Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue / Blue vinyl

Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released on August 17, 1959, by Columbia Records. For this album, 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 replacing Evans on “Freddie Freeloader”. The album was recorded at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York City in two sessions on March 2 and April 22, 1959.

Influenced in part by Evans, who had been a member of the ensemble in 1958 and was called back for this album, Davis departed further from his early hard bop style in favor of greater experimentation with musical modes, as on the title track of his previous album, Milestones (1958). Basing Kind of Blue entirely on modality, Davis 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 album ever recorded, and one of the greatest albums of all time. Its impact on music, including jazz, rock, and classical music, has led writers to also deem it one of the most influential albums ever made. The album was one of fifty recordings chosen in 2002 by the Library of Congress for the inaugural year of the National Recording Registry, being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In 2003, it was ranked number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, repositioned to number 31 in the 2020 revision. 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.