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 (pressing plant not identified on this label) · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	Columbia
Catalogue number	CL 1274
Year	1959
Mono / Stereo	Mono
Country	US (pressing plant not identified on this label)
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

Variant chronology

1959 - US Columbia red/black 6-eye deep-groove label, standard retail mono first pressing
1959 - US Columbia red/black 6-eye deep-groove label, "DEMONSTRATION"/"NOT FOR SALE" promo overprint  <- this copy
1963 - US Columbia plain "Guaranteed High Fidelity" 2-eye label mono repress
1968 - Netherlands CBS reissue (62108)
2012/2021 - Record Store Day 180g mono reissue

This Pressing

1959 promo pressing (mono) - Columbia six-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, whose book and lyrics were 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-1950s quintet and 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.

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-and-black six-eye center label with a pronounced deep groove, the same design used across the company's catalogue from about 1958 into the early 1960s before the plain "Guaranteed High Fidelity" two-eye label replaced it around 1963-65. In place of the standard commercial text the label reads "DEMONSTRATION" above the title and "NOT FOR SALE" beneath the side/ASCAP line, marking this as a promotional pressing rather than a retail copy. Both the deep groove and the six-eye design place manufacture firmly within the album's first few years on the market, and the promo overprint identifies it as the demonstration issue struck alongside the standard first retail pressing rather than a later repress.

Fidelity

This is an original-era Columbia six-eye mono pressing, mastered from the 1958 session tapes cut at Columbia's 30th Street Studio; collectors on the forums generally rate the original mono six-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 six-eye pressing this sits at or very near the top of the vintage fidelity hierarchy for this catalogue number, since promotional copies were cut and pressed from the same early metalwork as initial retail runs. A later audiophile 45RPM reissue exists and is praised for openness and detail, but it derives from later-generation tape sources rather than the original mono cut, so mono purists still favor a clean original six-eye pressing like this one.

Notes

1959 Columbia CL 1274 mono - a promotional "Demonstration/Not For Sale" pressing struck alongside the first US release, not a later reissue. The deep-groove six-eye label matches Columbia's design used circa 1958 through the early 1960s, well before the plain two-eye "Guaranteed High Fidelity" label replaced it around 1963-65. The demonstration overprint marks a distinct promotional variant rather than a standard commercial copy, sharing the same early metalwork as the initial retail run.

Documenting collections

I do this work for other people’s collections too — documenting a collection record by record, researching individual pressings, and preparing collections for sale or for insurance. If you have a collection you would like documented, or a record you want identified properly, get in touch: email

This record’s page: https://vinylcurator.net/albums/miles-davis-porgy-and-bess/