Album Reviews

Best known to American Miles Davis fans as side one of the twelve inch Columbia Records LP release Jazz Track (CL1268), Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (“Elevator to the Scaffold”), the jazz soundtrack to the Louis Malle film was originally released in France in 1958 on the Fontana label as a 10” LP.

Miles Davis was in Paris playing the Club Saint-Germain as well as performing at the Olympia Theater. A chance meeting with director Malle who had just completed his first film, led to Miles agreeing to compose the soundtrack.

Following a private screening, Davis entered a Paris radio studio with French jazz musicians pianist René Urtreger, tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen, bassist Pierre Michelot (who is sensational here) and ex-pat drummer Kenny Clarke, and while watching the picture, the group improvised the music to the film’s key scenes.

The other side of Jazz Track is notable because it’s performed by the group that soon thereafter would produce Kind of Blue.

However, there is something more satisfying and historically complete to having a superbly reproduced version of the original document and that is what Sam Records provides in its commendably completist style that includes a laminated “fold-over” cover, outstanding cover photo reproduction and as a bonus, a black and whilte matte finish photo of Miles in Paris 1957 by Gérard Landau.

More importantly, the mono sonics on this evocative soundtrack, where your mind can almost accurately conjure up the “noir-ish” happenings on screen (involving, among other action, an illicit love affair and a murder), are transparent and precise. Young Miles’ sometimes forlorn, echo-y horn, especially, as well as Michelot’s bass, are presented in full, believable fidelity. Miles' solo on "Diner Au Motel" will knock your socks off or your dentures out.

The reissue producer doesn't specify who cut or from what, but listen and you'll not care. This is supreme late night, lights out listening. Highly recommended. (Available now at Acoustic Sounds, which is the label's American distributor.