The Best Jazz Album of All Time?
“Kind of Blue has been called the most famous and influential jazz recording of all time.” NO “Although it took three decades to sell one million copies, it has sold another four million since Davis died in 1991,” YN making it the best-selling jazz album of all time. This is the jazz record.” CQ “It has been for many the gateway to the world of jazz.” TB
Trumpeter and composer Miles Davis “left his most lasting mark” TL with Kind of Blue, an album that “isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers” AM and “has influenced generations of jazz and other musicians.” YN “Many consider this recording to be one of the most important jazz recordings of any era.” NRR It is “a foundation album for jazz fans, the cornerstone of any jazz collection.” CS Clarke Speicher, of The Review, calls it “the most important, as well as one of the most beautiful albums, in the history…[of] jazz.” RV
“Kind of Blue became a how-to of jazz recordings, a standard by which all others would be judged.” RV “Seasoned jazz fans return to this record even after they’ve memorized every nuance.” AM “It is advanced music that is extraordinarily enjoyable.” AM This is “a perfect album to curl up with on a rainy day.” CQ “It may be a stretch to say that if you don’t like Kind of Blue, you don’t like jazz – but it’s hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection.” AM
Influence on Rock
The album has found a place “even in record collections that are otherwise jazz free.” TB “When you find jazzers, rock and popular music followers actually unanimously unite over one record, then you know something must be right.” CL “It’s music that transcends jazz.” CM Davis “was jazz’s rock star.” VB “Davis’ modal scales inspired the rock improvisers that would arrive 10 years later with Santana, Pink Floyd and the Allman Brothers. His horn phrasing would be copied by James Brown and in the hypnotic work of Phillip Glass and modern composers.” CM
The Impact of Miles Davis
Davis had “already remade jazz in his own image several times over.” TL “The Birth of Cool introduced a smooth, sophisticated approach, and then Walkin’ heated things up again. His classic ‘50s quintet raised the bar for small-group improvisation.” TL As Miles Davis’ son Erin said, his father “was never one to dwell on the past and always moved on to embrace new styles.” YN
Modal Jazz
Kind of Blue is “the pinnacle of modal jazz” AM and reinforced Davis’ “rep as a trendsetter and innovator.” BL “Where much jazz before…is rule ruled by fast-moving chordal schemes, the Kind of Blue songs slow things down – they’re organized around droning single chords, known as ‘modes,’ that can last for a long time.” TM
Jazz had been “largely based on chord progressions, limiting soloists in their efforts to improvise.” CS “When modal music was rediscovered by early-20th-century composers such as Claude Debussy and George Russell, it allowed soloists a greater degree of innovation…as they could now wander freely through the scales rather than be compelled to revisit important notes in a chord.” CS
“A minimalist revolt against bebop’s self-celebrating complexity, Miles’ jaded innovation in modal music reduced jazz to pure and gorgeous ephemera.” EW’93 Davis described it this way: “I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.” JI This was “a style that Davis had worked with prior to recording Kind of Blue, but perfected here.” CQ
The Players
“To feel out the possibilities of this new sound, he assembled a legendary group.” PM He brought pianist Bill Evans, who “drew on classical composers such as Béla Bartók and Maurice Ravel,” CM back into the fold because “Davis saw a linkage with the blues.” CM The “unprecedented all-star team” TL also included John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley on alto saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Wynton Kelly on piano. “This is an exceptional band…of the greatest in history, playing at the peak of its power.” AM
Davis and Evans created outlines for the tracks but gave the freedom to the players to “show off what they could do without overshadowing their colleagues.” CS The album’s “perfection stems directly from how elegantly this approach allows the improvisation between musicians.” CQ This collection “tells what happens when thoughtful jazz musicians pursue ideas across a profoundly uncluttered canvas.” TM
The Recording
The album was captured in “less than ten hours of actual recording time at Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio” YN in Manhattan on March 2, 1959, and April 22, 1959. “The studio was a big space, a hundred feet square with high ceilings; it could hold a symphony orchestra and classical recordings were often made there. Engineers and musicians valued its reverberant sound, resulting from the natural wooden surfaces.” TB
Evans said all the songs on the album are first takes. CS
“The iconic trumpeter rewrote the jazz rulebook with this liberating celebration of improv and mood.” UT “Modal music requires an improviser to conceptualize and organize ideas differently.” TM In the album’s original liner notes, Evans says “the band did not play through any of these pieces prior to recording. Davis laid out the themes before the tape rolled, and then the band improvised.” AM
They wouldn’t know if they were recording or not when Davis called them into the studio. He “liked to capture the raw, spontaneous energy that came with a musician trying a piece for the first time.” CS “The glorious results…are simultaneously delicate and powerful, and teeming with life.” TL This is “the sound of musicians honoring the simplicity of a setting by listening closely, playing less, and saying more.” TM
The Songs
Here are insights into individual tracks.
“So What”
“With the first few notes…[you know] something momentous is about to occur.” PM Kind of Blue “lures listeners in with the slow, luxurious bassline and gentle piano chords of So What.” AM It “feels like a warm bath before Davis’s trumpet electrifies Bill Evans’ piano work and Jimmy Cobb’s steady drumming.” CQ
“From that moment on, the record never really changes pace – each tune has a similar relaxed feel, as the music flows easily.” AM “His songs sound deceptively simple, but more complicated harmonies lurk just beneath the surface. The sparseness shows a more introspective direction from the fast and furious sound of be-bop that had dominated jazz.” RV
“So What” features “a neat call-and-answer idea between the bass and the other instruments. Miles Davis said the inspiration for the music came from two sources. One was the African folk rhythms and timings he had recently heard when watching the Ballet Africaine perform. The second was American church music, recalled from childhood when he lived on his grandfather’s farm.” TB
“Freddie Freeloader”
This was the first song tackled on the March 2nd session. It is “a 12-bar blues-based structure to ease the musicians in, and the only track with Wynton Kelly playing piano instead of Evans. They did three aborted takes before the fourth and final run through nailed it. A small amount of echo was added to the mix in addition to the studio’s natural reverb, which can be heard in the middle of the stereo image if you listen on headphones.” TB
“Blue in Green”
This was the third track tackled on the March 2 session. It is a “delicate ten-bar sequence” TB with solos for trumpet, piano, and tenor saxophone. Adderley sat this one out. TB
“All Blues”
“The lack of the dense harmonic digressions associated with Bop give the music its unhurried, meditative, but still intense feel, beautifully illustrated in All Blues or ‘So What.’” WR “All Blues” is “a simple blues in 6/8 time with the warmth and familiarity that evokes while the horns drip with emotion and Davis’ trumpet sounds like a far off cry in the night.” CM The “bouncy” number was the last recorded by the ensemble. TB
“Flamenco Sketches”
The album concludes “ with the haunting and wistful Flamenco Sketches.” CQ This was the first track tackled at the April 22 session. “The bass pattern had been played by Evans in a song called ‘Peace Piece’ on the album Everybody Digs Bill Evans earlier that year. The five scales that form the basis of ‘Flamenco Sketches’ had been worked out on the morning of the first session in March, when Evans went to Davis’s apartment. It got its name because one of the scales – the Phrygian – has a Spanish flavor and is often heard in flamenco music.” TB
Notes:
A 1997 reissue added an alternate take of “Flamenco Sketches.” In 2008, a two-disc version added more studio outtakes and additional songs.
|
