Miles Davis and the recording of Kind of Blue

There aren’t many of these venues left. Keep showing up!

Wonderful place!!

Got into jazz when I lived in Oakland and I still miss Jerry Dean and KJAZ: http://timhodges.net/SPIRIT/index1.html

Eventually learned about Django Reinhardt, which led me to Django the web framework and the rest of your and Jacob’s work: https://jacobian.org/help/

Thanks so much, Simon!

for sure. saw vijay iyer trio there 6 years ago and it was very memorable.

Not a secret, but I haven't thought about it in 20 years. I didn't realize it was still going (maybe that's sort of a secret!)

Haven't been there in a while, but it is indeed a fun venue.

wow I used to live near there and somehow missed it. Looks great!

Who did you go with?

For a given jazz standard, if the renditions exist, chances are my favorite one is either Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson on piano. He's like if Chopin learned jazz.

My potentially hot take is Blue in Green is Coltrane's best solo on the album. It's purely a taste thing, the best way I can describe it is Coltrane frequently breaks my sense of immersion in a song.

I don't know if it's because Adderly wasn't on that one or what, but it's pretty much the only track where I feel where he gave the track what it needed instead of what he wanted.

Interesting. The entire Kind of Blue album has the opposite effect. If I hear the music now, it pleasantly tranports me back to the early 1980s when I bought it as one of my first CDs. Then I go on to focus on the music...

I very much agree with this sentiment. For me it is the 9th symphony that I don't want to wear out.

That's interesting. For me, this is an album that never gets old and I can always put on. My favorite piece is "So What," which is conveniently at the front. I often put this album on when I want to relax. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Yes.. Good music, or any good art are consumables.. I'll always "like" them but that visceral feeling won't always happen.

Out of curiosity and if you don't mind me asking, would you mind listing the others?

That is the moral of Christopher Alexander's Zen View pattern

Bill's chords just hit different.

Strongly agree. See artists such as Domi and JD Beck, Snarky Puppy, Jesus Molina, Sungazer, Greg Mehldau, Sullivan Fortner... The list goes on.

There are some extremely great jazz musicians out there today.

Wow, a lot of great suggestions. I have been stuck in the Spotify bubble with Miles on repeat. Not sure even how would this work but, here is the invite to the Spotify playlist to which I am trying to add all of the suggestions. Feel free to edit it: https://tinyurl.com/HNJazz

Any modern trumpet players you love?

Don't take this wrong, but So What?

https://youtu.be/zqNTltOGh5c

And soon to be a film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20414360.

The autobiography is also a phenomenal book while we're on that topic.

It would have been quite expensive to try for a second or third take. You're paying for the room, for the tape, and for at least one engineer and probably another guy, and except for the tape, it's all per hour.

They had likely played together enough that they planned to just do one take unless there was a hiccup.

Normally, I roll my eyes at claims of something being "the greatest ever." However, I think this one is a defensible claim.

I like Miles' quote about it: "If I'd known it was going to be such a hit, I'd have asked for more money."

I always wonder what they thought at the time. "Well, I guess that was pretty good." maybe?

* Ashley Kahn

> https://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/

That is crazy, and eye-opening.

> It breaks my heart that a project I did for fun, on the side, and out of pure love and dedication to the source material ended up costing me so much — emotionally and financially. For me, the chilling effect is palpably real. I’ve felt irrationally skittish about publishing almost anything since this happened.

I feel sad for the author.

You're listening to a conversation in a foreign language. Jazz has a fundamentally different theoretical and idiomatic basis to classical music. If you didn't grow up with blues, gospel and show tunes, you're missing most of the vocabulary and context needed to make sense of jazz. I'd strongly recommend listening to that stuff because it's fantastic, but there is a bit of a shortcut - learn to hear jazz one tune at a time.

Here's the tune Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise, as Sigmund Romberg wrote it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy_L8VVu7-c

And now, as a variety of jazz musicians heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSeFc3CP5Mk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlViBYcZpJ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NG_wZFBM24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dofsqZrE5sU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaV51BuHfIw

Do you hear how the melodic theme is stated, before the players improvise over the same chord progression? Do you hear how fragments of the main melody are woven into the solos? Do you hear the interplay between the musicians as they rotate between accompaniment and soloing? Do you hear how each ensemble creates a distinct mood from the same basic starting point? If you do, then you're starting to hear the language of jazz.

