SKF NOTE: November promises to be a great music month for drummers with newly released albums featuring Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, and Jimmy Cobb.

The Lost Recordings label is releasing the Miles Davis Quintet’s The Complete Live in Paris Vol. 1. This is the Olympia, Paris concert of October 11, 1960. Miles’s band, in addition to himself, included Sonny Stitt (saxophones), Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums).

“For the first ever, this legendary concert is published in its entirety. The adventure began in 2022 with a visit to a tape recorder enthusiast who had the missing part of this extraordinary recording,” TLR tells us.

This concert, most of it, has been available for awhile. From what I can tell, TLR’s Vol. 1 includes four previously unissued concert songs: Softly, As in the Morning Sunrise, Autumn Leaves, Makin’ Whoopee, and So What.

We will have to see if Vol. 2 includes more unreleased songs.

But Miles’s band here with Stitt is excellent. The rhythm section, sometimes referred to as The Trio, always makes great music, always gives pianists, bassists, and drummers something to think about.

Jack DeJohnette is the drummer on Blue Note records’ upcoming album, McCoy Tyner & Joe Henderson – Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs,’ recorded in 1966.

Said DeJohnette of this band and this date, which includes bassist Henry Grimes, “Everybody really played like there was no tomorrow. Luckily, we have this document from that week with this incredible personnel making this incredible music with this intensity and commitment. This recording represents a time and period where musicians were really playing, intensely searching and experimenting with new things.”

Finally, Columbia/Legacy Recordings delivers over four hours of previously unreleased music with Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet on Miles in France – Miles Davis Quintet 1963/64: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8.

Is this album title misleading? The Second Great Quintet, in my mind, is Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Tony Williams (drums), and Wayne Shorter (saxophones). Columbia/Legacy’s upcoming Davis album is half Miles with Shorter, and half Miles with George Coleman (saxophones).

All in all, any month giving us new music from DeJohnette, Cobb, and Williams, is a great month.