Most of the jazz I've collected comes from "best" lists, since I still consider myself to be in a discerning phase of my interest in the music. This particular album, however, joined the collective much earlier than most of the stuff that appears here under the "jazz" tag. Like many a college student, I heard some essential Miles Davis (Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain) and then randomly reached out and got something else. While Nefertiti usually doesn't grace any "top jazz" lists, except maybe in the lower reaches of the top 200 or so, it is an interesting and important album in the Miles Davis discography.
Nefertiti was one of the last albums recorded by Davis using the classic quintet instrumentation that had defined bop and its ilk for the past 20 or so years. Although every member of the "second great quintet" would go on to record heavily in the fusion era (Davis, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams in their own names, Wayne Shorter and Ron Carter within ensembles) they all play in "traditional" instrument roles. One key innovation, sort of a "road not taken" by Davis on future albums, was to flip the lead and rhythm sections on the tracks penned by Shorter: "Nefertiti", "Fall" and "Pinocchio". On these tracks, Hancock, Carter, and Williams get to improvise around a repeating riff by Davis and Shorter. The other tracks (written by Hancock and Williams) take a more standard approach, though Hancock acts more as a lead than a rhythm player.
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