#12 - Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)
The ubiquitous jazz album - on top (or at least in the top 5) of most any jazz album ranking you will see. Up until the mid-50's or so, the jazz scene had come to be dominated by bebop and hard-bop artists and musical ideas that relied on chord progressions to drive the music. The idea of modal jazz, whereby musical modes provide the harmonic framework, was just beginning to take root when Miles Davis was inspired to explore it by the music of a dance troupe from New Guinea which stayed on single chords for long periods of time, constantly weaving in and out of dissonance. These modal ideas where first recorded by Davis on the album
Milestones. Following a retooling of his band, he entered the studio with an awesome lineup - Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on alto and tenor sax, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb as the rhythm section, and the newest member, Bill Evans on piano. Evans' delicate playing style served as inspiration for Davis as much of the music that became known as
Kind of Blue was conceived with Evans in mind. This album, almost entirely based on modality, is extremely influential and is the best selling jazz album of all-time.
The songs are able to spread out and they really have room to breathe and become their own entities as four of the five tracks clock in at 9:24 or more. The opener, "So What" has such a great understated intro with bass and piano before Chambers leads the group with that great bass lick while the horns provide a great hook with their harmonics. I've never been a huge fan of Davis' actual trumpet playing as I find his tone a bit thin and shrill, but he gives a good solo here, just before the saxophones come in and steal the show. The horn section's harmonic accents make a return as Evans solos later on. Perfect example of modal jazz. "Freddie Freeloader" takes on a bit more of a traditional feel, with a bit more of a swing in the bass. The shortest track, "Blue in Green" is a very subdued ballad. "All Blues" is an awesome 12 bar blues in 6/4 and entirely in 7th chords. And finally we have the great "Flamenco Sketches", another ballad featuring Davis' trademark harmon-muted trumpet in the first solo.
This album paved the way for other landmark modal jazz albums such as Coltrane's
My Favorite Things and
A Love Supreme, but its influence was felt throughout the music world. Duane Allman has stated it was heavily influential in many of his recorded solos and Richard Wright has given credit to the album for inspiring portions of "Breathe" from
Dark Side of the Moon. Chick Corea summed it up with this quote, "It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what
Kind of Blue did."
Topic: Big Hath's Top 50 Albums v. #1: -.---.----.. (Read 64291 times)
