"That will always be my music, man. I play Kind of Blue every day - it's my orange juice. It still sounds like it was made yesterday."
Kind of Blue is Miles Davis' most famous and critically acclaimed album, released in 1959 through Columbia Records. Since its release, it has become the top selling jazz album of all time and influenced countless musicians, not only in jazz, but in all kinds of genres. In 2002, it was added to the National Recording Registry for its cultural, historical and aesthetic importance.
Tracklist:
Side One
- "So What" (Davis) - 9:22
- "Freddie Freeloader" (Davis) - 9:46
- "Blue in Green" (Davis/Evans) - 5:47
Side Two
- "All Blues" (Davis) - 11:33
- "Flamenco Sketches" (Davis/Evans) - 9:26
The 1997 CD reissue adds an alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" (9:32) discovered on the master tapes by the engineers
as a bonus sixth track.
Personnel:
- Miles Davis: trumpet
- Bill Evans: piano
- Wynton Kelly: piano note
- Jimmy Cobb: drums
- Paul Chambers: bass
- John Coltrane: tenor saxophone
- Cannonball Adderley: alto saxophone
Flamenco Tropes:
- Alliterative Title: "Freddie Freeloader".
- Alternate Album Cover: The 1980s Columbia Jazz Masterpieces reissue used a different shot of Miles on the cover.
- Colourful Theme Naming: The album title and the track "Blue in Green".
- Continuity Nod: The Spanish atmosphere of "Flamenco Sketches" would receive an entire album inspired by it, named Sketches of Spain (1960).
- Epic Rocking: All tracks are long jams. "All Blues", at eleven and a half minutes, is the longest; even "Blue in Green", the shortest, is still nearly six minutes long.
- Foil: Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come came out shortly after Kind of Blue, codifying the free jazz movement.
- Face on the Cover: A photo of Miles in close-up, playing trumpet.
- George Jetson Job Security: Miles built the album concept around Bill Evans, who had left the group months earlier, but had neglected to inform current pianist Wynton Kelly of the situation until Kelly arrived at the studio to record the album. Kelly only performs on "Freddie Freeloader".
- Improv: Most tracks only had one complete take; "Flamenco Sketches" had two. There were a few false starts and a bit of studio chatter as well, but there are only six complete takes from the album sessions.
- Instrumentals: It's an entirely instrumental album.
- Mundane Made Awesome: "So What", for such a throwaway expression it sure is a beautiful piece.
- New Sound Album: With Kind of Blue, Davis completed his move from the complicated chord changes of hard bop to a compositionally simpler jazz style — modality — offering players a far simpler script from which to work.
- The Not-Remix: Post-1992 reissues fix an error where Side One's stereo mix was mastered at the wrong speed.
- Questioning Title?: "So What"?
- Shout-Out: The opening measures of Claude Debussy's "Voiles" inspired the famous introduction of "So What".
- Something Blues: "All Blues".
- Supergroup: The lineup for this album includes some of the heavy hitters of jazz, including John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly.
- Trivial Title: "So What".