It’s nearly impossible to call anything by Miles Davis under-appreciated or overlooked. A universally praised trumpet player, Davis created a catalogue that is long, storied and highly influential.

Miles is credited with bringing jazz into the fusion era when he started experimenting in the late 1960s with rock and funk influences as well as a number of players from various backgrounds and styles. He was a leader in the fusion movement, but he was also influenced by what was going on around him, as he had always been, while jazz and rock began to merge in various forms.

Bitches Brew (1969) is rightly chronicled as a seminal work and before it In A Silent Way (1969) and Filles De Kilimanjaro (1968) have received quite a bit of notoriety as the first steps that culminated in Brew. But truly the experiment started with Miles In The Sky in 1968, our fourth Hidden Treasure. This work with his classic quintet, augmented by George Benson on guitar for one track, really was the beginning of fusion for Miles.

Three important aspects of this project were the use of Hancock’s electric piano for the first time by the quintet, the sense of complete collaboration that would manifest more and more in Miles’ music in the coming years, and extended improvisation over one chord or a series of modal chords as opposed to the bebop tradition of seemingly never-ending changes, something he started as far back as Kind Of Blue (1959).

I’ll never forget hearing the album for the first time, which I bought at Cutler’s in New Haven, in tandem with Taj Mahal’s The Natch’l Blues. What a combination. Taj’s album was a striking development beyond his debut with emphasis on country-blues, rock and soul. Miles In The Sky just grabbed me as an apparent turn in the road into undiscovered territory for Davis.

The opening track Stuff, at 17 minutes, is an extraordinary melding of soul, R&B and jazz with a straight, funk beat over which a seemingly ever-changing horn melody flows. The rhythm section’s inclusion of Hancock’s Fender Rhodes piano gives the quintet a new color with a fluid, less hard-edged attack. The strident horn lines suspend for each solo while a modal approach is taken for the improvisations. The piece travels through stages where it sounds positively eerie in places, atmospheric, creating a wonderful sound collage of haunting sustain over the Motown beat.

Shorter’s Paraphernalia, which includes Benson, exhibits a taut, tense rhythm on top of which the horns play a melody that provides release against the tightrope tension, with the guitar supplying much of the effect. Beautifully constructed and intricate, the melody concludes on a 3/4 section that sustains before returning to the main groove.

Tony Williams’ Black Comedy features a complicated rhythm, employing multiple time changes under a descending melody. The brief melodic section opens into an upbeat jazz feel that serves as a vehicle for improvisation for all of the group’s players, starting with Miles, then Shorter, Herbie and finally Tony. William’s power, drive and rhythmic creativity is at the core of this piece. Everything revolves around him.

Country Son, Miles’ second composition along with Stuff, is perhaps the most ambitious piece with three distinct sections, two recurring, but no apparent melody, pointing to the direction that would dominate Miles’ journey in the early ’70s.

It employs the most overtly rock rhythm on the album in the first section driven by Davis’ horn. That flows into a ballad transition and eventually to a Latin-flavored feel, still featuring Miles, peppered with staccato piano and an explosive drum pattern. This resolves to another transition that springs into a final swing section with Shorter soloing. Williams’ drumming throughout is remarkable, frenetic yet controlled.

Following another tender transition, the piece makes its way back to the Latin feel with Hancock taking the lead through to the swing beat again. Another interlude brings the quintet back to the Latin rhythm with Davis on top and Hancock and Williams again providing the fire underneath. Davis then solos over the jazz section this time with some trumpet pyrotechnics as he shows off some of his prodigious chops.

At nearly 14 minutes, this piece is eminently listenable and pulls you back for repeated turns through its multiple transitions.

I bought the original Columbia release of this title on CD in the early ’90s and like most of those first issues, it sounds fine. But I couldn’t resist the 20-bit remastering with bonus tracks a few years later and it was worth it. It sounds even better and the addition of alternate takes of Black Comedy and Country Son, which in particular is quite different in construction and feel, make it highly desirable. Miles In The Sky is one of Miles’ great achievements but never really given its due compared with some of his other late ’60s releases.