Collectors' Items

Collectors' Items is a 1956 studio album by Miles Davis. There are two sessions collected on the album with largely different musicians. The first 1953 session is "Compulsion", "The Serpent's Tooth" (two takes) and "'Round About Midnight". The second 1956 session is "In Your Own Sweet Way", "Vierd Blues" and "No Line". The personnel for the first session were Davis, Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker (credited under the pseudonym "Charlie Chan" due to his contractual obligations to a rival label) on tenor saxes, Walter Bishop on piano, Percy Heath on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. For the second session, the tenor sax was Rollins alone, the piano was Tommy Flanagan, the bass Paul Chambers and Art Taylor on drums.

Contents

• Track listings
• January 30 1953 session
• March 16 1956 session
• References

According to Ira Gitler's liner notes, the 1953 session was only the second time Parker had recorded on a tenor sax. According to the CD edition's liner notes, that session was the only time Parker and Rollins recorded together.

Davis describes the session with Parker in his autobiography as having been very chaotic. It was Davis' first session of 1953 and his heroin habit had gotten very bad. Parker had quit his own heroin habit following the arrest of his trumpet player Red Rodney, instead drinking enormous quantities of alcohol. He consumed a quart of vodka at the rehearsal, then spoke condescendingly to Davis as if it were his session and Davis an employee or a child. After arguing, Parker fell asleep and Davis was so mad he played poorly, which in turn angered Gitler who was producing.

The 1953 session was considered incomplete and remained unreleased. After having signed to Columbia Records in 1956, part of Davis' contractual obligation to Prestige was to complete another half session considered owed, which resulted in the second half of this album.

Parker was also billed as "Charlie Chan" on the 1953 album Jazz at Massey Hall. Also for Parker, this album represented a posthumous release, since it was released a year after his death, in New York City in March 1955.