I don't think there's any profound secret to jazz - except that it used to be a lifestyle and a kind of identity politics. If you played or liked jazz you were A Certain Kind of Person in a way that mattered in the late 50s. Not so much today.

Musically it's a combination of atmosphere and passion with a cerebral edge, with harmonies that are spicy and colourful but not atonally exotic and incomprehensible.

It's improvised moment-by-moment riffs and conversations over a chord chart and some loose linear and structural traditions. It doesn't have the grand architecture of classical music or the cheeky crowd-pleasing crudity and playfulness of pop.

Genres either hit you or they don't. It's fine not to like something.

> I just don’t get jazz at all. It’s fun to mess around on stage, and play free form

IMHO, that's so unusual in a jazz setting that it's almost always expressly declared as such - ie "free jazz" or "experimental". And even that relies primarily on preparation and practice to be done well.

IMHO, performing jazz is a delicate process of painting within the lines - so that you don't tread on the toes of everyone playing with you - lines you are all expected to know if you are going to get on stage and play a specific song together - while creating the illusion that you are all just messing about. And you are doing that while navigating a complex conjugation of harmonic structures, substitutions and alternatives, while seamlessly recombining the songs' melody with jazz idioms, rehearsed licks and runs, and admittedly, some improvisation, all while you try to say something new and original that your audience will be interested to hear.

So, you have to lean a lot on preparation and personal rehearsal (and group rehearsal), because you are listening, reacting and managing so many things at once that if you can't rely on muscle memory to keep up with the chord changes, and haven't sufficiently navigated several ways through them ahead of time (what if one of your bandmates decides to reharmonize some section in a way that precludes the scales you were planning to use to get through it?), you'll fall on your face.

> love all sorts of music, play live, jam and compose...don’t get jazz

But what is your definition of "jam" then? Is it improvised at all?

I have the opposite approach; I like classical music very much and have listened to it a lot, but for many years now I've only been improvising; the idea is to sound in real time as if it were composed and practiced; meanwhile I can play a whole band live myself (e.g. http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1268). I've always found it a torture to read and learn a piece and always play it back the same (correct) way.

Out of curiosity, even the standards and big-band arrangements, or vocal stuff with Ella, Louis, or Frank?

Take a close look at Bach’s violin sonatas; they seem like jazz to me compared to a lot of his work; they have lots of wild chords with 7ths and 6ths and 2nds, they are wandering and improvisational feeling.

Some jazz gives me the same feeling you’re describing, and I think you’re onto something with it being fun to play… a lot of it is musician’s music. Watching sporting events gives me the same feeling… good for the players, not as good for me, I’d rather be playing, or doing something else.

Interesting, as most jazz is not freeform and typically follows an agreed chord sequence. Certainly, jazz improvisation tends to feature lots of notes, often played at fast tempos, but ‘messing around’ it definitely isn’t. Jazz improv requires years of concerted practice and deep thinking. If you analyse a great jazz solo, it becomes clear that it isn’t random notes, or a ‘mess’. To me it’s astonishing that anyone can create something so intricately structured on the fly. Of course, you’re free not to like it.

> I’m classically trained [...] I just don’t get jazz at all.

Listen to the Brubeck Quartet's "Dave Digs Disney".

If you still "don't get" jazz after that experience, my guess would be that your formal training installed dogmatic opinions.

The jazz/classical split is a false dichotomy. Bill Evans more or less implies that he saw himself as coming out of the classical tradition: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXAqIaUahI

This video is an excellent musing on creativity and learning that I think is relevant even for nonmusicians.

have you actually listened to "kind of blue"? or (for e.g.) "sketches of spain"? i can't see how either could be classified as "some mess", though everyone's taste is different.

I personally cannot relate to what you're saying, as I'm sure you'd feel about people saying they don't like classical. One thing that we probably can agree on though is that there is jazz out there which is definitely written to showcase the player's skill rather than to create beautiful music, which I also don't care much for.

I like some of it, but I agree with you on most of jazz. Kind of Blue is great though. It really is something special.

But as I say, I agree with you on most other Jazz though. And I'm convinced that about 80% of the people that go around saying they love jazz are just pretending to.

Also, along with Bluegrass, jazz is SO closed off to people who'd like to join in and play with a group. It's filled with gatekeepers and judgemental jerks. For instance, criticizing you for bringing a guita they don't agree with, "you can't play jazz with that, go home and get another something else there, Eddie Van Halen". Seriously, it can be that bad.

