MILES DAVIS Kind of Blue

THE LAST
KING OF
AMERICA:
HOW MILES DAVIS INVENTED MODERNITY

We shall not cease from exploration
T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding i
I
Im not thinking about anybody but myself when we
play. I mean, how is my audience gonna move me?
I know that if I dont move myself, then its no good.
Miles Davis, 1973 ii
By 1959, the year when the album Kind of
Blue was recorded, trumpeter Miles Davis had
become one of the most famous jazz musicians
of his generation (post-World War II), a cele-
brated and singular personality in his culture
and in a profession where unusual and uncon-
ventional sorts were the rule, not the exception.
He stood at a pinnacle, at a moment of mastery
not only of his music but also of his moment.
This was no small achievement as the jazz per-
former is driven equally by talent; insufferable
ego; obsessive, insular training and focus;
blind confidence; self-destructive habits; and
the abject fear of creative failure. Any sus-
tained imbalance of these elements, a precar-
ious alchemy at best, will not produce anything
but an artist who never realized or only dimly
saw his or her gift, the stillborn genius or the
anguished one-work wonder. Davis had his fair
share of all these qualities and attributes, as
uncertainly poised as molecules in a volatile
formula. He played upon his strengths and
weaknesses and bedeviled his audience with
them for adulation as much as those strengths
and weaknesses played upon and bedeviled
him. He was both feared and admired, and ad-
mired for being feared as an imposing, tem-
peramental, seemingly evil-minded artist: Lord
Byron on a bandstand. (Both Davis and Byron
liked boxing and both were cruel to women.)
This was clearly at the time a remarkably new
public persona for a black man to assume but
Davis, undaunted by its daring, wore it with the
panache of swashbuckler.
Im a musician, I aint no comedian, he
once growled at nightclub owner Max Gordon,
I dont smile, I dont bow. I turn my back . . .
The white man always wants you to smile, al-
ways wants the black man to bow. I dont
smile, and I dont bow. Ok? Im here to play
music. Im a musician.iii These barks of artis-
tic grouchiness, minor enough in most re-
spects, were nearly revolutionary in the 1950s:
first, Davis was insisting that as a black man he
was entitled to be respected on his own terms
for the performance of his craft; second, Davis
was insisting that being a musician, always a
suspect profession in the United States, was
worthy of respect and was quite different from
being an entertainer. (Davis had nothing per-
sonal against entertainers and often went to
see them perform. He just wanted to make it
clear to the public that he was not one of
them.) Davis never thought he was there to en-
tertain his audience in the way a tap dancer, a
magician, or an acrobat might. How Daviss de-
mand for dignity struck the public beyond the
fact that many people were intrigued or even,
horror of horrors, entertained by it is unclear.
Some surely thought he was a snob, others that
he was overly sensitive (a common charge
against a member of a persecuted minority who
gets prickly), and still others probably thought
he was simply engaging in an especially ornery
form of special pleading. It is little wonder that
Davis emerged as a public figure at the same
time as novelist/essayist James Baldwin. De-
spite the considerable differences between the
two men, their upbringing, their temperament,
they served the same needs for both their black
and white publicspride and racial break-
through for blacks, encounter and racial re-
thinking for whites. (The two men were also
alike in two important respectsthey were
small men with artistic bents who were the old-
est sons in their families.) Davis changed his
culture by changing how whites saw black
artists and how whites and blacks understood
jazz. He was not alone in doing this but he was
a major figure in transforming America.
II
Having money has helped me once in a while, but
Im not looking for help. Im even the one thats the
helper, helping people by playing my music.
Miles Davis, 1972 iv
What made Davis extraordinary was that by the
end of the 1950s, he gave every impression to
the public of being a highly exploratory, prob-
ing musician while never seeming at all outside
the mainstream of what jazz was becoming or
had become since World War II. The great
achievement of Kind of Blue was that it was an
experimental record, experimental music, that
never seemed at all experimental. Ironically,
what made the music seem so fresh and ap-
pealing to listeners, even to people who dis-
liked jazz, was that all of it seemed so familiar.
The music never put you on the spot as a lis-
tener by revealing your inadequacies to appre-
ciate it. This is usually how many of the most
significant artistic innovations have worked:
the audience is taken somewhere its never
been while passing a lot of well-known
signposts. Kind of Blue was experimental in
several ways:
1. The music itself, as nearly every commenta-
tor has pointed out, was built on scales and not
chords, as was traditional for the jazz performer
who needed chords (and fake books) as the
building blocks for solos. But what has been
less noticed is that the intention of moving
away from chords was to free both the soloist
and the music itself from being over-deter-
mined and predictable, to make the music
more spontaneous and instinctive and not a lot
of virtuosic strategizing about running through
a set of chords; in short, to make jazz less bor-
ing as instrumental music. This is exactly what
Ornette Coleman was doing in 1959 with his
album, The Shape of Jazz to Come, and with
his controversial gig at the Five Spot the same
year, albeit with a different theory. The aim was
the same: to free the soloist and the music
from routine and to re-establish the rigors of
creating improvisational composition by re-cre-
ating the conventions of the discipline within
which it was generated. Davis did this in Kind
of Blue without any sense of self-conscious-
ness that what was being done was new or the-
oretical, unlike Coleman, which is one reason
why Daviss album became so popular and be-
came, not a signifier of the new or the revolu-
tionary, which would have dated it, but rather,
more strikingly, a signifier of the hip and the
cool, which made it timeless.
2. Kind of Blue harkened back to Daviss Birth
of the Cool sessions of 1949 and 1950 in
being a very self-aware collaboration between
black and white musicians, a stylistic and cul-
tural fusion, in much the way his Columbia
Records orchestral collaborations with arranger
Gil Evans were. Clearly, white pianist Bill Evans
was central to the concept and success of Kind
of Blue, which is why Columbia had him write
the liner notes, although he was upset in later
 THE PLAZA, NYC, SEPTEMBER 1958



