MILES DAVIS - KIND OF BLUE (1959)

Músicos: Miles Davis (trumpete), Julian "Cannonball"Adderley (sax-alto), John Coltrane (sax-tenor), Wynton Kelly (piano em "Freddie freeloader"), Bill Evans (piano), Paul Chambers (baixo) e Jimmy Cobb (bateria).

Faixas:
So what
Freddie freeloader
Blue in green
All blues
Flamenco Sketches

Kind of Blue is a jazz album by musician Miles Davis, released on August 17, 1959. As of January 16, 2002, it has been certified triple platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America.[1] Though precise figures have been disputed, Kind of Blue has been cited as Davis's best-selling album, and as the best-selling jazz record of all time.

CONCEPTION

By late 1958, Davis employed one of the best and most remunerative working bands pursuing the hard bop style, his personnel stabilized to alto saxophonist Julian Adderley, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Wynton Kelly, long-serving bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. His band played a mixture of pop standards and bebop originals by the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Tadd Dameron, and others, and as was the case with all bebop-based jazz, improvised on the chord changes of a given song. Davis, along with other musicians, began to view bebop as obsolete, finding it difficult to realize new avenues of expression within its grammar. In 1953, pianist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which offered an alternative to the practice of improvisation based on chords. Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of Western music, Russell invented a new formulation using scales or a series of scales for improvisations; this approach came to be known as modal in jazz.
Influenced by Russell's ideas, Davis implemented his first modal composition with the title track of his 1958 album Milestones; satisfied with the results, Davis now prepared an entire album based on modality. Key to the realization of these ideas was pianist Bill Evans, also an enthusiast of Russell, but recently departed from the Davis band to pursue his own career. Davis successfully drafted Evans into his new recording project, the sessions that would become Kind of Blue.

SESSIONS

The album was recorded in two sessions, on March 2 for the tracks "So What," "Freddie Freeloader," and "Blue In Green," comprising side one of the original LP, and April 22 for the tracks "All Blues," "Flamenco Sketches," making up side two. As was Davis' 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 Evans, the band had only sketches of scales and melody lines to go on. Once the musicians were assembled, Davis gave brief instructions for each piece, then set to taping. Excepting false starts, other than the two takes of "Flamenco Sketches" of which the second was released, all of the completed tunes were done in one pass.
Kelly may not have been happy to see the man he replaced back in his old seat. Perhaps to assuage the pianist's feelings, and also to take advantage of Kelly's superior skills as both bluesman and accompanist, Davis had Kelly play instead of Evans on the album's most blues-oriented number, "Freddie Freeloader."
All compositions were listed as being written by Davis. However, scholarly consensus is that the introduction to "So What" was written by Davis colleague Gil Evans, and that Bill Evans wrote "Blue in Green" in its entirety. Bill Evans himself assumed co-credit, with Davis, for "Blue In Green" when recording it on his Portrait in Jazz album. This appropriation of publishing by the bandleader was far from an unknown occurrence in the jazz world, Davis having been on the receiving end of such practice himself. While employed as a sideman in Charlie Parker's quintet in the late 1940s, Parker took credit for the Davis-penned tune "Donna Lee," which later became a popular jazz standard.

