Miles Davis – On The Corner / Columbia Jazz Masterpieces / Columbia Audio CD 1993 / 474371 2

UPC 5099747437120

On the Corner is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis. It was recorded in June and July 1972 and released on October 11 of the same year by Columbia Records. The album continued Davis's exploration of jazz fusion, and explicitly drew on the influence of funk musicians Sly Stone and James Brown, the experimental music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the free jazz of Ornette Coleman, and the work of collaborator Paul Buckmaster.

Recording sessions for the album featured a changing lineup of musicians including bassist Michael Henderson, guitarist John McLaughlin, and keyboardists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, with Davis playing organ more prominently than the trumpet. Various takes from the sessions were then spliced and edited into compositions by Davis and producer Teo Macero. The album's packaging did not credit any musicians, in an attempt to make the instruments less discernible to critics. Its artwork features Corky McCoy's cartoon designs of urban African-American characters.

On the Corner was in part an effort by Davis to reach a younger African American audience who had largely left jazz for funk and rock music. Instead, thanks to Columbia's lack of target marketing, it was one of Davis's worst-selling albums, and was scorned by jazz critics at the time of its release. It would be Davis's last studio album of the 1970s conceived as a complete work; subsequently, he recorded haphazardly and focused instead on live performance before temporarily retiring from music in 1975.

Critical and popular reception of On the Corner has improved dramatically with the passage of time. Many outside the jazz community later called it an innovative musical statement and forerunner to subsequent funk, jazz, post-punk, electronica, and hip hop. In 2007, On the Corner was reissued as part of the 6-disc box set The Complete On the Corner Sessions.

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