Richard Cook’s It’s About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off the Record is not a conventional biography. Instead, it evaluates, in the order in which they were made, all the trumpeter’s recordings (official and unauthorized), and relates them to events in Miles’s life, as well as the wider currents in music. For Cook, fourteen albums in particular are key to understanding Davis’s evolution. Each of these is considered in detail, in particular their contribution to Davis’s development as instrumentalist, group leader and composer. Cooks also reassesses the contributions of his fellow musicians, which have all too often been ignored or underplayed. It’s About That Time is a comprehensive and rigorous guide to the music and times of Miles Davis that burns away the fog of myth that surrounds its complex and contrary subject. It is an essential companion for anyone wanting to understand the trumpeter’s musical odyssey over four exhilarating decades.