Miles Davis’ First Recordings with the Kind of Blue Band Get a High-End Vinyl Release in December

“Classic” doesn’t mean what it used to—it mostly makes me think of Wendy’s hamburgers now—but it’s undeniable that Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue still fits any definition of the word. The 1959 Columbia record is basically the first album in the fledgeling jazzbo starter kit, right alongside Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Both deserve the rep, of course—they’re unassailable pillars of the form by two of its true titans, and like all true masterpieces, they controversially helped reinvent their genre in new and exciting ways. And now fans of Miles and Kind of Blue can hear some of the groundwork that lead to that magnum opus on Birth of the Blue, the first standalone release of the Kind of Blue band’s first recording session from May, 1958. Birth of the Blue will be out on vinyl on Dec. 13 through Analogue Productions, a boutique label devoted to high-end reissues of classic albums remastered from the original master tapes. 

Davis’ band on Kind of Blue was a murderer’s row of jazz legends. We’re talking John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb, all alongside the most iconic trumpeter this side of Louis Armstrong. The four tracks on Birth of the Blue—“On Green Dolphin Street,” “Fran-Dance,” “Stella by Starlight,” and “Love for Sale”—find this sextet still sizing each other out, improvising in Columbia’s 30th Street studio en route to one of the signature records of the 20th century. They make up a crucial step between the bebop Davis was known for and the modal jazz explored on Kind of Blue, and although these tracks have been released before—three of them on the 1959 compilation Jazz Track, all four on 1974’s 1958 Miles, and subsequently on various box sets and compilations—this is the first time they’ve been packaged as a single LP of their own. And given Analogue Productions’ high standards, it’s entirely possible they’ve never sounded as good as they will on Birth of the Blue.

Birth of the Blue comes in a gatefold sleeve with liner notes from Ashley Kahn, who literally wrote the book on Kind of Blue. (Or at least a book, a little number called Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece.) And if you’re in New York City, you can get a preview with a listening session at All Blues on Wednesday, Dec. 4. There’ll also be a panel afterward, featuring Kahn discussing the album with Steve Berkowitz, an archivist of Davis’ work, and Chad Kassem, the founder and CEO of Acoustic Sounds.