Miles Davis – Ascenseur Pour L'Échafaud

Release Date: 1958
Recording Period: Dec 1957

Miles Davis, Trumpet
Barney Wilen, Tenor Saxophone
René Urtreger, Piano
Pierre Michelot, Bass
Kenny Clarke, Drums

This soundtrack with the musical cues for Louis Malle's 1958 film Ascenseur Pour L'Échafaud was recorded at Le Poste Parisien Studio in Paris on December 4 and 5, 1957.

Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a jazz fan and Malle's assistant at the time, suggested asking Miles Davis to create the film's soundtrack - possibly inspired by the Modern Jazz Quartet's recording for Roger Vadim's Sait-On Jamais (Does One Ever Know), released a few months earlier in 1957.

Davis was booked to perform at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris for November 1957. Rappeneau introduced him to Malle, and Davis agreed to record the music after attending a private screening. On December 4, he brought his four sidemen to the recording studio without having had them prepare anything. Davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room, and, once the plot was explained, the band improvised without any precomposed theme, while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background.

The soundtrack was not released on its own in the USA but ten songs from this soundtrack were released as one side of the album Miles Davis - Jazz Track which received a 1960 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance, Solo Or Small Group.

This soundtrack might also be referred to as Elevator To The Gallows (literal translation of the French title), also known as Frantic in the US, also known as Lift To The Scaffold in the UK.

Also on CD via
Miles Davis - The Classic Albums Collection