"Kind of Blue": Hip or Hype?

Depending on your viewpoint, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue either is the most significant jazz album ever recorded—or one of the most over-hyped. Opinions on the 1959 classic vary, with tempers often flaring over who played the biggest role in the LP's artistic development and the album's meaning and message. I personally never cared much for Kind of Blue and carefully explain why in this month's cover story in Jazziz magazine. But I am overjoyed to see that Sony BMG is re-issuing the album on Tuesday as part of its Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Edition set. What makes this box so compelling is that Sony has wisely combined it with earlier recordings by the same sextet that I've long felt were superior.

My beef with Kind of Blue in general is that it's a relatively sterile work that dwells obsessively on icy modal riffs. These extended riffs offer plenty of cool and posturing but for me they've always come up short on heart and beauty. This isn't to say that the album should never have seen the light of day or that it isn't an essential recording for any jazz collection. It's certainly an artistic snapshot of an increasingly polarizing time in jazz and social politics. And most everything Miles Davis recorded has enormous aesthetic value.

My point here simply is that Kind of Blue may not be quite as monumental a work as we're repeatedly told it is, and that its significance has been somewhat inflated over time for a variety of reasons. For one, the compositions aren't as purely original to Miles as believed (we can thank bassist Oscar Pettiford for So What's theme and Bill Evans for two or more of the gloomier pieces). For another, the album's totemic stature owes quite a bit to Columbia's brilliant marketers of 1960, including the strategic use of the Columbia Record Club. Along the way, the label's promotional efforts even managed to win over a generation of rock musicians and convince rock record producers that it was far easier to fill albums with extended, repetitive solos than to expect more original work from their artists under contract.

Let's be fair: Is Kind of Blue really more important or enduring than John Coltrane's Giant Steps or the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out? Both were recorded in 1959. The difference is that Kind of Blue had Columbia's marketing juggernaut behind it following Miles' success with Porgy and Bess. For all we know, Kind of Blue's marketers may have been behind Columbia's decision to delay Time Out's release until 1961. Personally, I never bought that story about Columbia's president worrying about how all the group's different time signatures would play with consumers.

Here's the intro to my article in Jazziz:

"On the afternoon of Monday, March 2, 1959, Miles Davis met his working band at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio in New York City and handed out sheet music. After running down the modal sketches, Davis and the group set about recording three songs, adding two more later, on April 22. The result was Kind of Blue, an album that is now widely considered to be the greatest jazz recording of all time. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 12 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list—right after Elvis' The Sun Sessions and two notches ahead of the Beatles Abbey Road. Rockers like the Doors' Ray Manzarek have hailed the album as a major influence, and Kind of Blue has sold millions of copies worldwide, making it one of the record industry's best-selling jazz albums.

But is Kind of Blue really as original or as influential as many jazz critics have claimed? Compositions said to have been written solely by Davis for the session actually were adaptations and collaborations. The sonic quality of the album is frustratingly sub-par. And it's even debatable whether Kind of Blue is this sextet's best work.

How then did Kind of Blue rise to become jazz's Mona Lisa—an unassailable icon symbolizing an entire art form? The album's early marketing efforts by Columbia certainly played a pivotal role. So did rock's embrace and the jazz industry's need for an album—any album—to serve as an intellectual jetty against rock's relentless incursions."

That gives you the gist. I also note that the Miles Davis Sextet's recordings of May 1958 for me remain far more interesting. Which is why I was gratified to see that Sony's plush Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Edition box has included the recordings from this date: On Green Dolphin Street, Fran-Dance, Stella by Starlight, Love for Sale and an alternate take of Fran Dance.

These May 1958 tracks originally were released on the second side of Jazz Track, an LP that foolishly paired these works with Miles' original soundtrack work for the French film Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud. The problem is that most jazz fans already owned the original Ascenseur LP and passed on Jazz Track. As a result, the material was largely overlooked and forgotten until it turned up in 1974 on the LP Basic Miles and then on a poorly remastered CD Miles Davis '58 Sessions in 1991. The tracks, of course, appeared in 1999 remastered with Kind of Blue on Sony's Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

To understand the point I'm making about the difference between the two Sextet sessions, simply listen to So What followed by On Green Dolphin Street. To me, On Green Dolphin Street (along with the other tracks from the date) are modern yet retain a sensuality that So What and the rest of Kind of Blue lack. The 1958 tracks inhale and exhale, and each artist exhibits a special beauty. Also, the tension that exists doesn't snap completely free from the listener. Listen to Cannonball Adderley's and Bill Evans' solos on On Green Dolphin Street. By contrast, the compositions on Kind of Blue have always struck me as kind of bleak.

Kind of Blue may be considered by many to be jazz's greatest recording and an unassailable work. To me, the album isn't nearly the work of perfection that many rave about. The Miles Davis Sextet recorded its best and most tender work in May 1958. Dig the two dates and compare for yourself.

Comments

[Michael J. West]

Marc, you ask:

"Let's be fair: Is Kind of Blue really more important or enduring than John Coltrane's Giant Steps or the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out? Both were recorded in 1959."

