Category — improv
Kind of Blue by Miles Davis (with Coltrane, Adderley, Evans, Chambers, Cobb and Kelly)
Bill Evans
Our Rating: 
Thoughts/Words/Reviews: 
45tunes.com says: I don’t know if there is another record that I can listen to SO many times and never get sick of … I think that the John Szwed write-up below sums it up most awesomely …
John Szwed comments (from Amazon.com):
This is the one jazz record owned by people who don’t listen to jazz, and with good reason. The band itself is extraordinary (proof of Miles Davis’s masterful casting skills, if not of God’s existence), listing John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans (or, on “Freddie Freeloader,” Wynton Kelly) on piano, and the crack rhythm unit of Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Coltrane’s astringency on tenor is counterpoised to Adderley’s funky self on alto, with Davis moderating between them as Bill Evans conjures up a still lake of sound on which they walk. Meanwhile, the rhythm partnership of Cobb and Chambers is prepared to click off time until eternity. It was the key recording of what became modal jazz, a music free of the fixed harmonies and forms of pop songs. In Davis’s men’s hands it was a weightless music, but one that refused to fade into the background. In retrospect every note seems perfect, and each piece moves inexorably towards its destiny. –John Szwed
January 7, 2008 Comments Off
