Seven Steps to Heaven

A crucial transitional album that captures the birth of Miles Davis's legendary Second Great Quintet. The record features two different bands from sessions in Los Angeles and New York, but it's the New York band—with Hancock, Carter, and the explosive 17-year-old drummer Tony Williams—that charts the future. Their aggressive, harmonically complex, and rhythmically daring approach set the stage for the revolutionary music the quintet would create over the next five years.