You don't have to get it. Some people don't get classical. Others don't get country and so on. I feel like sometimes treat music taste as if it was a science while it should be treated more like food. You don't all have to like or dislike the same things :)

Also, "classically trained" is irrelevant. Having a background on a specific kind of music doesn't grant you authority or insight into a different kind of music

There are so many different kinds of jazz. I guess you have not listened to Kind of Blue.

I come at improvised music more from the blues and rock end of the world than the jazz end, though I am a casual fan of Charles Mingus.

Some of that can be a mess, for sure. If you gave me one word to describe Phish, it would be "amorphous", and I wouldn't mean it as a compliment.

On the other hand, The Allman Brothers Band made a lot of magic before Duane Allman and Berry Oakley died, much of it recorded officially or bootleg. Mountain Jam grew out of Donovan's First There is a Mountain. Which is worth listening to to understand where some of the phrases come from.

Mountain Jam (and their other longer songs) has distinct movements and part of the pleasure of listening to the various recordings is to hear the variations between them. The form remains pretty constant, but the details vary.

For my money, I think the July 5th recording at the Atlanta International Pop Festival surpasses the more definitive Eat a Peach version. The Ludlow Garage version runs to 44 minutes and isn't as focused. And the July 3rd recording at Atlanta is a treat because it was interrupted by a rainstorm. The second part picks up in the middle of the song after the rain. It feels a little more experimental. Those are all comparatively easily found on official albums.

Another treat is Medeski, Martin, and Wood. I'm not hugely familiar with their catalog, but Friday Afternoon in the Universe is an example of just how close the music can sit to the brink of disaster without going over. Like, if they weren't so damn good, it would end in a dumpster fire rhythmically, but they keep it together. It's a truly impressive listen.

I just turned on Swissjazz FM, as I've never heard of it, and man yeah, if this playlist on here is what you think of as what jazz is then I agree, I don't like it either! I'd have asked them to turn it off too. The songs on this playlist are what happens when you take a traditionally Black art form, ignore all of those roots, wash it through a university, and make something that is likely going to be consumed by a white audience.

There's so much going on in 'jazz' music, but for me personally I'm always listening to it (and all music, really) rhythmically first, and all the harmonic and melodic components, everything else, comes out of the rhythm. That tends to be the opposite approach of European classical music (which of course I like too).

I don't know what your taste in music is, but there's a ton of great music out there that falls under the label jazz. Since you're in the classical world, here's some recordings that might speak to you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VlOigfm-ww

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMTHsK3MlzA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIIyCOAByDU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0O9L7KXkC0&list=OLAK5uy_l61...

And some live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_BE_gi4YkA (my friend's group)

https://youtu.be/lhgaJ_kDLPg?feature=shared&t=23 (particularly Afro Blue)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuEVN3BTFHM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA9GhIyP_zI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM5Cj8yFkOQ

I don't know, the rabbit hole is deep I could go on forever.

honestly, Fusion is about the only thing worth listening to, and even then, it's mostly wank too

suggestions: Tony Williams Lifetime, Miles Davis 1969 - 1975, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jaco, Weather Report

Davis's music is pretty much about as pure rhythm as you can get outside of electronic music. it's so far beyond jazz that you can hear so many modern genres in something like On The Corner, it's crazy. and it was hated originally, too. jazz rejected evolution, so now it's stuck as some dead academic genre

You might enjoy this lovely little anecdote from John McLaughlin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sB5UkrkMu4

You don't necessarily need to see live jazz to have some great jazz experiences in Japan.

Type in "Jazz Kissa" on google maps when you're wandering around these towns and you'll find little bars with great hifi setups that exclusively play jazz music. The reviews are pretty good for figuring out if they're worth a stop or not.

I made an effort to stop by a few on my last trip and had some great experiences.

I've been having trouble finding good ones in Tokyo. Blue Note Tokyo seems nice but is pricey and often sold out far in advance. I've seen some others I'd like to go to, but they double as cigar bars and my lungs don't enjoy smoke.

We saw a sax quintet play at The Pit Inn in October, it's a nice little basement club

I used to like jazz club Overseas in Osaka. Just a small place but very nice people. Also in Tokyo all my best experiences were at small intimate places where you got to know the owners or at least have a nice conversation about jazz with them.

They don't want tourists in them.

> I haven't been able to find out more about this, or how much it actually influenced him or his preparation for Kind of Blue, but it's about as strong an endorsement for Barry Harris's work as it gets.

