Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Miles Davis

Porgy And Bess

1959 · Columbia CL 1274 · Mono · US · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	Columbia
Catalogue number	CL 1274
Year	1959
Mono / Stereo	Mono
Country	US
Format	LP
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Jazz - Orchestral/Third Stream
Producer	Cal Lampley
Composer	George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, Ira Gershwin (arranged by Miles Davis & Gil Evans)
Conductor	Gil Evans
Performer / Orchestra	Orchestra under the direction of Gil Evans
Musicians	Miles Davis (trumpet, flugelhorn), Gil Evans (arranger, conductor), Ernie Royal, Bernie Glow, Johnny Coles, Louis Mucci (trumpet), Joe Bennett, Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland, Dick Hixon (trombone), Willie Ruff, Julius Watkins, Gunther Schuller (French horn), Bill Barber (tuba), Cannonball Adderley (alto sax, uncredited on jacket), Romeo Penque, Phil Bodner, Jerome Richardson (flute, clarinet, alto flute), Danny Bank (bass clarinet, alto flute), Paul Chambers (bass), Philly Joe Jones, Jimmy Cobb (drums)

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  XLP44661-2L 1 1
Side B:  XLP 44662-2D

Condition

Cover: VG+
Vinyl: NM DEEP GROOVE 6 EYE PROMO LABEL/NM DEEP GROOVE 6 EYE PROMO LABEL

Variant chronology

1959 - US 6-eye red/black label, deep groove, standard retail issue
1959 - US 6-eye red/black "DEMONSTRATION - NOT FOR SALE" promo label, deep groove, same stamper family as retail issue  <- this copy
1959-c.1962 - US 6-eye retail, later/rebalanced stamper generations, deep groove fading out on later runs
1963-c.1965 - US "Guaranteed High Fidelity" 2-eye/CBS-era label reissue, no deep groove
1970s - Columbia orange "walking eye"/Columbia House era reissue
2012 - RSD 180g mono reissue
2020 - Mobile Fidelity 45RPM 2xLP audiophile reissue

This Pressing

1959 promo pressing (mono) - Columbia 6-eye deep-groove label overprinted "DEMONSTRATION - NOT FOR SALE," placing it in the same early manufacturing window as the standard first retail issue.

The Album

Porgy and Bess was the second full orchestral collaboration between Miles Davis and arranger-conductor Gil Evans, recorded over four sessions at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in July and August 1958, with Davis's trumpet and flugelhorn taking the vocal roles of George and Ira Gershwin's 1935 folk opera (book and lyrics co-written by DuBose Heyward). Evans reworked the opera's songs into dense, brooding voicings for a large ensemble of brass, reeds, and French horns built specifically around the color and phrasing of Davis's horn rather than a conventional big-band chart, pushing jazz orchestration into new territory. The record arrived at a pivotal moment in Davis's career, sandwiched between the hard-bop small-group work of his mid-50s quintet/sextet and the modal breakthroughs of Kind of Blue, recorded only months later, and its spacious, harmonically open writing is widely heard as a direct precursor to that watershed album. Alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley appears on the sessions though he went uncredited on the original jacket, a detail that has fed decades of critical and fan discussion. Porgy and Bess has been consistently ranked among the finest Davis-Evans collaborations and among the great orchestral jazz albums of its era, prized for its emotional depth on a program built entirely of other composers' material, and it remains a cornerstone in assessments of both Davis's interpretive genius and Evans's arranging artistry; it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. The Buzzard Song
2. Bess, You Is My Woman Now
3. Gone
4. Gone, Gone, Gone
5. Summertime
6. Bess, Oh Where's My Bess

Side 2

1. Prayer (Oh Doctor Jesus)
2. Fishermen, Strawberry and Devil Crab
3. My Man's Gone Now
4. It Ain't Necessarily So
5. Here Come de Honey Man
6. I Loves You, Porgy
7. There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York

The Label

This copy carries Columbia's red/black 6-eye center label with a pronounced deep groove, but the standard commercial text is replaced by "DEMONSTRATION" above the title and "NOT FOR SALE" beneath the side/ASCAP text - Discogs catalogs this exact configuration as a distinct promo variant of CL 1274 (r3490714), pressed alongside the standard retail 6-eye issue rather than as a later run. Columbia's 6-eye deep-groove label design ran roughly 1958 through its phase-out around 1963-65 in favor of the plain "Guaranteed High Fidelity" 2-eye label, so this design firmly places manufacture within the album's first few years on the market. The transcribed matrix suffixes (XLP44661-2L / XLP44662-2D) indicate an early-generation stamper pairing consistent with a pressing struck close to the March 1959 street date; only comparison against a documented -1 suffix retail copy would confirm whether this is the very first stamper run or an immediately subsequent one.

Fidelity

This is an original-era Columbia 6-eye mono pressing, mastered from Frank Laico's 1958 session tapes at Columbia's 30th Street Studio; collectors on forums.stevehoffman.tv generally rate the original mono 6-eye Columbia pressings of this album as the most natural and best-balanced versions, ahead of the original stereo mix and well ahead of later CBS-era reissues. As a deep-groove 6-eye pressing this sits at or very near the top of the vintage fidelity hierarchy for CL 1274, just below only the earliest-stamper commercial copies in strict collector terms since promo copies were cut and pressed from the same early metalwork as initial retail runs. The 2020 Mobile Fidelity 45RPM 2xLP is a more recent audiophile alternative praised for openness and detail but derives from later-generation tape sources rather than the original mono cut, so mono purists still favor a clean original 6-eye pressing like this one.

Notes

1959 Columbia CL 1274 mono - promotional "Demonstration/Not For Sale" pressing of the first US release, not a later reissue. Deep-groove 6-eye labels match Columbia's design used circa 1958-early 1960s, well before the 2-eye "Guaranteed High Fidelity" label replaced it around 1963-65. The DEMONSTRATION/NOT FOR SALE overprint is a distinct, separately-cataloged Discogs variant (r3490714) rather than a standard commercial copy, and the transcribed matrix suffixes (-2L/-2D) point to an early stamper generation consistent with initial release rather than a later repress.

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