The concert was part of a series of benefits staged at the recently built Philharmonic Hall (now known as
David Geffen Hall), co-sponsored by the
NAACP, the
Congress of Racial Equality and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Davis's set that night was ostensibly in support of
voter registration in
Mississippi and
Louisiana, but he also mentioned in a
Melody Maker interview that one of the concerts was in memory of
John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated the previous year.
Kennedy's death had struck at the hopes of many in the
Civil Rights Movement, a cause dear to Miles, who had expressed his admiration for the President in 1962: "I like the Kennedy brothers; they're swinging people." Two albums were assembled from the concert recording. The up-tempo pieces were issued as
Four & More, while
My Funny Valentine consists of the slow and medium-tempo numbers. Davis biographer
Ian Carr notes that the former were "taken too fast and played scrappily", while the
Funny Valentine pieces "were played with more depth and brilliance than Miles had achieved before." The hurried nature of the faster pieces that night has been partially attributed to the sheer importance of the event weighing on Davis's young rhythm section, who were playing their biggest date yet. Tensions were only worsened by their anger on finding out they would not be paid for the performance. Pianist
Herbie Hancock, twenty-three years old at the time, later described the psychological pressure on the quintet: "That was my first time playing at the Philharmonic Hall and that was, like, a big deal, because the new
Carnegie Hall was the Philharmonic Hall. Just from the prestige standpoint I really wanted to play good—the whole band really wanted to play good because that was the whole band's first time playing there … although Miles had played at Carnegie Hall before … but it was really a special concert. Only the
New York Philharmonic plays there … and I tell you something … it was really funny … when we walked away from that concert, we were all dejected and disappointed. We thought we had really bombed … but then we listened to the record - it sounded fantastic!" The concert marked the final recording of saxophonist
George Coleman with Miles Davis. He would be replaced by
Sam Rivers, then
Wayne Shorter, cementing Miles' "
Second Great Quintet." == Track listing ==