You mean George Russell? And my impression is that it was influential with Miles because it was one of the early examples of the modal/horizontal approach being fleshed out as text over and above it being LCC specifically.

Harris' approach is based on what he calls the sixth diminished scale.

I'd assume. 'Mike' is a pretty common shorthand. Feels like it's more of an older generation thing to spell it like that, though.

I can't take that record off the shelf without thinking of this CBS memo.

https://i.imgur.com/2GMwXPo.jpg

If you like Bitches Brew, I would advise checking out "Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East" [1] (ideally the 1997 reissue rather than the original which was pretty heavily edited). It's like if someone took Bitches Brew and wanted to make it even more intense and hostile. Genuinely terrifying, amazing music.

[1] https://www.discogs.com/fr/release/5036048-Miles-Davis-Miles...

In A Silent Way for me. What a brilliant musician.

What's remarkable about Bitches Brew to me, is that in many ways Miles was a traditionalist, and yet his foray into the avant garde was more successful than most of his contemporaries.

That album is more challenging to appreciate for listeners new to jazz, while Kind of Blue is immediately accessible to mainstream listeners.

My favorite was his work on Miami Vice. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kLyqgd-KTRM

I'm more of a Dark Magus guy, myself.

Which, in many ways is a polar opposite to Kind of Blue. Whereas Kind of Blue is comprised almost entirely of first takes, Bitches Brew was assembled in the editing room, pulling together multiple takes and pieces to form the tracks on the album.

Who wouldn’t love them both.

But I’m partial to Miles from the Bitches Brew era as well.

I really got hooked on the reissue of the “bootleg“ 1969 European concerts a few years back. It gave a whole new perspective on his style in those years, it’s different than BB in some ways.

I think Kind of Blue is a better album but I listen to Bitches Brew more often, maybe due to greater variety of song and texture. The former is like swinging, poignant velvet, the latter a swirling, electronic groove.

I actually now think that Miles's best work was his early stuff, before _Kind of Blue_, but that has to do with changes in my general preferences around jazz.

I'm partial to Cookin. So I guess I'm on team early Miles.

I’ve come to love all sides of Miles.

Oh—it’s not only me! I just commented on Blue in Green.

Outside of that, the album overall has an association for me. I started buying jazz records in my teens in the 80s. No one guided my listening or made recommendations. I eventually came upon Kind of Blue and felt it was special. I had no idea how famous and well-loved it was. I find it interesting that even in a “blind taste test”, I converged with the critical massess.

I think there are several other tracks on the album tied for this same distinction. :)

I've been playing jazz most of my life and one of the most frustrating parts of it has been this idea that there should be some immediately obvious virtue in jazz as a musical style. If you're a musician who enjoys improvisation, chances are good that you'll be drawn to jazz, especially to recorded works from the era of albums like Kind of Blue. But you aren't some kind of philistine if it doesn't hook you.

For example, I have studied a lot of classical repertoire in order to get my technique together to improve my jazz playing, and while I appreciate those compositions, I don't really listen to them for pleasure. My opinion about their value as works of art is not based on whether I enjoy them or not. I don't enjoy many types of food but I recognize that they have enormous value to people who do enjoy them. We like what we like, and we shouldn't judge styles on the basis of whether we like them or not.

If you listen to a record like Kind of Blue and it doesn't do anything for you, don't sweat it. You wouldn't be a better person for liking it, and no true lover of jazz would judge you on the basis of whether you like that record or not. If you're genuinely curious, listen to other jazz records from the era, maybe you'll like those. If you don't, no big whoop. There's a lot of music to love. Listen to what you like.

Like many jazz albums of its era, this one uses a pretty typical standard jazz sort of formula, to wit, roughly[0]

- The whole ensemble plays an arrangement of the melody of the tune

- After playing the melody through, the group jumps into a series of alternating solos, in which each band member improvises new melodic ideas on top of the chord progression of the original melody

- After the solos are done, the original melody is returned to, either in full or an part, to recapitulate the initial theme and bring the performance to a conclusion

Do this (more or less) for each track on the album.

It's really not necessarily obvious at first. It can help to follow along with sheet music.

But what is the genius? Or, how is this particular jazz album more genius than another? Say, how is it more genius than "Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet" which was recorded earlier (and also very good)? I think a lot of it is the particular ensemble on this record. Miles brought together a lot of truly exceptional musicians, and they all brought their own bit of genius to their own performance.

