‹ It’s hard being a caveman….. •
On March 2nd, 1959 Miles Davis held the first of two recording sessions for the album that would become Kind of Blue. Widely considered the enigmatic genius’ greatest achievement, Kind of Blue is the best selling jazz album of all time, and at the top of many critics’ lists of the best. With a powerhouse lineup of Miles Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Bill Evans on piano (except for “Freddie Freeloader” which featured Wynton Kelly), the albums represents one of the greatest confluences of talent in music history.
March 2nd was the first of two recording sessions for the album, with “So What”, “Freddie Freeloader”, and “Blue in Green” being recorded. All three of the songs were recorded in one take, a fact that Davis insisted on. The album’s songs were based on the relatively new musical technique of modal improvisation, and Miles felt that single takes, with any flaws in tact, would best represent their experimentation. And boy howdy was he right. There’s a palpable sense of reaching, of the unknown, and of expanding boundries in the sessions. The tracks feel fresh and new even after almost 50 years.
Bill Evans and Paul Chambers kick of the album with the iconic intro to “So What”, one of the most famous passages in jazz, sketching out the basic call-and-response structure of the song. Miles enters with a masterfully understated solo that Eric Nisenson described as “the jazz equivalent of the impressionism of Debussy, Ravel, and Scriabin — the kind of lyrical impressionism usually associated with some European folk music”. Miles passes the solo off to Coltrane, who shows atypical restraint and economy. Adderley takes his turn next, providing a little more energy to the tune. Evans rounds out the solos and the piece ends with a restatement of the call-and-response introduction. In just under 9 1/2 minutes Miles and his all-star band altered the progression of jazz and created the standard against which all of its future pieces would be measured.
For more information about the modal improvisational structure of the album read Eric Nisenson’s excellent in-depth account of the recording sessions The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece. Or, if you’re REALLY interested, read the “manual”, George Russel’s The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, though I must warn you, it’s for SERIOUS music geeks only.
