Circle in the Round is a 1979 compilation album by jazz musicianMiles Davis. It compiled outtakes from sessions across fifteen years of Davis's career that, with one exception, had been previously unreleased. All of its tracks have since been made available on album reissues and posthumous box sets.
Material
"Two Bass Hit" is from a 1955 session. A 1958 re-recording was released on Milestones. "Love for Sale", previously released on a 1974 Japanese compilation, features the same lineup that would play on most of Kind of Blue. "Blues No. 2" comes from the last session that Davis and John Coltrane would record together in 1961, although Coltrane does not play on the track. The title track, "Circle in the Round," is the first studio recording in which he departed from the acoustic quintet, and therefore marks the inception of his "electric" period. Recorded in 1967, it was the earliest released recording of Miles that featured the sound of the electric guitar, something that would become prominent in his music over the years. Edited here by seven minutes, the full track was released on The Complete Studio Recordings of The Miles Davis Quintet 1965–1968. The first officially released Davis track with electric guitar was "Paraphernalia", from 1968's Miles in the Sky, with George Benson contributing. Benson appears here on the second take of "Side Car" and "Sanctuary". "Teo's Bag", "Side Car", "Splash", and "Sanctuary" come fromtwo sessions in early 1968. "Splash" was later released on The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions, and a re-recording of "Sanctuary" in August 1969 would be the closing track on Bitches Brew. "Guinnevere" is from the same "electric" sessions of early 1970, with sitar and tabla, which yielded "Great Expectations", "Orange Lady" and "Lonely Fire". Like the title track, it was released here in abbreviated form, as on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, the track is three minutes longer.
Critical reception
In , Robert Christgau deemed the recordings on Circle in the Round "damaged goods", even though "Miles tastes better out of the can than fresh watermelon or even V.S.O.P." Lester Bangs voted it as one of 1979's ten best records in his ballot for The Village Voices annual Pazz & Jop poll. "Although seemingly hodgepodge in arrangement, Circle in the Round is a brilliant examination of the depth of scope and range possessed by Miles Davis", Lindsay Planer later wrote in AllMusic.
