Kind of Blue 50th Anniversary
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis' timeless record, Kind of Blue.
On its release in 1959, the album--which also features a young John Coltrane on sax--was a completely new direction for bebop and jazz in general. Miles was mainly concerned with new sounds and the introduction of space into his improvisations. From his autobiography:
"Kind of Blue also came out of the modal thing I started on Milestones. This time I added some other kind of sound I remembered from being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and they were playing these bad gospels. So that kind of feeling came back to me and I started remembering what that music sounded like and felt like. That feeling is what I was trying to get close to. That feeling had got in my creative blood, my imagination, and I had forgotten it was there. I wrote this blues that tried to get back to that feeling I had when I was six years old, walking with my cousin along that dark Arkansas road."
This is the kind of album that expands with every listen (I believe a "grower" is the technical term).
Read/Listen to an NPR article on the album and its reissue this year.
and check out my favorite song from the record:
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