October 3, 2025 – Six decades later, the music still wows, baffles, and inspires. What happened
over two nights in a tiny, unassuming Chicago club under a bakery was a fascinating and
unplanned documentation of a pivotal moment in the evolution of Miles Davis’s leadership and
sound. Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music
Entertainment, today announce the reissue of these legendary recordings: THE COMPLETE
LIVE AT THE PLUGGED NICKEL 1965. Arriving January 30, 2026, as a cornerstone moment
in the year-long celebration of Miles Davis’ Centennial to come next year, this comprehensive
collection will be available as a 10LP or 8CD box set. Pre-orders begin today.
As a preview of the larger collection, a standalone 2LP set, Live At The Plugged Nickel:
December 23, 1965 – Second Set, will be released for RSD Black Friday on November 28.
The recordings capture Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet—featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie
Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—at an inflection point. Wayne Shorter was just over a
year into his tenure, and the group, fresh off of recording E.S.P., was solidifying into what would
become the most transformative small group in jazz. What unfolded on the stage of the Chicago
club was not just a performance, but a provocation. Sparked by a pact instigated by drummer
Tony Williams to play “anti-music,” the band actively subverted expectations, turning their
well-tread setlist inside out. As Miles would later put it, “We found ways to make the old music
sound as new as the new music we were recording.” It is the sound of the Second Great Quintet
becoming itself—alive, unstable, and always mid-mutation.
Originally released in 1995 as a Mosaic Records limited-edition LP box set, The Complete Live
at the Plugged Nickel has been out of print for nearly three decades. The new 10LP edition
recreates the Mosaic musical presentation and offers the complete performances—over
seven hours of music—in a newly designed slipcase featuring ten individual jackets and a
40-page booklet. An 8CD edition will also be available. Both formats feature new liner notes by
Syd Schwartz, who unpacks the radical spirit of the performances, as well as classic material by
jazz historian Bob Blumenthal.
“The Plugged Nickel tapes don’t just capture great performances. They document a band
revolutionizing improvisation in real time, welcoming surprise, discarding certainty, and turning
‘wrong’ notes into revelations,” remarks Schwartz in the new liner notes. “What unfolded on that
stage has become one of the most mythologized stretches in post-bop history.”
The release has only grown in stature since its initial issue. The Guardian hailed it as “Maybe
the best-ever representation of ‘the second great quintet’ at work…reinventing small-band jazz
with an all-but-psychic flexibility of timing and on-the-fly harmonising.”
Sixty years later, The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 returns, humming like a live
wire and daring a new generation of listeners to rethink what’s possible.
