Prince’s Vault contains unreleased tracks that were planned for Miles Davis.
Davis, who died in 1991 at age 65, saw Prince as an older version of himself. In an interview Davis once described Prince as a combination of James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, and Charlie Chaplin”.
In the mid 90s Prince and Miles Davis were both signed to Warner Music. Prince wrote the track ‘Can I Walk With U’ for the 1986 Davis album ‘Tutu’ but didn’t like the final song and the collaboration was abandoned. Davis changed tact for the album and went on to work with Marcus Miller for the record.
Prince later wrote ‘Penetration’ for Davis who performed the song live once in Paris in 1991 but died from a stroke two months later.
Prince recorded the instrumental track ‘Seventeen’ aka ‘Penetration’ at Paisley Park on 5 December 1988 during the sessions for Madhouse’s third album ‘24’ album. The album was eventually abandoned. Madhouse’s first album ‘8’ featured eight tracks named ‘One’ through ‘Eight’. The second album ’16’ featured eight more tracks titled ‘Nine’ through ‘Sixteen’. ‘Seventeen’ would have been the first track on the third Madhouse album.
After the Madhouse album was discontinued Prince retitled the ‘Seventeen’ as ‘Penetration’ and gave it to Davis, along with two other songs ‘Jailbait’ and ‘’A Girl And Her Puppy’. The plan was to get Davis to add his trumpet parts to the songs but Davis died before it happened. Warner wanted to include the tracks on Davis’s posthumous release ‘Doo-Wop’ but by now Prince had lost interest as it found it disrespectful to Davis.
David performed the song live on 10 July 1991 at La Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris. This version was going to be released as part of a 2001 box set ‘The Last Word’ but remains unreleased. It was also planned for a 2010 2 disc album titled ‘Perfect Way’ but again did not make the final release.
