Kind of Blue is the fifth studio album released on Columbia, and twenty-eighth overall, by American jazz musician, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. It was recorded on March 2 and April 22, 1959, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City, and released on August 17 of that same year by Columbia Records. For the recording, Davis led a sextet featuring saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb, with new band pianist Wynton Kelly appearing on one track – "Freddie Freeloader" – in place of Evans.
Influenced in part by Evans, who had joined the ensemble in 1958, Davis departed further from his early hard bop style in favor of greater experimentation with musical modes, as on his previous album Milestones (1958). Basing Kind of Blue entirely on modality, he gave each performer a set of scales that encompassed the parameters of their improvisation and style, and consequently more creative freedom with melodies; Coltrane later expanded on this modal approach in his own solo career.
Kind of Blue is regarded by many critics as Davis's masterpiece, the greatest jazz record ever recorded, and one of the best albums of all time. Its impact on music, including jazz, rock, and classical genres, has led writers to also deem it one of the most influential albums ever made. The LP was one of fifty recordings chosen in 2002 by the Library of Congress for the inaugural year of the National Recording Registry, and in 2003 it was ranked number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2019, Kind of Blue was certified 5× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of at least five million copies in the United States.
Background
By late 1958, trumpeter Miles Davis employed one of the most acclaimed and profitable hard bop bands. Bassist Paul Chambers had been with the band from its beginning in 1955; alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley joined in late 1957, and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane returned in early 1958. Drummer Jimmy Cobb replaced Philly Joe Jones in May 1958, and pianist Wynton Kelly replaced Bill Evans in November 1958.
The Davis band played a mixture of pop standards, blues, and bebop originals by composers such as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Davis, and Tadd Dameron. As with all bebop-based jazz, Davis's groups improvised on the chord changes of a given song. Davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop, however, and saw its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering creativity.
In 1953, the pianist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which offered an alternative to improvisation based on chords. Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships, his concept introduced the idea of chord/scale unity and was the first theory to explore the vertical relationship between chords and scales. These insights helped lead the way to modal jazz. Influenced by Russell's ideas, Davis implemented his first modal composition with the title track of his studio album Milestones (1958). Satisfied with the results, Davis prepared an entire album based on modality. Evans, who had studied with Russell but had left the Davis group to pursue his career, was drafted back into the project.
Recording
Kind of Blue was recorded on three-track tape in two sessions at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio in New York City. On March 2, 1959, the tracks "So What", "Freddie Freeloader", and "Blue in Green" were recorded for side one of the original LP, and on April 22 the tracks "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches" were recorded, making up side two.
As was Davis's penchant, he called for almost no rehearsal and the musicians had little idea what they were to record. As described in the original liner notes by pianist Bill Evans, Davis had only given the band sketches of scales and melody lines on which to improvise. Once the musicians were assembled, Davis gave brief instructions for each piece and then set to taping the sextet in studio. While the results were impressive with so little preparation, the persistent legend that the entire album was recorded in one pass is untrue. Only "Flamenco Sketches" yielded a complete take on the first try. That take, which is not the master, was added to the 1997 CD reissue of the album as a bonus track. The five master takes issued were the only other complete takes; an insert for the ending to "Freddie Freeloader" was recorded, but was not used for release or on the issues of Kind of Blue prior to the 1997 reissue.