General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYesterday was the 60th Anniversary of a musical masterpiece.
March 2, 1959 Miles Davis began recording the incomparable Kind Of Blue, the best selling jazz album of all time.
Kind of Blue brought together seven now-legendary musicians in the prime of their careers: tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb and, of course, trumpeter Miles Davis.
Ferrets are Cool
(21,063 posts)Herbie Hancock. I can't decide whether I like Kind of Blue or Bitches Brew better. I lean towards the latter.
First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...Miles himself never played better than on that album, and--as I learned many years later--Gil Evans had a hand in it. That surely didn't hurt...
erronis
(14,955 posts)It helped that we had a friend/neighbor that liked to play Errol Garner and other jazz pianists.
I had to go to NYC to get a copy - wish I still had it!
NRaleighLiberal
(59,940 posts)Stinky The Clown
(67,680 posts)The full side recording with Shorty Rogers on trumpet was an Afro-Cuban epic with lots of jazz greats.
I love old jazz, particularly Afro-Cuban.
Thanks for the reminder about the greatest jazz album of them all.
brush
(53,474 posts)"Perhaps the most beautiful piece on the album is the Evans composition Blue in Green, for which Coltrane fashions his greatest and most moving solo. Of the five tracks on the album, four are quite long, ranging from nine to eleven and a half minutes, and they are placed two before and two after Blue in Green. Regarding the program as a whole, therefore, one sees Blue in Green as the small capstone of a musical arch. But Blue in Green itself is in arch form, with a palindromic arrangement of the solos. The capstone of this arch upon an arch is the thirty seconds or so of Coltranes solo."
Chipper Chat
(9,635 posts)And this LP has been my no. 1 best seller.
eleny
(46,166 posts)i'm sure i brought it with me when i moved across country decades ago. some music never lets go.
Miigwech
(3,741 posts)in around 1989 in Stamford , CT... he never spoke ... just held up signs, with his back to the audience, to introduce the next song. An amazing performance.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)jalan48
(13,798 posts)ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)I've always been a Monk guy, but Bill Evans? Oh, my!
jalan48
(13,798 posts)NNadir
(33,368 posts)Coltrane in particular changed me completely.
I'll never forget the first time I heard him; something inspired me to buy an album called "His Greatest Years."
When I heard "Alabama" for the first time, all the stuff to which I'd been listening before, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead...all of it just seemed, well, silly.
I came to "Kind of Blue" in reverse, tracing Coltrane's career, coming upon Miles Davis, always innovating, always going somewhere unexpected.
Truly one of the greatest pieces of American Music, by far.
Jersey Devil
(9,863 posts)He was the opening act for Diana Ross at a concert at Giants Stadium. He came out and played his entire set with his back to the crowd, facing the back of the stage.
Ferrets are Cool
(21,063 posts)it was his signature move. Pun intended.
Journeyman
(15,001 posts)"The Hand of Miles Davis" by Irving Penn (1986)