With his success at Newport and the formation of the Miles Davis Quintet, Davis convinced Avakian to buy out his contract with Prestige. Weinstock gave Davis an advance of $750, but the company's artists' contracts were often manipulative with low royalties, paying nothing for rehearsal time. In January 1951, Prestige Records owner and producer Bob Weinstock signed Davis to a one-year contract Davis would continue to record for the label into 1956. By the autumn Rollins had left, and at the recommendation of Jones, Davis replaced Rollins with John Coltrane. Davis assembled his first regular quintet to meet a commitment at the Café Bohemia in July with Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. In the summer of 1955, Davis performed a noted set at the Newport Jazz Festival, and had been approached by Columbia Records executive George Avakian, offering a contract with the label if he could form a regular band. It is also available in a set of six vinyl LPs from Craft Recordings in the original 42-track format. In 2019 Craft Recordings, an imprint of the Concord group of labels, released a 32-track version without the fourth disc of live recordings subsequent to the main body of studio recordings in digital hi-res format.
It peaked at #15 on the Billboard jazz album chart, and was reissued on December 2, 2016, in a smaller compact disc brick packaging. The fourth disc contains live material from a television broadcast and in jazz club settings. The track " 'Round Midnight" was released on the album Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants. It collates on three discs the entire set of recordings that made up the Prestige Records albums released from 1956 through 1961 - Miles, Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin'. The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions is a four compact disc box set of recordings by the Miles Davis Quintet released in 2006 by the Concord Music Group.