Miles Davis:
Kind Of Blue: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

[Columbia/Legacy]

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The jazz record everyone should own becomes the box set everyone should own

Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is an essential disc for music lovers of all genres. Yet unlike most masterpieces, it doesn’t announce its greatness loudly. Instead, the music draws you in with seductively gentle restraint. It’s a recording with a pristine elegance that has never been matched, not even by Davis himself, who made several recordings that rank among jazz’s best. One listen to the distinctive sound of opening track “So What” and it should be clear why this is the best-selling jazz disc of all time.

Despite the near-universal acclaim Kind of Blue has received, the music has not fared especially well during the jazz-reissue boom. The main obstacle has been that there aren’t a lot of alternate takes; four of the five tracks on this 1959 recording were accomplished in a single take. The only alternate, “Flamenco Sketches” is interesting but doesn’t add substantially to the mystique of this remarkable music.

The 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition works hard to create a monument celebrating a landmark anniversary of a landmark album, and it succeeds. The three-disc package includes one disc with the original music from Kind of Blue, the alternate of “Flamenco Sketches,” plus nine false starts and studio chatter (which will only interest the most devout Miles-ologists). The second disc features five tracks performed by the Davis-led sextet that was featured on Kind of Blue—songs that had been scattered across other compilations—and a searing live rendition of “So What” that’s getting an authorized release for the first time. The third disc is a fairly straightforward DVD documentary called Celebrating a Masterpiece: Kind Of Blue, featuring a wonderful live performance from the group at the Robert Herridge Theatre, and also a photo gallery by Don Hunstein. Taken with the authoritative liner notes by noted authors like Ashley Kahn, Francis Davis, and Gerald Early, this creates a useful and often impressive frame for some of the most extraordinary jazz ever recorded.

That said, ‘59 was a watershed year for the genre. John Coltrane, the tenor saxophonist on Kind of Blue, released his first masterpiece, Giant Steps, and Ornette Coleman released his first major statement, the aptly titled The Shape of Jazz to Come. Here’s hoping those albums receive equally loving reissue treatment.

Listen to Miles Davis' "Blue in Green" from Kind of Blue:

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2 Comments

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By John Rosenfelder on February 27, 2009

there's a really nice podcast about the album and miles davis on the sony page that people might be into.

check it out here:

http://blogs.legacyrecordings.com/podcast/category/miles-davis/

By The Hepcat Geezer on August 16, 2009

August 17, 2009 marks exactly fifty years from the day Columbia Records released the Miles Davis album, "Kind of Blue". "So What?" one might ask. Well, there are many great albums from the Age of Vinyl, but "All Blues" are not the same. Some music has the horsepower to affect and alter it's listeners, to move them mentally and emotionally, and to transform them.
One afternoon on the sidelines of the soccer pitch, at least fifteen years ago, I was talking to the son of a friend of mine. Though this young fellow was in college at the time, I had known him since he was in grade school. Beside refereeing youth soccer games, he had been in a garage rock band since high school. "My Dad told me you listened to jazz a lot," he says, "but I don't know much about it. People say it's pretty deep. What should I listen to so I can get into it?" "Get a copy of the CD "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis," I told him. "It's easy to find. They probably have it at Wal-Mart. Drink two glasses of wine and sit in the dark with headphones on, at one o'clock in the morning. Listen to Miles talk on trumpet, Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, John Coltrane on tenor sax, and Bill Evans on piano. Do this three times. You will be turned on to the music."
I knew this because that's how I got hooked on jazz. (Well...I didn't have the wine.) The Columbia Record Club sent me a copy of the "Kind of Blue" album when I was thirteen years old. As I lay in bed listening to it in 1960, the music transported my mind from suburban New Jersey to a smokey jazz club in Greenwich Village, where I could hang out with Maynard G. Krebs, and talk to girls with blonde ponytails, wearing black turtleneck sweaters. From that point on, I began to construct an aura, a shell, of iconoclastic coolness, or so I imagined.
Anyway, about six months after my conversation with this young guy, I ran into his father, Claude, who tells me a tale of woe about how their oldest son is driving both his wife and him nuts. (I knew this to be a very short ride.) "That crazy kid," he told me, "changed his major at the University, from Business Administration to Music. He says he wants to become a jazz musician!" Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Claude went on to ask, "Do they still have those?? I thought they were all dead by now!! Where does he get these crazy ideas???
What could I say? I didn't tell him. Two years later I heard Claude Jr. was playing bass on weekends in a piano trio, in a bar just off the expressway. It wasn't me, or what I had said to him. It was Miles. Like the Pied Piper in the fairy tale, his recorded sound (particularly in his golden period from 1955 to 1965) kidnaps the listener's ear. Looking back from a fifty year view, the "Kind of Blue" album remains a masterpiece of the twentieth century.