INLFUENCE

Kind of Blue is not only regarded as one of Davis's masterworks, but one of the most influential albums in the history of jazz. One reviewer has called it "a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence." [1] Many of the songs from the album have become jazz standards and are very often covered by others.
In 1959, however, the arrival of Ornette Coleman on the jazz scene via his fall residency at the Five Spot club, consolidated by the release of his The Shape of Jazz to Come LP the same year, muted the impact of Kind of Blue, a happenstance that irritated Davis no end. Davis would never reconcile himself to Coleman's free jazz innovations, although he would incorporate musicians amenable to Coleman's ideas with his great quintet of the mid-1960s, and offer his own version of "free" playing with his jazz fusion outfits in the 1970s.
The influence of the album did build, and all of the sidemen from the album would achieve success on their own. Evans formed his influential jazz trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian; "Cannonball" Adderley would front his popular bands with his brother Nat; Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb would continue as a touring unit, recording under Kelly's name as well as in support of Coltrane and Wes Montgomery, among others; Coltrane would go on to become one of the most revered and innovative jazz musicians in history. Even more than Davis, Coltrane took the modal approach and ran with it during his brief career as a leader in the 1960s, leavening his music with Coleman's ideas as the decade progressed.
In his book, Kind of Blue: The Making of a Miles Davis Masterpiece, author Ashley Kahn wrote that "still acknowledged as the height of hip four decades after it was recorded, Kind of Blue is the premier album of its era, jazz or otherwise. Its vapory piano introduction is universally recognized" (Kahn 16). Quincy Jones, one of Davis' longtime friends, wrote: "That [Kind of Blue] will always be my music, man. I play Kind of Blue every day — it's my orange juice. It still sounds like it was made yesterday" (Kahn 19). Chick Corea, one of Miles' acolytes, was also struck by its majesty. He said: "It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what Kind of Blue did" (Kahn 19).

One significant aspect of Kind of Blue is that the entire record, not just one song, was revolutionary. Gary Burton noted this occurrence. "It wasn’t just one tune that was a breakthrough, it was the whole record. When new jazz styles come along, the first few attempts to do it are usually kind of shaky. Early Charlie Parker records were like this. But with Kind of Blue [the sextet] all sound like they’re fully into it" (Kahn 179).
Along with Dave Brubeck's Time Out, Kind of Blue is often recommended as an introductory jazz album, for similar reasons as the Brubeck record: the music is very melodic, and the relaxed "open" quality of the songs makes the improvisation easy for listeners to follow, without sacrificing one iota of brilliance or creativity.
In 1997 Kind of Blue was named the thirteenth greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millennium poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian, and Classic FM. In 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number sixty-six. VH1's Ashley Kahn has devoted an entire book to the record: Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. In 2002, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
The album's influence reaches beyond jazz. Many improvisatory rock musicians of the 1960s name-checked this album, along with other Davis albums, or Coltrane's modal records like My Favorite Things or A Love Supreme. Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright has said that the chord progressions on this album influenced the structure of the introductory chords of their song "Breathe" on the landmark 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon.

RELEASE HISTORY

Kind of Blue was originally released as a 12-inch vinyl record, in both stereo and mono. There have been several reissues of Kind of Blue, including additional printings throughout the vinyl era. On some editions, the label switched the order for the two tracks on side two, "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches." The record has been remastered many times during the compact disc era, notably the 1992 remastering which corrected the speed for side one, which had been issued slightly off-pitch originally, and the 1997 which added the alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches." All releases after the 1997 include the alternate take and are speed-corrected. In 2005, a DualDisc release included the original album, a digital remastering in 5.1 Surround Sound and LPCM Stereo, and a twenty-five-minute documentary Made in Heaven about the making and influence of Kind of Blue.
August 17, 1959 – Columbia CS 8163, original stereo vinyl LP
August 17, 1959 – Columbia CL 1355, original mono vinyl LP
1984 – Columbia CK 8163, original compact disc issue
1987 – Columbia Jazz Masterpiece CK 40579, compact disc, digitally remastered from original master tapes
December 8, 1992 – Columbia CK 64403, Mastersound Gold CD, super-bit mapping, corrected speed
1997 - Double LP Gatefold edition from Classic Records included two side ones at original and corrected speed and a 45RPM alternate take of Flamenco Sketches
March 25, 1997 – Columbia CK 64935, compact disc, 20-bit remastering, adds alternate track, corrected speed
August 21, 2001 – Columbia CS 64935, SACD, corrected speed
December 2001 – Classic Records CS8163QP, Quiex SV-P 200 gram vinyl, corrected speed, original tracks
February 8, 2005 – Columbia CN 90887, DualDisc, 20-bit remastered standard compact disc side, DVD-Audio 5.1 Surround Sound LPCM Stereo side, corrected speed

(Wikipédia)