Miles Davis and the Paris Sessions That Opened a New Era
A return to the soundtrack that still echoes through modern jazz
To mark the centenary of Miles Davis, Decca Records France releases new deluxe vinyl and CD editions of the landmark soundtrack to Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud. Recorded in Paris in December 1957, the score remains one of the most influential jazz soundtracks ever made and one of the few created entirely through live improvisation as the musicians watched the film unfold.
The reissue programme, available on May 22, appears in three formats. A 180 gram vinyl LP with the original liner notes by Boris Vian. An expanded set of three ten inch vinyl records that includes all session takes and an essay by Franck Bergerot. And a limited two CD edition with a sixty page hardcover book featuring new notes by Ashley Kahn and Franck Bergerot.
First released in 1958, the recording quickly became a cult object. Few film scores have shaped the atmosphere and reputation of a film so decisively. Nearly seventy years later, beyond the mythology of its creation, the music still stands as one of Davis’s most striking works. Tense, nocturnal and stripped to its emotional core.
The story behind the session is now part of jazz folklore. While performing at Club Saint Germain in late 1957, Davis was approached by Louis Malle, who was dissatisfied with the music planned for his debut feature. After a private screening, Davis agreed. On December 4 he entered the studio with Barney Wilen, René Urtreger, Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke, four musicians rooted in the Paris scene. Preparation was minimal. A few harmonic sketches, a brief explanation of the plot and projected loops of key scenes. The musicians improvised directly to the images and created a sound world built on atmosphere rather than composition.
What the official history often leaves unsaid is the cultural moment surrounding it. Paris offered Davis a freedom he rarely experienced in the United States, where racism shaped both daily life and the reception of Black musicians. In France he found a different kind of recognition, artistic and personal, and a relationship with actress Juliette Gréco that anchored him in the creative circles of the city. That sense of space is audible in the music. Open, brooding and radically intuitive.
The film itself moves in the world of French noir, with its empty streets, moral shadows and slow burning tension. Davis’s improvised score deepens that atmosphere. His trumpet lines echo the quiet danger and drifting solitude that define the genre. It is not classic American noir, but a Parisian evolution of it, and the soundtrack has become one of the clearest examples of how jazz can shape the emotional language of cinema.
Long before Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain or his later work with Marcus Miller, Davis was already expanding the vocabulary of modern music and redefining what a film score could be.
The soundtrack was first issued on a ten inch LP by Fontana and awarded the Grand Prix du Disque. In the United States it appeared on Columbia’s Jazz Track and received a Grammy nomination in 1960. The new editions revisit the complete sessions from December 4 and 5, 1957, presented across 180 gram vinyl, three ten inch vinyl records and a limited two CD set with archival photography and newly commissioned essays.
About Miles Davis
Miles Davis (1926–1991) fundamentally reshaped modern music across five decades of relentless reinvention. From pioneering bebop and cool jazz to defining hard bop, modal improvisation, and electric fusion, Davis treated each genre breakthrough as a starting point rather than a destination. His discography reads like a timeline of jazz’s evolution with dozens of albums that continue to define both the essence and the outer limits of improvised music. His accolades include eight Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, eleven recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and stars on both the Hollywood and St. Louis Walks of Fame. Beyond music, Davis established himself as a style icon (#1 on GQ’s Most Stylish Musicians of All Time), visual artist (paintings exhibited across four continents), and symbol of artistic independence. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service honored his legacy with a commemorative stamp, cementing his status as an American cultural monument.