The second volume of Columbia's Bootleg Series focuses on a rare transition period between Miles Davis' great second quintet and his full-on embrace of electric music, presenting the Bitches Brew repertoire that would provide the core of his forthcoming live performances in its nascent form.
"Recorded as little as two weeks before and as much as four months after Bitches Brew Live's July 5, 1969 Newport Jazz Festival date, some within days of the 1969 Copenhagen DVD, and between four and eight months prior to the Live at The Fillmore East show, much of this music—three CDs, plus one DVD with a 45-minute, full-color performance of the quintet in Berlin on November 7, 1969—has been circulating in bootleg versions for years, but rarely in such sonically (and, in the case of the DVD, visually) cleaned-up form. The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 captures this quintet at two significant junctures: first, in July 1969, a few weeks before entering the studio (albeit with a much larger cast) to record Davis' seminal Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970); and second, in November 1969, less than two weeks before once again returning to the studio to continue recording music that was ultimately collected on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (Columbia/Legacy, 1998).
This group was the first to introduce electric instruments to Davis' music in a live context—only one, actually: [Chick] Corea's Rhodes, which he employs almost exclusively throughout the four discs. Still, this is a far cry from the more rock-inflected music that was soon to come; if anything, the music on Live in Europe 1969 is some of the flat-out freest improvisational music released by the Davis estate to date. Of course, the second quintet—where saxophonist Wayne Shorter (here, that group's only remnant) was joined by pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and Williams—regularly stretched the boundaries of its compositions, heard with crystal clarity on Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 (Columbia/Legacy, 2011); but this new quintet of Davis, Shorter, Corea, Holland and DeJohnette took the music to even more far-flung places—a function, most likely, of DeJohnette's formative years in Chicago and Holland's work in England, before Davis called upon him to relocated to the United States." - All About Jazz