Kind of Blue (1959)
Kind of Blue is a 1959 cool jazz album by Miles Davis.
Five musicians walked into a New York studio in 1959 with almost nothing written down. Miles Davis handed them sketches and let modal scales stand in for dense chord changes, and the result reshaped jazz. His sextet reads like a summit: John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly at the piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums. 'So What,' 'Freddie Freeloader,' and 'Blue in Green' move with unhurried space, every solo built in the room across two sessions. Calm, roomy, and endlessly replayed, it stays the record newcomers and lifers both return to.
Quick answers
What is Kind of Blue about?
Five musicians walked into a New York studio in 1959 with almost nothing written down. Miles Davis handed them sketches and let modal scales stand in for dense chord changes, and the result reshaped jazz. His sextet reads like a summit: John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly at the piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums. 'So What,' 'Freddie Freeloader,' and 'Blue in Green' move with unhurried space, every solo built in the room across two sessions. Calm, roomy, and endlessly replayed, it stays the record newcomers and lifers both return to.
When was Kind of Blue released?
Kind of Blue was released in 1959.
Who made Kind of Blue?
Kind of Blue is by Miles Davis.
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Kind of Blue in our writing
- Companion guide: Jazz on Screen and Record: The Complete Cross-Media Guide
A few thoughts on Kind of Blue
Anyone drawn to the quiet mastery here should watch Whiplash for the opposite temperature, jazz as blood sport rather than calm. Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle's biopic, chases the man behind the trumpet. And John Coltrane's A Love Supreme carries the same searching spirit a few years on.
Albums as unhurried and spacious as Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue was sketched almost live in the studio, five musicians filling in Miles Davis's modal outlines with unhurried, roomy phrasing. A Love Supreme and In a Silent Way stay inside that same jazz lineage, The Köln Concert carries the spaciousness into solo piano, and Moondance and Feels Like Home bring that same loose, mellow cool into soul and singer-songwriter territory.