years that he did not get as much credit for his
collaboration as he should have, especially
monetary and composer credit. (Composer
theft in jazz was quite commonplace. A musi-
cian had to watch his tunes as much as he did
his money. Did Davis really write Blue in
Green or Flamenco Sketches? Did Davis re-
ally write Nardis or Milestones? We will
never really know for sure.) Davis himself over
the years had mixed feelings about his collab-
orations with white musicians. In an interview
with Nat Hentoff published in 1958, he said,
Boy, Ive sure learned a lot from Bill Evans.
He plays the piano the way it should be played.
He plays all kinds of scales; can play in 5/4;
and all kinds of fantastic things. Theres such
a difference between him and Red Garland
whom I also like a lot. Red carries the rhythm,
but Bill underplays it, and I like that better.v
In a 1973 interview, at a time when Davis
spoke more harshly about whites and about
race, he said, Let them [the critics] say it. I
dont care what they say. As long as I been
playing they never say I done anything. They
always say that some white guy did it.vi But
the blending of black and white jazz is key to
the mystique of the album.
3. Kind of Blue would not have been possible
if the LP did not exist. It was jazz conceived
for the record album, not only because of the
playing times of the tunes but also because of
how the album creates an overall mood. Kind
of Blue is not simply a series of tracks as the
standard small group jazz album of the day
was. Kind of Blue was one of the few jazz
records of its time that had a sense of narra-
tive, a cohesive inter-relation between the
tunes. It was a work, not a bunch of disparate
tunes used to pace a small group jazz album:
one fast-tempo piece, one ballad, one blues,
one or two standards, a bop-oriented original.
The sense of the album as an organic whole
added to its appeal.
4. Kind of Blue, its sonic accessibility, its mod-
erate-to-slow tempi, its inspired but tempered
performances, was an album that was tailor-
made for the Columbia House Record Club,
started four years earlier (1955) as a way to
generate a mail order business for LPs. Here
was a jazz album that would appeal to both
Middle America as a kind of hip mood music as
well as to jazz fans and purists as state-of-the-
art, uncompromised jazz: non-commercial jazz
for commercial or aspiring taste. Kind of Blue,
in other words, was one of those records, along
with Dave Brubecks Time Out, another Colum-
bia jazz record released in 1959, that made
jazz a middlebrow music, a respectable music
for middle-class, educated people who felt they
had refined taste. This was enormously impor-
tant for Davis both commercially and artisti-
cally for the rest of his career. As jazz ceased
to be dance music, it needed middlebrow sta-
tus in order to survive as art music. Davis was
essential in making this transformation possible.
NEWPORT, JULY 1958
Miles and Guests
 Yeah, you have to come up through those ranks. They can always do that; but you dont hear anybody

III doing that old shit with me. You know, some guys are still playing all that shit we did years ago, things I
did with Bird and stuff; theyre still using those clichs and calling it jazz. Black guys as well as white
guys. I hear it over and over againshit Ive even forgotten. Miles Davis, 1972 vii

