Track Listing

1. So What
2. Freddie Freeloader
3. Blue in Green
4. All Blues
5. Flamenco Sketches
6. Flamenco Sketches

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179 in Music
• Released on: 1997-03-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered

Amazon.com essential recording
This is the one jazz record owned by people who don't listen to jazz, and with good reason. The band itself is extraordinary (proof of Miles Davis's masterful casting skills, if not of God's existence), listing John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans (or, on "Freddie Freeloader," Wynton Kelly) on piano, and the crack rhythm unit of Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Coltrane's astringency on tenor is counterpoised to Adderley's funky self on alto, with Davis moderating between them as Bill Evans conjures up a still lake of sound on which they walk. Meanwhile, the rhythm partnership of Cobb and Chambers is prepared to click off time until eternity. It was the key recording of what became modal jazz, a music free of the fixed harmonies and forms of pop songs. In Davis's men's hands it was a weightless music, but one that refused to fade into the background. In retrospect every note seems perfect, and each piece moves inexorably towards its destiny. --John Szwed

From Jazziz
"As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time," says Bill Evans in the liner notes to Kind of Blue. "Miles Davis presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with a sure reference to the primary conception." Amen. During the past 40 years, the performances Davis' stimulated from Evans, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Wynton Kelly have become some of the most storied in jazz, and all of them - classics such as "Freddie the Freeloader," "All Blues," "Blue in Green," and, of course, "So What" (featured) - are featured on this Columbia/Legacy reissue.

--- JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

From Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD
This first-take, unrehearsed Miles Davis session from 1959, no less than a jazz/blues succes d' estime, offers stimulation for the mind and satisfaction for the soul. The late trumpeter and his fellow improvisers (notably John Coltrane and Bill Evans) create shifting prismatic colors, textures given over to lyricism, and intriguingly vague tonality within five compositions. A quiet, wondrous state of equilibrium between tension and repose. -- © Frank John Hadley 1993

Customer Reviews

Kind of blue
I accidentally? ordered the wrong form of the CD, corresponded with Amazon, got prompt and detailed reply, exchanged the item with no trouble.

The definition of perfection
If you haven't heard Kind of Blue yet, well, what are you waiting for? Whether you're big into jazz or not, this is an absolutely timeless, flawless album. Every moment is to be savoured. The moods and feelings conveyed here by the music are plentiful and impossible to put into words. Just put this one on and get lost in it, the feel of it. I never get tired of this record.

I'd take it on a desert island
Owned this labum for more than 10 years, I love Coltrane (not all), I love Miles (not all), and many others (I recommend Abdullah Ibrahim), but this one is the quintessence, the one I ALWAYS go back to. I just don't grow weary. If I were to take one album on desert island, that would be Kind of Blue.