The Complete Plugged Nickel Live 1965

The most requested Miles Davis reissue arrives for his centennial in spectacular style. What began as a holiday residency at Chicago’s Plugged Nickel Café became the crucible where the Second Great Quintet forged its identity. Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams delivered a masterclass in risk and invention, dismantling familiar tunes and rebuilding them on the fly. Producer Teo Macero captured every note across seven sets on December 22 and 23, 1965. Portions trickled out in the ’70s and ’80s, but only in the early ’90s did Legacy (CD) and Mosaic (LP) reveal the full scope of seven and half hours of revelatory music—instantly hailed as one of the greatest live jazz recordings ever, earning the Penguin Jazz Guide’s coveted “Crown,” and becoming pricey, secondary-market rarities. Now, 30 years later and six decades after the shows themselves, veteran fans finally get the repress they’ve demanded, and new fans get a chance to own one of the most mythologized live engagements in jazz history. This new 10LP edition mirrors the original sequence, cut from the high-res Mosaic masters and pressed on 140-gram black vinyl. Each LP comes in its own newly designed jacket, housed in a gold foil-embossed slipcase box. The 44 page 12”x12” Smyth Sewn book includes rare Plugged Nickel photos and extensive new liner notes and track-by-track commentary by Syd Schwartz alongside Bob Blumenthal’s original essay.