Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (full album w/ bonus tracks) 1959 [View all]

Trumpet – Miles Davis
Tenor Saxophone – John Coltrane
Piano – Bill Evans
Alto Saxophone – Cannonball Adderley
Bass – Paul Chambers
Drums – James Cobb
Piano – Wynton Kelly (Track A2)
Written-By – M. Davis

Label: Columbia – CS 8163
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Country: US
Released: 17 Aug 1959
Genre: Jazz
Style: Modal










Kind of Blue: how Miles Davis made the greatest jazz album in history

Kind of Blue is frequently cited as the greatest jazz album of all time. Stuart Nicholson tells the full story of how Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb made it

https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/kind-of-blue-how-miles-davis-made-the-greatest-jazz-album-in-history

What Miles Davis, had he been alive today, would have made of the sumptuous reissue package Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition is anybody’s guess. Those close to him spoke of his ambivalence towards his past achievements, one moment regarding them with pride, the next as a burden. When, in the 1970s, the great Jimmy Cobb, the drummer on the album that he once described as having been “made in heaven”, was given a rare live tape recorded by the Kind of Blue band shortly before its break-up, he immediately took it around to share with his old boss. “Miles wouldn’t even open his door, telling Jimmy through the intercom to slide it under,” wrote author and critic Eric Nisenson. “Jimmy, who used to be close to Miles and is a very sensitive person, simply left.”

If Davis often gave the impression of running away from his distinguished past during his lifetime, then since his death in 1991 the rest of us can’t seem to get enough of it. Although his prolific creativity ceased when he took a furlough from jazz between 1975 and 1981, his career on records continued unabated as Columbia delved into their vaults to release previously unreleased material. When he made his comeback in 1981, in terms of record releases at least, it was if he had never been away.

Following his death in 1991, there has been a distinct feeling of déjà vu as Columbia embarked on a major reissue series of scrupulously packaged boxed sets of key Davis sessions. With the release Miles Davis/Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (Volume 1) in 1996 through to the final The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Volume 8) in 2007, plus The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 and The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, each box-set (now highly sought-after collector’s items) dominated the jazz best selling charts and in some cases, such as the Miles Davis/Gil Evans set, remained on the chart for the best part of a year.

Add to this The Miles Davis Quintet: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions box set from the Concord Music Group in 2006, and it seems that Davis still has the power to command our attention in a way no other jazz artist, alive or dead, is able to do today. For many, his crowning achievement was the album Kind of Blue, the best selling album in jazz history. In 1999 it topped The Independent’s “50 Best Recordings of the 20th Century” list, in 2006 it topped the Jazzwise “100 Albums that Shook the World” listing, while more recently The Guardian’s “1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die” gave Kind of Blue a half-page box-out, an honour accorded to just 20 or so albums on the whole list. It even featured at No. 66 on the pop station VH1’s “100 Greatest Albums of Rock ’n’ Roll.”

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