G0100017564177

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Kind of Blue
at 50

N TERMS OF WHERE IT FALLS IN JAZZ HISTORY, Kind of Blue

is celebrated for being the album that popularized improvising
on modesthat is, improvising on the sparest and starkest of
scales as an alternative to bebops dense thickets of chord
changes. But this hardly explains the albums hold on three
successive generations of listeners. Kind of Blue is as much a
mood album and as much a beginning-to-end concept album as
any of Frank Sinatras 1950s Capitols, even if its mood is more
abstract and the exact concept tough to pin down. At heart its also
a blues album, even though only two of its five pieces conform to
blues structure (the others are blues-inflected). But part of it is
simply Kind of Blues line-up: Besides Miles Davis, the personnel
includes John Coltrane (then in his second stint with the trumpeter)
and fellow saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, the pianists Bill Evans
and Wynton Kelly, the bassist Paul Chambers, and the drummer

NEWPORT, JULY 1958

Bill Evans/Jimmy Cobb/Paul Chambers/
4Cannonball Adderley/Miles Davis/John Coltrane

Jimmy Cobba veritable postbop summit. All were current members of Daviss sextet, except for
Evans, a recent alumnus brought back specially for this project (Kelly, his replacement, plays only on
Freddie Freeloader, a funky little thing thats as close as Kind of Blue comes to an uptempo tune
and its slightest, though it would be a highlight of almost any other jazz album then or now). The two
recording sessions for Kind of Blue, the first on March 2, 1959 and the other seven weeks later on
April 22, took place in the nick of time: its impossible to imagine Davis, Evans, Coltrane, and
Adderley coming together so harmoniously a year or two later, by which point each had become not
just leader of his band but practically founder of his own school.
Davis was an unorthodox bandleader. Though he often created contrast and variety by drawing
on traditional methods such as gradual or sudden shifts in rhythm and dynamics, his favorite strategy
involved bringing together sidemen who were fundamentally different from one another in temperament and musical sensibility, and leaving the rest to chemistry. He and Coltrane were diametrical
opposites: Davis spare and confidential, drawing you in for fear of missing something; Coltrane aiming
for spiritual transcendence with an unending downpour of notes. (They were philosophical opposites as
well: Davis, admired for the stylish linesand presumed high costof his custom-tailored suits, his

THE PLAZA, NYC, SEPTEMBER 1958

Bill Evans/Paul Chambers/Miles Davis/John Coltrane

RIGHT CLOCKWISE:
Bill Evans and Miles Davis/Jimmy Cobb/Cannonball Adderley/
Paul Chambers/Wynton Kelly
BELOW: BIRDLAND, NYC, 1959
Jimmy Cobb/Cannonball Adderley/Paul Chambers/John Coltrane

sports cars, and his women, was a materialist; Coltrane a protomystic.) Adderley and Evans sounded exactly the way they looked, as
if confirming that days prevalent stereotypes regarding differences
between black and white conceptions of jazz. Adderley was fleshy
and gregarious, a motivating force in the emerging soul jazz
movement drenched in the Baptismal waters of the black church;
even his ballad solos danced the hucklebuck, inviting listeners to do
likewise. Evans, the bands only white face, was shy and withdrawn;
he wore glasses and sat hunched over the keyboard as if trying to
disappear into it. His friend the composer and modal guru George
Russell, whod recommended him to Davis, once described Evans as
looking like a nonperson.
There is a way in which Kind of Blue marked another
attempt by Davis to reconcile what were then widely regarded as
opposing black and white styles of jazz, much as hed done ten years
earlier on Birth of the Cool. Jimmy Cobb has said that to him the
album sounds as characteristic of Evans as it does of Davisthat he
assumed the concept behind Kind of Blue grew out of the way the
two played together. Along with the shaded attack both favored, they
shared a similar respect for the part played by silence in determining
the character of a musical phrase. Two of the compositions in
particular exhibit Evanss undoubted influence, even though all five
pieces on the LP were credited solely to Davis (accepted on face
value, it was the first of his albums exclusively devoted to his own
tunes). Flamenco Sketches is a paradox: all yearning melody from
beginning to end but with no actual melody as suchjust a series of
five modal scales on which each of the soloists was instructed to
improvise one after the other. (The curving, two-note opening phrase
of Daviss solo on the released take, which listeners might perceive
as the beginning of the tunes melody, isnt heard on the earlier take
included here, nor does it appear on any of the false starts on the
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April 22 session reel.) The part of Flamenco Sketches we can

