sábado, agosto 04, 2007

Miles Davis: Kind of blue


Do I really need to say something? Well... I guess so for those guys who don't know what is this album about. After you hear and find out what is this album you'll understand why I don't really need to say something.

Kind of Blue is a jazz album by musician Miles Davis, released on August 17, 1959. As of January 16, 2002, it has been certified triple platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America. Though precise figures have been disputed, Kind of Blue has been cited as Davis's best-selling album, and as the best-selling jazz record of all time. It is also counted by many as the greatest jazz album of all time and ranks at or near the top of many "best album" lists in disparate genres.

Conceptions: By late 1958, Davis employed one of the best and most profitable working bands pursuing the hard bop style, his personnel stabilized to alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Wynton Kelly, long-serving bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. His band played a mixture of pop standards and bebop originals by the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Tadd Dameron; as with all bebop-based jazz, Davis's groups improvised on the chord changes of a given song.

However, Davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop, seeing its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering creativity. In 1953, pianist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which offered an alternative to the practice of improvisation based on chords. Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of Western music, Russell invented a new formulation using scales or a series of scales for improvisations; this approach came to be known as modal in jazz.

Influenced by Russell's ideas, Davis implemented his first modal composition with the title track of his 1958 album Milestones. Satisfied with the results, Davis now prepared an entire album based on modality. Pianist Bill Evans, also an enthusiast of Russell, but recently departed from the Davis band to pursue his own career, was successfully drafted in to the new recording project - the sessions that would become Kind of Blue.

Musicians:

* Miles Davis – trumpet, leader
* Julian "Cannonball" Adderley – alto saxophone, except on "Blue in Green"
* John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
* Wynton Kelly – piano, only on "Freddie Freeloader"
* Bill Evans – piano, liner notes
* Paul Chambers – bass
* Jimmy Cobb – drums

Track List:

1. "So What" – 9:22
2. "Freddie Freeloader" – 9:46
3. "Blue in Green" – 5:37
4. "All Blues" – 11:33
5. "Flamenco Sketches" (take 2) – 9:26
6. "Flamenco Sketches" (alternate - take 1, featured on the 1997 reissue as a previously unreleased bonus track) – 9:32

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