Recorded in a single February 1969 session at Columbia's Studio B and shaped afterward by producer Teo Macero's editing, In a Silent Way marked Miles Davis's full turn toward electric instruments. Built from just two long pieces stitched from a handful of takes by an expanded band including three electric pianists and a guitarist new to New York, it plays as a hushed, largely beatless record that unsettled jazz and rock critics alike on release.
Charles Mingus's first album for Columbia, recorded in May 1959, gathers tributes to Lester Young, Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton alongside Fables of Faubus, a satire of Arkansas's segregationist governor recorded without its banned lyrics. A tight sextet, led from the bass, turns gospel, blues and big-band writing into a single, coherent argument about jazz's own history.
Recorded in 1959 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio, Time Out grew out of Dave Brubeck's overseas tours for the State Department, where he heard rhythms outside the usual pulse of American jazz. The Dave Brubeck Quartet built seven tracks around metres like nine-eight and five-four, including Take Five, composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond almost as an afterthought, which went on to outsell every jazz single before it.