For all he was an irascible person (which is a nice way of saying he could be a real dick), Miles Davis' musical persona was one of warmth, vulnerability, passion, and romance. Few musicians were better at creating great backdrops for classy assignations. Music from his Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain LPs, to be sure, were both popular (by jazz standards) and certainly offered a marvelous musical tapestry if a young man wanted to impress a young woman with his taste, class, and style enough to get her in to bed.
When he wanted to, though, Miles could just do a love song. Period. His release Some Day My Prince Will Come, featuring his beautiful young wife on the cover (after a previous album had featured a leggy blonde, Miles had pitched a fit because, if had shown up anywhere in the country on the arm of that same model, he would have been in a whole lot of trouble), was aided by a special appearance on the title track by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. 'Trane had been in Miles' band a few years before, but Miles had kicked him out because of 'Trane's growing addiction to heroin. In the intervening years, Coltrane had gotten off drugs and started a quartet of his own. There are various stories about how Coltrane ended up playing on the record, but whatever the case may be, he's there.
In this live recording, from The Blackhawk in San Francisco, April, 1961, Hank Mobley does a great job not so much covering Coltrane as making the song his own.
Virtual Tin Cup
