records.