Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue (stereo) [COLUMBIA/LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

Kind of Blue is the best-selling jazz album of all time, and the band is a who's who: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. "So What" and "All Blues" are where modal jazz begins for most of us.

This edition

• Stereo mix
• Columbia / Legacy pressing (cat# 88875111921)

About the album

One could fill a book (and many books have, in fact, been filled) discussing the myriad twists and turns of Miles Davis's endlessly questing career.

If you've gotta start somewhere, however, 1959's Kind Of Blue is a pretty good entry point into a catalogue that comprises dozens of his own studio albums. The irascible trumpeter is moving away from his more traditional beginnings and "hard bop" here and moving into "modal" jazz with a gifted ensemble of improvisers that includes John Coltrane on tenor sax, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto sax and Bill Evans on piano. In layman's terms, then: Miles is starting to get freaky, but not as freaky as he would get on the wilder and wilder albums to come. Kind Of Blue is a toweringly influential record, in any case, and one that casts a loooooong shadow well beyond merely the world of jazz. It's also Davis's best-selling album, so it's definitely not impenetrable. Dip a toe in here and you might just find you like it.

Also at Kops: more Miles Davis on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 88875111921), a reissue of the 1959 album.