Today marks the birthday of jazz great Miles Davis, who, on
the very day of my birth in 1959, released his landmark album Kind of Blue. For today’s post, I
entertained the possibility of selecting a track from a different album—the
main contenders were Sketches of Spain
(1960) and Bitches’ Brew (1970)—but I
feel I have to honor myself in this indirect way and go with the album that
began its public life when I began my life.
It’s also the first entire Davis album I heard. I got a CD
of it in 2009—50 years after its release, you’ll note—and that led to me
eventually acquiring the other two albums I named. I have a Miles and Coltrane
compilations album, and an early Miles compilation album as well. When I
returned to vinyl in 2011, I got Kind of
Blue and Sketches and Bitches on nice audiophile copies. Ah,
the fetish of listening.
The track I picked from Kind
of Blue is of course the opening track, “So What.” The other frontrunner
was the track that opens Side Two, “Green in Blue,” but that’s the one that, it
seems, was actually written by pianist Bill Evans, or at least should be seen
as a collaboration. Seems that, on his birthday, I should pick a track Davis
wrote, indisputably. The latter is the “bluest” song on the album and I’m very
fond of it. Both it and “So What,” I’m told, are exemplars of Davis’ new modal
approach to jazz music, to offset the reliance on chords of be-bop. I couldn’t
have told you what the structural difference is, but I can say that be-bop, to
my ears, is generally a bit too frantic, I guess because the imperative to
improvise on a song’s chords promotes constant innovation. It gets a bit
fatiguing on the ears, to me.
That is never the case with Kind of Blue. Its ability to hold long notes and to let sounds sort
of drift is what gives the album its peculiar fascination, to me. Every track
feels like it’s meandering, even when there is a pretty steady propulsion going
on, as with “So What.” That bassline in the first minute of the track gives a
lively basis to the opening, after those clear and pure notes from Evans’ piano.
The intro, like the intro to Mingus’s “Better Git It In Your Soul,” is the
part of the track I know best. Up till that great cymbal crash about 1:30 and
then Miles steps in and the trumpet starts speaking. The little descend he does
as he announces himself is probably the most instantly recognizable part of the
track to me. He seems to step into the space the sound is creating. After that,
it becomes a succession of leads—including Coltrane on, I believe, tenor
sax—that draw toward, eventually, that little progression that becomes so
familiar as the “tune” of the piece.
What is the track’s mood? To me, it has a kind of
insouciance that makes it match well its title. It’s romantic in its trumpet
sounds, primarily, but not always. Davis also plays it cool at times and lets
little flourishes remind us of the modern city and its pace. It’s a very urban
sound, a kind of soundscape that is never wholly silent, but has quiet passages
that underscore the more cutting sounds. Even when instruments begin to overlap
and the drummer’s brushes seem to be going like mad, the track never feels
frantic. It’s not mellow either. It’s a sound that matches a certain up late at
night and letting the hours unwind kind of vibe. Stick around till 6:55 on the track when Davis
does this little bit that then gets underscored by the piano; that segue is
probably my favorite part, feeling like a sudden agreement or sun after shower.
That till the end is like a sunset drive, full of possibility, with the
little notes from the horn giving it a feel of something coming, while marking
time. Then we’re back to that great bass part again.
Davis is the jazz composer/musician I’ve listened to the
most and so, to an extent, he defines jazz for me, and nothing does that more
than Kind of Blue, which, when I was not so happy and struck with serious back pain, I would sometimes play on repeat for 6 or 8 hours straight. So what?
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