Kind of Blue is no exception. It was a logical progression in Davis' career, and in his ability to choose excellent sidemen. Davis had the core of a crack band that he at the time of Kind of Blue's two 1959 recording sessions, with Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on bass, and the dueling saxes of the avant-garde John Coltrane (soon to leave on a solo career that would rival Davis' in its stature and influence) and the more conventional, but playful technique of Cannonball Adderly.
Davis toured with pianist Wynton Kelly, who plays on Kind of Blue's bluesy "Freddie Freeloader", but a few months prior to the recording session Davis recruited Bill Evans, who was quietly earning a reputation as the pianist in jazz, with the chops to handle any material, and an innovator in his own right.
This was the group that walked in Columbia Record's 30th Street studios in Manhattan to record Kind of Blue. Ashley Kahn, in Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece covers this session, the events leading up to it, such as Davis' then rapidly rising stature, his 1955 signing to Columbia, which provided the budgets and studios to allow Davis to produce "concept albums", often with a small orchestra behind him, a decade before the Beatles made both concepts popular in rock music.
Kind of Blue would not exist in its current form but for Davis' astute hiring of Bill Evans. Kahn sketches Evans career up to "Kind of Blue", and briefly, but effectively covers the "Crow Jim" reverse racism that Evans occasionally received from black audiences when performing as the only white member of an otherwise black group.
(He also mentions the hilarious request of Davis before he allowed Evans into the band: "You got to make it with everybody, you know what I mean? You got to f**k the band." The straitlaced Evans stuttered in reply, "I'd like to please everyone...but I just can't do that". Davis's sardonic humor, and attempts to mess with the minds of his musicians would eventually become the stuff of legend among his band members.)
Article comments
1 - Keivn Corren
Thanks for the Inspiration Miles...
2 - Chris Rich
Did it occur to anyone that the whole premise of writing a book about one release in the life of Miles Davis is utterly ridiculous, glib and stupid?
Kind of Blue is one of dozens of equally compelling works Davis nade in his long tenure at Columbia and that hardly even touches amazing work he did as a kid with Charlie Parker for the Dial label.
Then there are years of stuff he did for Capitol, Prestige and Bluenote, all perfectly compelling.
The very notion that one can apply some notion of 'quintessence' to someone of this stature is deeply flawed, but then Kahn lacks any real credentials as a jazz scholar beyond amateur enthusiasm and a potential jazz fan hardly needs him to mediate their experience.
I hate to rain on your parade but most books about jazz are terrible and useless as I soon discovered as a kid in the 70's trying to learn about an idiom I deeply love that changed my life for the better.
May I suggest the work of Lewis Porter, Gary Giddins or Ross Russells tour de force, 'Bird Lives' as far more compelling reads than this shallow thing and beyond that, just buy the music and realize that your own insight will be every bit as meaningful as anything Kahn will ever write.
After all, one of his main prior fame claims was promoting Brittany Spears. Need I say more?
3 - Chris Bich
Hey Chrissy baby,
what have you done in your miserable life that could possibly compare with Miles, or Ashley Khan for that matter? How can you be so negative, it is patently obvious that nothing, especially jazz, has changed your sad existance.
Come back and flame when you are better intellectually armed with something other than a glib comment about his promoting Ms. Spears. Business is one thing, making music is quite another