life:
When LIFE photographer Robert W. Kelley shot a few rolls of film at an intimate jazz gig on May 14, 1958, evidently neither he nor the magazine’s editors were jumping out of their skins with excitement…
Why the pictures — which capture the great, groundbreaking trumpeter, then just 31 years old, leading his band in an unnamed New York venue — never made it into print remains a mystery to this day.
(see more — Miles Davis: Unpublished Photos of a Jazz Giant)
Pictured: “The Prince of Darkness” shows his goofy side at his gig in 1958.
