It is the second studio recording released after the trumpeter's six-year hiatus, the first to feature electric guitarist John Scofield, who was recommended by saxophonist Bill Evans, and the last to be produced by long-standing collaborator Teo Macero.

Electric guitarist Mike Stern features on most of the pieces, and drummer Al Foster and percussionist Mino Cinelu round out the rhythm section.

In a contemporaneous review, music writer Greg Tate wrote: Now, what I've come to love about Star People is that it doesn't sound like Miles wants this band to become capable of anything but playing a simple blues.

And while seeing Miles in concert recently made me think he was trying to reconstruct his mystique out of thin air, Star People reveals him capable of delightful self-parody.

So that on Star People we hear the innovator of modern music make a big to-do out of playing muted blues cliches over funk vamps that were old in 1970, hear him riotously romp through a cornball Tin Pan Alley variation like he was born yesterday, find him spurting soul band trumpet squeals in and out of a number whose head and rhythm arrangement come across like a cross between Basie, Bird, and James Brown.