If you have a jazz performance with a great trumpeter, paired with an okay pianist, an okay drummer, and an okay bassist, then the whole performance likely won't be genius. But if you pair a genius trumpeter with a genius pianist, a genius drummer, etc., then you'll likely get better results. Especially if they are all kind of genius in the same direction.

On top of that, this particular album was exploring a new compositional style that emphasized modal composition rather than the more typical dominaint-tonic-oriented composition. There was a freshness to it, both for listeners at the time, and for the players themselves. They were exploring this sort of sound for the first time, and were enjoying it, bringing that mentality to how they performed.

[0] Roughly indeed! I don't remember offhand if every track on Kind of Blue follows this exactly.

This is a fascinating comment to me. I understand not really feeling jazz, but it doesn't even sound like a song to you? My only suggestion is to jump into the middle of a few songs and try to hear the rhythm and song structure. They can often be difficult to pick up when they start slow. All Blues might be the easiest. I sincerely wish you luck, because it's really incredible music.

If you listen to that kind of jazz long enough you start hearing things. Patterns. References to other songs or standards in a solo. Two players interacting and having a kind of conversation with each other. I’ve listened to this album so many times I can play it in my mind.

If you’re really interested then listen to it enough so that it becomes somewhat familiar. You’ll be able to distinguish the structure from the improv and hear the interaction between the two. Bill Evans was a classical pianist. Maybe just focus on the piano and try to see what it’s doing in the song.

My Favorite Things by John Coltrane may be a better place to start though. It really emphasizes a familiar melody.

Make sure you’re listening to kind of blue. Not any of the extended deluxe this and that. Just the original tracks.

All the extra stuff is great, but the original is the perfect album.

What music do you typically like? There will definitely be a gateway to jazz in there somewhere.

Local man listens to Kind of Blue, remarks “So What”

The best advice I can give anyone trying to appreciate jazz is to think of it like listening to a conversation in an unfamiliar foreign language. You don't have to understand the literal meaning of the words/notes to infer their emotional tone, pacing, and the ebb and flow of the conversation. Jazz in this way is an abstraction of spoken language. It communicates a vibe or general emotional landscape that you can interrupt for yourself in a personal way.

As a more accessible starting point I'd actually recommend Miles Davis's Porgy and Bess album. It's a hybrid of Gershwin's composed music and jazz. Being more structured than most jazz recordings it will give you some context/framework to enjoy the jazzy parts. Most of the songs are short and digestible.

You could try Dave Brubeck "time out" as an introduction to jazz, it is awesome in many ways and has quite a few catchier tunes. Also Bill Evans Trio and listen to that first. Only problem is that you'll be addicted for life afterward, but it's not that bad as a habit :-)

This is like grabbing a book from a Japanese store and complaining that it just seems like a mishmash of strokes. You don't just grab a Japanese book. You learn what it is first, the different writing systems, the grammar and then you start reading small sentences that build into paragraphs then groups of paragraphs. Then pages and then eventually books.

Familiarise yourself with the standards and then let the infinitude of variations of them be your journey to the PRACTICE of jazz

If you don't like So What without an explanation then I just don't think it is for you.

I love lamb vindaloo too but if you take a bite and don't like it..maybe a few repeated exposures might adjust your palette or it just might not be to your taste.

Nothing wrong with that. So What though was just instant love for me.

It certainly helps to be a musician though too. I can't really separate Coltrane's playing from the appreciation for his virtuosity.

People are acting all shocked, but I do feel that jazz is an acquired taste. Go listen to something like Jazz at the Pawnshop by Arne Domnérus - it's lighter and more playful. If you're into electronic music, you can also listen to nu jazz and acid jazz records to get some of the jazz "vocabulary" mixed into other genres.

Why do you want to listen to it if you don't like it? It's music that moves a lot of people, and gives an incredible depth if you want to also analyze it. If you don't even get touched emotionally then it's not for you.

Walk through New York City. You will hear a "mishmash of sounds", and perhaps begin to understand.

Yeah agreed, always thought it was an average album.

If you aren't used to the conversation it sounds too foreign to be appreciated. You'll likely have had the experience of being around foreign language speakers, some you'll be more comfortable with than others even though you don't understand a word that are saying. Think Manga with the subtitles on or Italian opera. So it is with musicians and their jazz conversation. It takes a lot of experience and listening to really feel the jam and synchronisation. It's very rewarding if you put the time in. Took me ten years or so mainly invested in just three lauded jazz albums.

Who said that?