More like Kind of Blue
Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Kind of Blue was recorded in two sessions — March 2 and April 22, 1959 — at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York. Miles Davis led a sextet including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb. The taste it signals isn't just jazz: it's an appetite for work made through restraint and collaboration, where mood is the architecture — an instinct that shows up across film, books, and beyond.
About Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released on August 17, 1959, by Columbia Records. For this album, Davis led a sextet featuring saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb, with new band pianist Wynton Kelly replacing Evans on "Freddie Freeloader". The album was recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City in two sessions on March 2 and April 22, 1959.
From the Wikipedia article Kind_of_Blue, available under CC BY-SA.
Films like Kind of Blue
Film
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
An immersive documentary on the life and artistic career of Miles Davis himself.
Film
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Live jazz captured at Newport, moving from improvisation toward Gospel — music as presence.
Film
High Note
Animated short: a conductor note tries to keep order, but one drunk note breaks the ensemble.
Film
Cool Blue
A painter's obsessive search for love and inspiration after a woman vanishes from his life.
Film
A Jazzman's Blues
Forbidden love and 40 years of buried secrets unfold against Deep South juke-joint blues.
Books to read after Kind of Blue
Book
Duke Ellington
A career portrait of Duke Ellington, whose music was consistently beyond category.
Book
In search of the blues
A revisionist account of how "Delta blues" emerged from white fascination with Black authenticity.
Book
Jazz-Rock
Traces the controversial marriage of jazz improvisation and rock over three decades.
Book
Half-blood blues
A jazz band flees Nazi Germany for Paris, playing music the regime has banned as degenerate.
Book
Billie Holiday
How Billie Holiday's life inflected her art — her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius examined.
Book
Africa and the Blues (American Made Music)
Connects African instrumentation — including a Mozambican musical bow — to the roots of blues.
Frequently asked
What movies should I watch if I love Kind of Blue?
Start with Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, an immersive documentary on Davis's life and career. Jazz on a Summer's Day captures the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival with a similar atmosphere of spontaneous, after-dark musical magic.
Are there books about jazz and blues I'd enjoy after Kind of Blue?
Half-blood Blues is a gripping novel set in Nazi-era Berlin following a jazz band forbidden to play, while Billie Holiday digs deep into the life and rhythmic genius of one of jazz's most iconic voices.
Why do people still love Kind of Blue more than 60 years later?
Recorded in just two 1959 sessions at Columbia's 30th Street Studio, Davis led an extraordinary sextet — including John Coltrane and Bill Evans — whose modal improvisation created an album that feels unhurried and effortlessly alive every time.