When Miles Davis released the album In a Silent Way in the summer of 1969, it represented a tectonic shift in the trumpeter’s artistry, aligning him with the growing legion of disrupters in the fusion movement and ushering in an era of funk-rock experimentation that critics would later dub his “Electric Period.”
Featuring jazz stalwarts like Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams, the album is a sprawling landscape of buzzy guitars, soul-stirring keyboards and pulsing drums, all threaded together by Davis’ elliptical trumpet asides and Wayne Shorter’s winding soprano sax. Now considered a seminal recording in Davis’ discography—and in the jazz canon in general — the album was recorded in one session on this day in 1969. Our Song of the Day is the title track, which begins as a dreamy meditation, then builds toward something darker and more pressurized before dissolving back into the electronic mist.