After the unfinished sessions for Quiet Nights in 1962, Davis returned to club work. However, he had a series of health problems in 1962, which made his live dates inconsistent and meant that he missed gigs, with financial repercussions.[10][11] Faced with diminishing returns, by late 1962 his entire band quit, Hank Mobley to a solo career, and the rhythm section of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb to work as a unit.[12] The departure of Chambers especially was a blow, as he had been the only man still left from the original formation of the quintet in 1955.
With club dates to fulfill, Davis hired several musicians to fill in: Frank Strozier on alto saxophone and Harold Mabern on piano, with George Coleman and Ron Carter arriving early in the year.[13] For shows on the West Coast in March, Davis added drummer Frank Butler,[14] but when it came time for the sessions, Davis jettisoned Strozier and Mabern in favor of pianist Victor Feldman.[15] With a lucrative career as a session musician, Feldman declined Davis's offer to join the group, and both he and Butler were left behind in California.[16] Back in New York, Davis located the musicians who would be with him for the next six years, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams; with Carter and Coleman, the new Miles Davis Quintet was in place.[17] Williams, then only 17 years old, had been working with Jackie McLean, and Hancock had already scored a hit single with "Watermelon Man", recorded by percussionist Mongo Santamaria.[18]
The assembled group at the April recording sessions finished enough material for an entire album, but Davis decided the uptempo numbers were not acceptable, and rerecorded all of them with the new group during the May sessions in New York.[19] Two of the ballad tunes recorded in Los Angeles were old – "Baby Won't You Please Come Home", written in 1919 and a hit for Bessie Smith in 1923, while "Basin Street Blues" had been introduced by Louis Armstrong in 1928.[20] Neither features Coleman; both are quartet performances with Davis and the rhythm section.
The uptempo numbers from New York in May include Feldman's "Joshua", which remained in the Davis performance book for the rest of the decade. This is the last of Davis' studio albums with standards rather than band originals; they were gone by the time the quintet made its last personnel change, Wayne Shorter replacing Coleman in late 1964.
On March 15, 2005, Legacy Records reissued the album for compact disc with two bonus tracks, both from the Los Angeles sessions in April. "Summer Night" had been previously released on Quiet Nights to bring that album up to an acceptable running time.
Seven Steps to Heaven Review by Rovi Staff
Seven Steps to Heaven finds Miles Davis standing yet again on the fault line between stylistic epochs. In early 1963, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb left to form their own trio, and Davis was forced to form a new band, which included Memphis tenor player George Coleman and bassist Ron Carter. When Davis next entered the studio in Hollywood, he added local drummer Frank Butler and British studio ace Victor Feldman, who ultimately decided not to go on the road with Davis. It's easy to see why Davis liked Feldman, who contributed the dancing title tune and "Joshua" to the session. On three mellifluous standards -- particularly a cerebral "Basin Street Blues" and a broken-hearted "I Fall in Love Too Easily" -- the pianist plays with an elegant, refined touch, and the kind of rarefied voicings that suggest Ahmad Jamal. Davis responds with some of his most introspective, romantic ballad playing. When Davis returned to New York he finally succeeded in spiriting away a brilliantly gifted 17-year-old drummer from Jackie McLean: Tony Williams. On the title tune you can already hear the difference, as his crisp, driving cymbal beat and jittery, aggressive syncopations propel Davis into the upper reaches of his horn. On "So Near, So Far" the drummer combines with Carter and new pianist Herbie Hancock to expand on a light Afro-Cuban beat with a series of telepathic changes in tempo, texture, and dynamics. Meanwhile, Feldman's "Joshua" (with its overtones of "So What" and "All Blues") portends the kind of expressive variations on the basic 4/4 pulse that would become the band's trademark, as Davis and Coleman ascend into bebop heaven.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Basin Street Blues" | Spencer Williams | 10:29 |
| 2. | "Seven Steps to Heaven" | Victor Feldman, Miles Davis | 6:26 |
| 3. | "I Fall in Love Too Easily" | Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn | 6:46 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4. | "So Near, So Far" | Tony Crombie, Benny Green | 6:59 |
| 5. | "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" | Clarence Williams, Charles Warfield | 8:28 |
| 6. | "Joshua" | Victor Feldman | 7:00 |
- Sides one and two were combined as tracks 1–6 on CD reissues.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7. | "So Near, So Far" (alternative version) | Tony Crombie, Benny Green | 5:11 |
| 8. | "Summer Night" | Harry Warren, Al Dubin | 6:02 |
Tracks 1, 3, 5, 7 & 8 – recorded in Hollywood on April 16 or 17, 1963
- Miles Davis – trumpet
- George Coleman – tenor saxophone
- Victor Feldman – piano
- Ron Carter – bass
- Frank Butler – drums
Tracks 2, 4 & 6 – recorded in New York on May 14, 1963
- Miles Davis – trumpet
- George Coleman – tenor saxophone
- Herbie Hancock – piano
- Ron Carter – bass
- Tony Williams – drums[21]
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