Jazz Marketing Class 101: pick a soloist with an impressive catalog, pick a marketable theme, one that nearly everyone sorta likes (romance, love, whatever), collect some tracks that touch on said theme and throw it onto the marketplace.... yeah, so? Some of my usual cynicism aside, the musical world is NOT a pure place, and marketing wizards gotta think up ways to "move" the catalog to folks who might not pick up a Miles Davis disc just because it contains great jazz.... hence, the "For Lovers" hook. The Fantasy folks, drawing on Miles’ sojourn with Prestige in the mid-1950s, pick some beautiful love-themed ballads, mostly accompanied by his classic Coltrane/Garland/Chambers/Jones quintet. While the music within does not reach the heights of his Columbia era, it IS some of the BEST cool bebop of the 1950s and beyond: his playing, mostly with a mute in the horn’s bell, is full of the same delicate, deep yearning and sublime detail present in Frank Sinatra’s ballad singing of the same period (in his autobio, Miles admits to having been influenced by Ol’ Bleu Eyes). Red Garland plays sparingly and with great subtlety (with ballads, what you leave out is as important, if not more so, than what’s played) and Philly Joe, a classic hard swinger of a bebop drummer, matches him. John Coltrane was to shake the jazz world to its foundations in a few years, here plays with a sumptuous tone that shines like Sonny Rollins and rich and slightly breathy as Stan Getz. Also making "appearances" are Charles Mingus (on bass and piano), Horace Silver and Teddy Charles. As jazz, it’s wonderful stuff - as late-night/candlelight-diner, mellow, romantic mood music, it’s also wonderful stuff, not just for jazz aficionados. (As That Season will soon be upon us, Remember This, You Gift-Givers, if there’s somewhat in your orbit that you think needs an introduction to jazz in general or Miles in particular.)