Stairway2Drew's Full Review: Kind of Blue [Remaster] by Miles Davis
Heavenly.
This scripty adjective is the word that immediately springs to my mind when trying to formulate an accurate description of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.
Miles Davis is the jazz artist that all rock fans have checked out for one reason or another. Perhaps this is largely due to his rock-influenced double album B-tches Brew. Whatever the case, there are many worse artists one could check out. Miles Davis has many classic albums under his belt. Birth of the Cool. Sketches of Spain. 'Round About Midnight. In A Silent Way. The list goes on, on, and on. People love Miles Davis. Myself included.
For 1959's Kind of Blue, Miles Davis assembled a crack team of jazz players---including "Cannonball" Adderly on alto sax, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and the great John Coltrane on tenor sax, with the addition of Wynton Kelly's piano on "Freddie Freeloader"---and, basically.... told them to play.
Kind of Blue is one of the finest examples of "modal jazz"---Miles Davis laid out the basis for these five tunes, assembled the band, and allowed them to do what they do. The utterly heavenly music found on Kind of Blue illustrates exactly why jazz musicians are some of the most talented in the world.
They created these five songs, these five masterworks, with nothing but rudimentary rehearsal time and extensive knowledge of their instruments. Davis had a rough outline of how he wanted these songs to go, but the length of time, the placement of solos, how the song would end.... these things were up to the musicians. Could they read each other's minds? No, although at times on Kind of Blue you'll swear that they could. They just, as musicians, knew how to read each other---mannerisms, a certain style of playing, etc.
The result is some of the most beautiful music you're likely to hear in your lifetime. "So What" opens with a rumbling bassline and some slight piano work before escalating into a full-tilt jazz jam. "Freddie Freeloader" enters full-force, but winds down near the end. Each song on Kind of Blue is a mini-journey---a work that depends on the work of all six musicians to write the roadmap home.
The closer, "Flamenco Sketches," is probably the most impressive track on here, a nine and a half-minute masterwork that allows all members of Davis' band a chance to flex their muscles with deft soloing and lengthy instrumental passages. Included on my remaster is an alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches"---which doesn't bore in the least, since, due to the modal nature of these sessions, all tracks were strictly impromptu. Of course, the centerpiece of the album is the eleven and a half-minute "All Blues". It's dark, it's fast, it's moody---there's definitely something stirring here.
There's not a great deal you can say about an album with five tracks, especially an instrumental one. Luckily, somewhere between experimenting with other instruments and strange, tribal sounds---not to mention being addled by heroin---Miles Davis made Kind of Blue, an album of otherworldy, beautiful music. If each track is, indeed, a journey, I don't want to find my way home.
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