Quiet Nights (Miles Davis and Gil Evans album)
| Quiet Nights | ||||
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| Studio album by Miles Davis/Gil Evans | ||||
| Released | December 16, 1963 | |||
| Recorded | 1962–63 | |||
| Studio | Columbia Studios in Los Angeles | |||
| Genre | Bossa nova | |||
| Length | 26:57 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Teo Macero, Irving Townsend | |||
| Miles Davis/Gil Evans chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| Down Beat | |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Quiet Nights is a studio album by jazz musician Miles Davis, and his fourth album collaboration with Gil Evans, released in 1964 on Columbia Records, catalogue CL 2106 and CS 8906 in stereo. Recorded mostly at Columbia's 30th Street Studios in Manhattan, it is the final album by Davis and Evans.
Keeping to his standard procedure at Columbia to date of alternating small group records and big band studio projects with Gil Evans, Davis entered the studio with Evans to follow up the latest studio LP by the working quintet, Someday My Prince Will Come. In 1961, Davis had also released his first live albums, two independent LPs entitled Friday Night at the Blackhawk and Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, in addition to the studio set. Another live set from 1961, Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall, also with both the quintet and a large ensemble conducted by Evans was issued in 1962.
The genesis of this Davis/Evans album, however, encountered far greater difficulties than its three predecessors. Bossa nova had recently become a commercial success in 1962 with the single "Desafinado" from the album Jazz Samba by Stan Getz, and Columbia executives may have pressured Davis and Evans to attempt something similar with this album. Sessions were also protracted over long stretches of time.
Two songs were recorded at the first session in July, "Corcovado" and "Aos Pés Da Cruz" (meaning 'Hunchback' and 'At the Foot of the Cross' in Portuguese), and released as Columbia singles 4-33059 and 4-4-42583; neither charted. The pair returned to longer forms for the subsequent sessions, Evans perhaps not given enough time to finish the charts for the earlier session. The attempt to mix potential hit singles and Evans' writing style for Davis, essentially concertos for jazz trumpeter, may have torpedoed the project.
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