Back in New York after successfully battling personal demons, and at the helm of the incredible Horace Silver/Percy Heath/Kenny Clarke rhythm section, Miles Davis cut a pair of sessions in April 1954 that announced where both his own music and jazz in general were heading. The quintet date, with underground legend Davey Schildkraut on alto sax, provided the first inkling of the trumpeter’s haunting muted style and introduced his classic composition “Solar.”

Even more influential was the sextet session with J.J. Johnson and Lucky Thompson, which took advantage of long-playing record technology with two extended jams that announced both the return of modern jazz musicians to a focus on the blues and the coming of the funky hard-bop era. Together on the LP Walkin’, this music (among the first to be recorded for Prestige by Rudy Van Gelder) created one of the earliest essential albums in the Miles Davis canon.