TITLE: The Complete on the Corner Sessions

ARTIST: Miles Davis

STARS: 4 out of 5 Stars

SOUNDS LIKE: James Brown on acid.

Just a little over a week after the 1972 release of “On the Corner,” Miles Davis crashed his sleek Lamborghini on Manhattan’s West Side Highway. Miles totaled his car and landed himself in the hospital for two months.

But that wreck might serve well as sort of visual metaphor for how “On the Corner” crashed on to music scene i nhte early 1970s. It took listeners by surprise as Miles took plenty of hits from the jazz purists and music critics of the time.

The critics called it anything but jazz. They took Miles to task for using R & B players like drummer James “Mtume” Heath and bassist Michael Henderson on the set, thinking them not true jazz musicians.

But Miles didn’t want a jazz record so he told his group to play anything but jazz on this gig said Henderson.

“Little did they know that we all knew jazz, we just chose not to do it for this occasion,” Henderson said from a press release. “The truth is, they just didn’t like the fact that we had all these rhythms they didn’t understand and couldn’t get into.”

It might be hard for some fans today to even get into this highly flammable mix of jazz funk and rock.

“On the Corner” basically covers that period in Miles’s career following his rock infused “Tribute to Jack Johnson” and “Bitches’ Brew” era. But where those two releases explored the pyschedelic marriage of rock and jazz, these six CDs cover “On the Corner, Big Fun” and “Get Up With It” works that utilize more funk funk and soul rhythms.

But the funk licks of Sly Stone and James Brown only provides the launching pad for the 31 compositions. They simply serve as the base for Miles and company to take off and soar to newer, more hallucinogenic jazz galaxies.

“On the Corner” is some really funky and highly creative stuff. But its probably more for true Miles disciples and those fans of the more spaced-out realms of the avante-garde.