guess was written, or at least agreed on beforehand, is Evanss
somber piano intro, identical to his own Peace Piece, which hed
recorded the previous December (together with Leonard Bernsteins
Some Other Time, the show tune on whose intervals it was based).
And Evans later staked a co-credit to the gorgeous, unresolved ballad
Blue in Green, which sprang verbatim from his introduction to
Alone Together on an earlier recording of that standard by Chet Baker.
Blue in Green is Evans right down to the slow spin of its
lower chord voicings. But as Gerald Early observed in Miles Davis and
American Culture (2001), Davis had the three instincts necessary
for genius: he was an opportunist; he was not afraid of talented
people, even if, in some particular area, they were more talented than
he; and he had supreme confidence in his ability to make anything
hed try work. And to make it his own. Regardless of who
authored the two pieces in question, Davis was clearly their auteura
point Evans offers testimony to in his original liner notes to Kind of
Blue, when he tells us Miles conceived these settings only hours
before the recording dates
Years later, in his 1989 autobiography, Davis would say that
with Kind of Blue he was trying to evoke the sound of a gospel choir
hed once heard while walking at night on a dark road in Arkansas
and the sound of a thumb piano that had struck his fancy during a
performance by an African dance troupe. If the piece that best calls
to mind that dark Arkansas road is the perambulating All Blues (in
6/8what musicians call a double waltz), the strongest hint of the
thumb piano is in the two-handed trill repeatedly played by Evans
near the beginning, which by all accounts was impromptu. Evans and
Davis were certainly on the same wavelength, and the pianist
certainly contributes more than a sidemans share of Kind of Blues
air of pensive melancholy. In addition to which, his eloquent liner
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notestitled Improvisation in Jazzcued listeners to hear the

album as the very essence of jazz, an unmediated exercise in
spontaneity.
Contrary to what Evanss notes imply, it has never been uncommon
for jazz musicians to be asked to sight-read and improvise on new
pieces at recording sessions. No, what was different about Kind of
Blue was that the musicians were required not just to interpret new
compositions but also to improvise following largely untested
procedures. And Evans identifies what was musically visionary about
the album in the final graph of his notes, when he alludes to modes.
Modes were still tricky business for jazz musicians in 1959.
There is a session photograph showing the items on Cannonball
Adderleys well-fortified music stand: his mouthpiece, a box of
reeds, a pack of Newports, a sugar substitute, a bottle of Bufferin,
and a lead sheet for Flamenco Sketches outlining its five modes.
Adderley suffered from migraines, but he might have needed the
Bufferin in any case. More than any of the others, he was venturing
into unchartered territory, and there are moments on Kind of Blue

RIGHT: 30TH STREET STUDIO, NYC, JUNE 1958

Miles, Coltrane and Evans at Michel Legrands
Legrand Jazz session
BELOW: Cannonball Adderleys music stand