I happen to love Kind of Blue very much, but what surprises me is the 1959 album you DON'T mention. I've argued and will continue to argue that the most all-around significant recording of 1959 is The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Coleman.

'59 was a banner year, no doubt, with a glut of major albums, but none so thoroughly called into question the very foundation of jazz theory and practice -- and certainly none inspired as much discussion or as many passionate opinions. (And certainly that fact does give doubt to the claims about Columbia, Brubeck, and Time Out.)

Kind of Blue is both experimental and accessible, which gives it its reputation, but if you want to talk about a truly monumental record, and one that's an immediate contemporary of Kind of Blue at that, well, there's my suggestion.

[Dean]

Interesting points. Don't forget Mingus Ah Um. 1959 was a great year for jazz.

[Mark Gorney]

I am no jazz aficionado but to my ears (at least the SBM CD that came out some years ago, remastered from the original 3-track), this sounds like a damn fine recording. I have no problem with the fidelity.

[DJA]

I don't get the beef on the sound quality either -- it's as good or better than most other recordings of the period. Also, I'm not sure why it's relevant to the quality of the album that Miles took credit for other people's tunes on the album, especially since that was pretty much par for the course for him.

Marc, you have beef with Kind of Blue's "icy" vibe but that's precisely what so many people love about the record and why it's been so enduring -- from the opening, Gil Evans-penned intro to "So What" to the last chord of "Flamenco Sketches," the album sustains a singular, focused, contemplative mood. At the time, the idea of an album as a complete, unified work -- not just a collection of tunes -- was a relatively new thing, and Kind of Blue did it better than most.

Certainly better than Time Out, which has not aged well at all. You ask, rhetorically, "is Kind of Blue really more important or enduring than […] the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out?" The answer is, unquestionably, "yes." I honestly do not know of a single jazz musician who thinks Time Out is a great record. It's true that odd meters are very popular today, but they are popular despite Brubeck's (admittedly somewhat pioneering) efforts in that direction, not because of them.

[Greg Lee]

"Time Out" and "Kind of Blue" both share something else in common that none of the commentators (Marc included) have said explicitly but I will: they both are great "gateway" jazz records -- you know, like marijuana is a "gateway" drug... (pardon the tawdry jargon). I have found that self-professed jazz avoiders can be reached by these bright moments on record. They can't explain why, and they don't even realize that these are not just any jazz recordings but timeless ones.

[reuben jackson]

It is always good to have a bounty of opinions about, well, anything, but this piece semi-reeks of reactionary nitpicking.
Oh well. Such is the case with so much "jazz literature" today...

[Ian]

I know Marc ISN'T a reactionary nit-picker, so I took this post as a legitimate question, and one that deserves to be asked periodically of any canonical artwork.

Aside from the question of whether KoB can be separated from its reputation, as I thought about this post I realized the more difficult task for me was separating it from my memories of the record. Although I'd grown up hearing my dad's copies of the Miles/Gil Evans compilations, KoB was the first jazz CD I bought myself, mainly because of its rep (and despite the cheesy cover the first Columbia CD issue featured). My first listen to it was a sort of rubicon, and maybe because of its reputation, I listened to it with a focus I'd never given any other album. It was moody without being somber; bluesy without being corny; intelligent without being effete; virtuosic without being cold.

And even though over the years I've come to see it in the continuum of Miles' output (and jazz history in general), it still remains above and beyond for me because of that near-religious response I initially had to it, and which has stuck with me.

The other Miles records mentioned are great, too, but I hear them as great jazz albums, whereas KoB still feels like the Gutenberg bible (even if I hear it in Starbucks). How much of that is due to the hype-based expectations of a teenager, it's hard to say--but I'd still rather take it to a desert island than any other jazz record.

[Bill Forbes]

I first heard "Kind of Blue" when it was released in the UK, which I think was in 1960. At the time it seemed a first-class album, as did "Milestones" for example, but certainly not something which would totally outsell other Davis albums of the time. To my youthful ears its modal innovations weren't apparent, but then I'd already been exposed to "Milestones"' pointers in that direction. When I heard - some thirty years later - that it was the biggest grossing jazz album of all time, I was astonished. I question that Columbia's marketing on its release had much to do with this, as continuing sales during the following decades seem to have been the big factor - sales to a new audience for whom the Miles Prestige sides or Bird and Diz, for that matter, had never existed.

[Tom]

The confusion here seems to me to be the factual content of the recording vs. the historical event. As some of the posters commented, it is problematic separating the music itself from its iconic/historic status and personal meaning in their lives (it was also my "gateway" album). I don't blame the author of the article for trying -- it encourages us to see critically and integrally --but I would suggest it is not possible. Rock fans of today often see "Sgt. Pepper" with a similar confusion -- "it's not even their best work!" Anyone interested in a theory of historical events that includes the non-time-like aspects that influences our value-judgments is encouraged to read J.G. Bennett: The Dramatic Universe, Vol. 4 History.