Someday My Prince Will Come
Miles Davis · Columbia · 1961
Edition №4
In the early 90s I was a classical voice major at the University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas. It’s a small town, but it has one of the best jazz schools anywhere, so jazz all over the place. A coffee house, a couple of dive bars, One O'Clock Lab Band open rehearsals, a bar somebody retrofitted in a former Pizza Hut. I’d go hear amazing players, students from all over the world, UNT faculty and whoever was passing through our dusty little town.
For two years, I had a volunteer slot DJ-ing at the college radio station, which was an all-jazz format, and that’s really where I got into Miles. Before that I only knew his late electric stuff that was current at the time, and it never did much for me despite Bono’s support. A friend at the station told me to go back further and handed me a CD of “Someday My Prince Will Come”. I started digging and didn’t stop.
This album comes from a strange moment for Miles. For context, we go back to March 1961, in an old converted church on East 30th Street in Manhattan, the same room where he’d made “Kind of Blue” a couple of years earlier. His classic band had broken up. Bill Evans moved on. Coltrane had quit the year before, Mobley was Miles’ new tenor, and yet Coltrane came back for two days to play the title track and one more. Mobley takes a solo early on, and a few minutes later Coltrane, the guy he’d replaced, comes in over the same changes. I didn’t catch that detail the first few times through.
That was sixty-five years ago, and the tape’s been cut and recut more times than I can count, in stereo and mono both, which was the way Davis and Macero meant it to be released. The copies aren’t the same, and the easy one to find is almost never the one you want.
The chain
Everything traces back to the 1961 stereo and mono masters. Three modern mastering chains come off them: two cut at Sterling Sound, one at Sony’s Battery Studios.
Session. March 7, 20 and 21, 1961 · Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York
Producer. Teo Macero
Engineers. Fred Plaut · Frank Laico
Postproduction. Macero spliced tape and added horn overdubs after the band had left, an early run at the method he scaled on “Bitches Brew”
Release. December 11, 1961 · Columbia · parallel stereo and mono mixes, both artist intent, neither a fold-down
Original master. The 1961 mastering engineer is uncredited at every layer of the catalog, a gap built into Columbia’s jazz practice of the period
Cover. Frances Taylor Davis, Katherine Dunham Company dancer
Notable. Philly Joe Jones replaced Cobb on one March 21 cut, “Blues No. 2,” his final Davis session. It was left off the album and surfaced later as a CD bonus track
One thing to flag before the picks. The 1999 Sony Columbia/Legacy CD is the easiest version to find, and under twenty dollars it’s the cheapest way in. But it’s the 1997 stereo remix, a later chain than the original-master cuts the picks run on. It’s a fine listen. It isn’t the reference.
The musicianship
The album catches Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb at their best, two years before they left Davis to form the Wynton Kelly Trio.
Personnel.
Miles Davis · trumpet
Wynton Kelly · piano
Paul Chambers · bass
Jimmy Cobb · drums
Hank Mobley · tenor saxophone, all tracks except “Teo”
John Coltrane · tenor saxophone, title track and “Teo”
Philly Joe Jones · drums on “Blues No. 2”
Notable.
This is Hank Mobley’s only studio album with Davis. He also appears on the April 1961 Blackhawk live recordings.
Kelly, Chambers and Cobb were in their last full year with Davis. Within two years the three would leave to record on their own as the Wynton Kelly Trio.
The verdict
Best overall in stereo is the 2010 Analogue Productions 45 RPM 2-LP, George Marino’s cut at Sterling Sound from the original analog master. It is out of print; recent sales run roughly $90 to $230, with the middle of the market near $155. The 33⅓ single LP from the same house, Ryan K. Smith’s later cut at Sterling Sound, is the in-print path at $40, though it is back-ordered at the label’s own store at press time.
Best overall in mono is a tie: the 2020 Sony Japan mono LP or the 2013 Music On Vinyl mono LP, both off the 2013 Mark Wilder mono master. The Sony Japan is freshly repressed and in stock as this edition publishes, about $25 from CDJapan; the Music On Vinyl moves with importer pricing. Pick by availability.
Best SACD and best CD is the Analogue Productions hybrid SACD, the same Marino chain across its layers, out of print but reasonable on the used market, roughly $23 to $85 with the median near $70. Its multichannel layer rebuilds the 1961 studio placement for the listener who has a multichannel SACD player.
Best download is the 24/96 mono file on Qobuz or HDtracks, about $6.
NOTE: The mono is a parallel mix the artists intended, not a fold-down, and it is worth owning alongside the stereo.
Catches to watch for. The mono picks reward a careful eye. The Sony Japan LP had a cancelled predecessor under an earlier catalog number, so confirm the 2020 issue, SIJP-1021; a fresh repress started shipping this week, which is the easiest buying window this pick has had in years. The Music On Vinyl mono is the 2013 cut from the mono master; an earlier Music On Vinyl number is a 2012 stereo pressing off the 1997 remix, a different record on a different chain. And the 1999 Sony Columbia/Legacy CD carries that same 1997 remix: the cheapest way in, named here so you know what it is, but a step below the picks above.
Endnote
This record pulled me into Miles, and I went a long way back from there to dig deeper. Unfortunately, the room where they made it is no-longer exists. Columbia gave up the church in 1981 and tore it down soon after; the band scattered inside two years, the rhythm section created their own trio, Coltrane was already onto the music that made him a household name. The tapes outlasted all of it. People have been cutting and recutting it for sixty-five years, and somewhere in that stack is the copy that still puts you in the nave of that long-gone church.
Reference Checks is an evidence-led publication on the recording versions worth a serious listener’s time. Subscribers to the paid tier receive the full chain-of-custody dossier (every catalog string, matrix runout, plant identifier, and verification specification) plus a more prose-forward editorial reading of each edition. The reviewer’s listening chain is calibration context, named in the About page and absent from every verdict.