CL 1355

when even the intrepid Coltrane sounds as though hes treading

carefully. This wasnt necessarily to his disadvantage: Coltrane
benefited from a little slowing down at this point in his career, just
as Adderley needed a safeguard against glibness. In fact, a good deal
of tentativeness on the part of everyone but Davis and Evans is one
of Kind of Blues most beguiling aspects. It comes across as
passionate deliberation; and in Flamenco Sketches as each soloist
finishes juggling the notes of one scale and moves on to the next,
what might have sounded mechanical instead becomes fraught with
suspense. It all results in this music still seeming as if its being
created in the moment five decades after the fact.
In his notes, Evans compares the music on Kind of Blue to a
form of Japanese medieval painting in which an unnatural or
interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the
parchment, and in which erasures or changes are therefore not
permitted. The reference captures Kind of Blues artful simplicity, its
waterfalls of ideas, its immediacyin a word, its Zen. The best
musical illustration of what I mean is So What, which begins with
a questioning, out-of-tempo and tonally ambiguous piano-and-bass
prelude which the tunes subsequent interpretersbeginning with
Davis himself when he added it to his live repertoirehave tended to
skip in favor of going straight to the main theme. The introduction is
said to have been ghosted by Gil Evans, a frequent Davis collaborator
whom the trumpeter also kept on retainer as a studio troubleshooter.
So What eventually becomes a jaunty semi-blues pivoting on calland-response between Chamberss bass and the three horns
despite its half-step up on the second eight, a finger-snapper
altogether not much different from soul-jazz tunes of the period,
including the following Freddie Freeloader. But as the memory of
that austere opening lingers in the mind, So What could be the
sound of one finger snapping.
14

Bill Evanss liner notes from the original 1959 LP release

On the exciting live version of So What

included on CD Two, recorded in the Netherlands
on April 9, 1960, the intro is gone, the tempo is
faster, and both Davis and Coltrane stretch out
more than they had in the studio a year earlier.
But the real difference is the greater bounce
Wynton Kelly gives the tune, in place of Evans
on piano.
CD Twos other bonus tracks are the
only other studio sides we have by Daviss sextet
with Coltrane, Evans, and Adderleyorphaned
performances recorded almost a full year before
Kind of Blue but held back until a few months
after it, which has resulted in them being
unjustly overlooked. (All but Love for Sale and
the alternate take of Fran-Dancea
flirtatiously pouting piece taken from the nursery
rhyme Put Your Little Foot Right Out and
clearly dedicated to Frances Taylor, a dancer who
was then Daviss wifefirst appeared on the
1959 Jazz Track, opposite Daviss music for
Ascenseur pour lchafaud.) Splendid in their
own right, these performances show Davis
already thinking along the same melodic lines as
on Kind of Blue. On Green Dolphin Street is
especially pleasing for the way that Evans, under
the horn solos and following a piano introduction
both elegant and harmonically mysterious, joins
with Chambers and Cobb in translating meter
and syncopation and pulse into tingling physical
sensation. One of Daviss passions around this

time was the music of Ahmad Jamals trio, and

this version of On Green Dolphin Street is
similar in overall design to one recorded by
Jamal a few years earlier, right down to the
throbbing bass pedal point and the tagged drum
rhythms. Its yet another example of Davis
embracing another artists vision and making it
unmistakably his own.
Modes or no, the pieces on Kind of Blue were
meant to serve as springboards to improvisation,
and did they ever. Evans introduces jabbing
voicings new to jazz piano on So What, and
Coltrane worries the notes of each scale as
prayerfully as beads on a rosary on Flamenco
Sketches. As for Davis, his solo on So What
is as incisive as any he ever recordeda source
book not just for fellow jazz improvisers but also
for a younger generation of jazz composers
(including Wayne Shorter, whose 1967 Prince
of Darkness springs into action on a phrase
borrowed from this solo). But an interesting way
of hearing Kind of Blue is from Cannonball
Adderleys point of view. Although Adderley was
musically the best educated of the albums four
major soloists, he didnt take as naturally to
modes as Coltrane did once introduced to them.
Yet he acquits himself admirably: on Flamenco
Sketches, when he begins his final chorus by
quoting the melody to So What verbatimbut
at ballad tempoyou realize the final mode

18

being introduced is the same one used on the earlier piece

(Dorian), and along with a sense of this musics inner workings,
you gain a sense of Adderleys quick wit and musical integrity.
Once Davis showed the waybefore quickly moving on, as had
become his custommodal became something every musician
had to try, just to keep up (if a blues-and-bebop diehard like
Cannonball could get with the program, anybody could).
Beyond jazz, Kind of Blues longterm influence has been
enormous. Beginning with the Byrds, the Doors, Carlos Santana,
and the Allman Brothers, most rock improvisation has been
modal. What Davis did in 1959 (and what Coltrane did

