eMusic Review
Christmas Eve, 1954, was an auspicious night for American music. Down in Memphis, original rocker Johnny Ace shot himself while playing Russian Roulette. Up in New York, Miles Davis teamed with Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver and the Modern Jazz Quartet's rhythm section (Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke), and helped define the parameters of hard bop to come. Often viewed as a transitional album, Bag's Groove contains echoes of Davis 'Birth of the Cool octet, and looks forward to his triumphant Kind of Blue without quite cohering in its own right. And yet, the album is famous in jazz circles not because Monk and Miles are said to have come to blows in the course of recording it, but because it's here that Davis mastered the bone-dry tone he's best remembered for, and Sonny Rollins matured into a true virtuoso. Highlights include take two of the title track (listen for Monk's furiously staccato solo), and Rollins 'Latin-tinged "Airegin" (which prefigures Davis 'own work on Sketches of Spain).
