Kind of Blue was recorded in 1959 at the tail end of the big be-bop movement in jazz. Miles had grown tired of be-bop and wanted to explore different avenues of self-expression. This album was one of the first to feature "modal" improvisations. This kind of improvisation is based more on a scale or series of scales rather than sequences of chords and harmonies. In the context of Kind of Blue, the resulting improvisations came out as free-flowing melodies, which was what Miles was after.

Miles used some of the finest musicians available for this recording; today it could pass as an all-star band. Miles' reed section had Cannonbal Adder

Kind of Blue is the recording on which, to the uninitiated, jazz suddenly makes sense. Its discovery almost always precipitates a slap of the forehead and a loud but ecstatic groan of 'Now I understand!' But it's not just for the once-were-lost-but-now-are-found: this is also the favorite album of many. And in a popular culture which tries hard to deny the existence of anything other than what sprung from Elvis and the Beatles, Kind of Blue is probably the sole representative in the broad public imagination of another, now otherwise submerged, tradition In this way it has a role also as a way out of the pop culture: this is the album through which more people (myself included) have been introduced to jazz and escaped than any other. More than anything else though this is an album to which it would be worth listening to every day for the rest of your life. It is never the same twice. It always has more to yield up. It continues to improve and expand after being subjected to prolonged and

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Miles Davis, Beatles Blue, Evans Miles, CD Blue, Van Morrison's, Jimmy Cobb, Flamenco Sketches, Miles Miles, Blue Green, Paul Chambers, flamenco sketches, freddie freeloader, bill evans, pop culture, blue green, tracks freddie freeloader, tracks freddie,