does, a full half-century after the fact. The albums enduring

mystique is one it shares with its creator. Miles Davis is often
said to have anticipated every new direction in jazz after bebop,
from cool in the late 1940s to fusion in the early 1970s. But
just as important, he also had an uncanny knack for being at the
nerve center of cultural trendsfor giving the impression of
letting the cultural moment rush up to keep pace with him.
With help from Evans, Davis captured the mood of
uncertainty that prevailed in bohemian and intellectual circles at
the end of the 1950sa time when the artists and audiences
who were most committed to the modernist ideal of ongoing

subsequently, by introducing non-Western scales) helped set the

stage for minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Philip
Glass. And if a certain horn riff on recent hits by Amy Winehouse
and Christina Aguilera strikes you as familiar, thats because
their producer Mark Ronson borrowed it from James Browns
1967 hit Cold Sweata riff that the tunes composer, Pee
Wee Ellis, freely admits to lifting from So What.
Kind of Blue is a classic among classics, the
culmination of a golden era in jazz and a signpost to much that
has taken place in music since. But while there are any number
of albums from its era and later that we can listen to now and
appreciate as daring and innovative for their time, somehow
none of them excites the imagination quite the way Kind of Blue

progress in the arts were also reading the Beats and J.D. Salinger
and pondering Zen Buddhisms riddles of blissful acceptance of
things as they are. Maybe Kind of Blues secret is one peculiar to
only the greatest and most enduring works of art: it continues to
speak to us so forcefully today because it seems so much a
creation of its own time. In that sense, it is itself something of a
riddlean album we could go on enjoying and thinking about for
another fifty years, or another thousand, without ever fully
penetrating all of its mysteries.
FRANCIS DAVIS, June 2008

The winner of five ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards

for Excellence in Music Journalism, Francis Davis is a Contributing Editor of The Atlantic
and jazz columnist for The Village Voice. His books include The History of the Blues and

Jazz and Its Discontents: A Francis Davis Reader.

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CD TWO

CD ONE
1. So What

(B) 9:22
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

2. Freddie Freeloader

(B) 9:46
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

3. Blue in Green

(B) 5:36
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

4. All Blues

(C) 11:32
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

5. Flamenco Sketches

(C) 9:25
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

6. Flamenco Sketches

(alternate take) (C) 9:31

(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

7. Freddie Freeloader studio sequence 1(B) 0:51

8. Freddie Freeloader false start (B) 1:26
9. Freddie Freeloader studio sequence 2 (B) 1:26*
10. So What

studio sequence 1 (B) 1:53*

11. So What

studio sequence 2 (B) 0:11*

12. Blue in Green

studio sequence (B) 1:56*

13. Flamenco Sketches

1. On Green Dolphin Street

(A) 9:48
(Bronislaw Kaper-Ned Washington) EMI Feist
Music/Patti Washington Music/Catharine Hinen ASCAP

studio sequence 2 (C) 1:09*

15. All Blues

studio sequence (C) 0:18*

*previously unreleased

5:30 pm) at Columbia 30th Street Studio, NYC. Producer: Irving

Townsend. Recording engineer: Fred Plaut

2. Fran-Dance

(A) 5:48
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

3. Stella by Starlight

(A) 4:43
(Victor Young-Ned Washington) Sony ATV Harmony
ASCAP

4. Love for Sale

(A) 11:46
(Cole Porter) Warner Bros Inc ASCAP

5. Fran-Dance (alternate take)

(A) 5:51
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

6. So What

(D) 17:28 **
(Miles Davis) Jazz Horn Music Corp BMI

**previously released in unauthorized form

(A) Miles Davis-trumpet, Cannonball Adderleyalto saxophone, John Coltrane-tenor saxophone,

Bill Evans-piano, Paul Chambers-bass,
Jimmy Cobb-drums. Recorded on Monday, May 26, 1958
(7 to 10 pm) at Columbia 30th Street Studio, NYC. Producer:
Cal Lampley. Recording engineer: Harold Chapman

studio sequence 1 (C) 0:42

14. Flamenco Sketches

(C) Miles Davis-trumpet, Cannonball Adderleyalto saxophone, John Coltrane-tenor saxophone,

Bill Evans-piano, Paul Chambers-bass, Jimmy
Cobb-drums. Recorded on Wednesday, April 22, 1959 (2:30 to

(D) Miles Davis-trumpet, John Coltrane-tenor

saxophone, Wynton Kelly-piano, Paul Chambersbass, Jimmy Cobb-drums. Recorded in concert at the
Kurhaus, Den Haag, Holland on April 9, 1960

Legacy Edition produced for release by

Michael Cuscuna
Sessions A-C remixed from the original
three-track tapes by Mark Wilder,
Sony Studios and Battery Studios
Mastered by Mark Wilder and Maria Triana,
Sony Studios and Battery Studios
Project Director: Nell Mulderry
Legacy A&R: Steve Berkowitz
Art Direction: Howard Fritzson
Design: Ron Kellum
Packaging Manager: Jeremy Holiday

Photography: Page 1: Jay Maisel; pages 2, 3, 5,

6 (top left photo), 7 (top photo), 12, 13, 16-21 :
Don Hunstein/Sony Music Archives; pages 4 &
11: Vernon Smith; pages 6 (top right), 7 (middle
& bottom photos). 8, 23 & 24: Chuck Stewart;
page 6 (bottom photo): Beuford Smith/Cesaire;
page 10: Frederick Plaut from The Frederick and
Rose Plaut Archives in The Irving S. Gilmore
Music Library of Yale University
Many thanks to Miless family and supporters:
Cheryl Davis, Erin Davis, Vince Wilburn, Jr, Darryl Porter;
Sandy Friedman, Lori Lousararian and Karen Sundell of
Rogers & Cowan; Jeff Biederman of Manat,Phelps &
Phillips; David Renzer and the Universal Music
Publishing family; Stephen B. Ratner CPA, Audrey Ratner
and staff of Ratner Lynn & Company, LLC.
Special Thanks: Rico Alcock, Adam Block, Mariner Brito,
Greg Brunswick, Tom Burleigh, Andy Cahn, Jimmy Cobb,
John Conroy, Tom Cording, Channing Delph, Anthony
Ellis, Brad Gallant, Sam Gomez, Randy Haecker, Bob
Hoch, Dave Howlett, John Ingrassia, Joel Kendall, Lyn
Koppe, Chris Lenz, Marisa Magliola, Elizabeth McShea,
Eric Molk, Jacqueline Powers, Christian Ruggiero, Jeffrey
Schulberg, Michele Scott, Steve Sterling, Scott van Horn,
Russ Wapensky, Widya Widjaja, and Che Williams

(B) Miles Davis-trumpet, Cannonball Adderley-alto

saxophone, John Coltrane-tenor saxophone,
Wynton Kelly (on Freddie Freeloader), Bill Evans
(on all others)-piano, Paul Chambers-bass,
Jimmy Cobb-drums. Recorded on Monday, March 2, 1959
(2:30 to 5:30 and 7 to 10 pm) at Columbia 30th Street Studio, NYC.

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Producer: Irving Townsend. Recording engineer: Fred Plaut

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MORE MILES DAVIS ON COLUMBIA

CK65142

Sketches of Spain

CK86556

In a Silent Way

C2K65774

Bitches Brew

C4K87106 Friday & Saturday Nights

at the Blackhawk-Complete

CK65141

Porgy and Bess

C2K94750 Round About Midnight

(Legacy Edition) (2 CD)

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON MILES DAVIS CHECK OUT:

miles-davis.com
myspace.com/milesdavis
www.legacyrecordings.com
2009 Sony Music Entertainment / Originally Recorded 1958 & Released 1975 (CD One, Track 6; CD Two, Track 4), 1999 (CD Two, Track
5); Originally Recorded 1959 & Released 1988, 2008 (CD One, Tracks 7-15); Originally Released 1959 (CD One, Tracks 1-5; CD Two, Tracks
1-3). All rights reserved by Sony Music Entertainment. 2008 Sony Music Entertainment / Manufactured and Distributed by Columbia
Records, A Division of Sony Music Entertainment / 550 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022-3211 / Columbia, W, Legacy and l Reg.
U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. Marca Registrada. / WARNING: All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.
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