What drove Miles Davis? In part, the masculine
sense of competition that always characterized
the life of the working jazz musician who
wanted more than just a gig at the corner bar.
The jazz musician had to have his own voice,
survive jam sessions and cutting contests, tol-
erate long trips on the road and playing in un-
congenial, sub-standard venues, and endure
withering criticism from colleagues and critics
without being fazed by it. In short, a successful
jazz musician with a national reputation had to
be a fairly tough or fairly stoic s.o.b. (More so,
if a woman.) For Davis in 1959, for instance,
was surrounded by more living and working
jazz musicians than any comparable figure is
today, if only because jazz is less listened to
and less performed today and fewer people,
from necessity, practice the craft as once did.
But in the late 1950s, old heads from earlier
eras were still around and still playing well and
working regularly like Harry James and Henry
Red Allen. The great Louis Armstrong, the
inventor of modern jazz trumpeting and mod-
ern jazz singing, had released two years earlier
his Musical Autobiography, which revealed
that Pops was still the master of the realm and
remained an extraordinarily compelling soloist.
There were Daviss influences and teachers like
Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge, Ray Nance, and Buck
Clayton, still alive and kicking. There were
Daviss contemporaries like Dizzy Gillespie,
Chet Baker (the blonde bombshell, the James
Dean of jazz, who could also sing languid bal-
lads), Shorty Rodgers, Maynard Ferguson, the
teenage wonder, Lee Morgan, Booker Little,
Kenny Dorham, Donald Byrd, Freddie Hub-
bard, and the ghost of the recently and tragi-
cally deceased Clifford Brown. By the end of
the 1950s, Davis eclipsed them all, had thor-
oughly stamped the age of post-war jazz, had
made himself a leader in the way the other
great trumpeters, indeed, other jazz musicians
of comparable skill, had not: as a virtuoso who
did not have the skills of the virtuoso but had
the virtuosos feelings, sense of flair for the
dramatic, sense of risk and brinksmanship. He
was also, by 1959, the hero and the villain of
his own self-constructed myth: the bad, uncouth
BIRDLAND, NYC, 1959

black man and the brooding black genius. That shocked the nation in the way no other racial Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for Maud Martha,
he was able to do this as a black man was a lynching had. The southern white reaction to novelist Ralph Ellison won the National Book
sign of his will and a sign of the changing the integration of Central High School in Little Award for fiction in 1952 for Invisible Man,
times. Rock outraged even Louis Armstrong, not and playwright Lorraine Hansberry won the
The idea that the 1950s were some tran- known for public expressions of militancy or Drama Critics Circle Award in 1959 for A
quil time of We Like Ike and the white subur- racial displeasure. Blacks were now actively Raisin in the Sun. In other realms, Dorothy
ban pastoral, of the nuclear family and and publicly protesting their second-class sta- Dandridge was nominated for an Oscar for
traditional values, is largely a thought clich. It tus. But it was also the time of stunning playing the title role in Carmen Jones (1955);
was more a time of jittery transition: a bloody crossover for blacks as their talents for the first singer Nat King Cole had a television show
three-year war in Korea that ended in a stale- time were recognized by the guardians of high (briefly); and blacks organized to have the tel-
mate opened the decade (and lasted nearly as culture: poet Gwendolyn Brooks won the evised version of the famous radio program
long as our time in World War II); McCarthyism
cast a long shadow of fear, loathing, and mis-
trust over the land and made un-American a
common expression in our language; Atomic
bombs were tested in the desert as nuclear war
seemed imminent; the Russians launched
Sputnik in 1957 and started the space race;
Fidel Castro seized Cuba in 1959 and for the
next several years the United States tried un-
successfully to assassinate him as it fought
communism with a half-crazed foreign policy;
and juvenile delinquency raged across the
nation.
Race relations began to change as both
blacks and liberal whites challenged Jim Crow
segregation and the state-sanctioned political
and economic degradation of blacks. Just five
years before Kind of Blue was recorded, the
United States Supreme Court declared state-
sponsored segregation unconstitutional in
Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. The
Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56 made
Martin Luther King, Jr. a household name and
was the beginning of the end of white southern
privilege. The horrific murder of 14-year old
Emmitt Till in 1955 galvanized blacks and
54th PRECINCT, NYC, AUGUST 1959
Miles Davis with wife Frances Taylor


Amos and Andy taken off the air. Miles Davis
emerged as a national figure during this time
as something like a militant race man but also
a firm integrationist. And he was never, fortu-
nately, a doctrinaire leftist but he shrewdly cul-
tivated an image of himself as something of an
iconoclast who valued establishment, Playboy
magazine-type ideas of masculine success: a
nice home with modern art and more modern
gadgets; lovely women as trophies; expensive,
well-tailored clothes, and fast, foreign cars.
Davis was always a man who was fascinated by
his own hunger, as he fascinated the public
with how he fed his appetites and rages. He
had no sentiment. He had no nostalgia. Noth-
ing he had done would ever be a reference for
what he would do: that was the definition of
modernity and that was what jazz was sup-
posed to be. Nothing more, nothing less.
Kind of Blue was recorded in two sessions:
March 2 and April 22, 1959. It was released
on August 17. A week later, on August 25,
Davis was beaten and arrested by white New
York City policemen while standing around in
front of the nightclub where he was playing,
enjoying a cigarette between sets, after escort-
ing a white woman from the club to catch a
cab. This made him an instant civil rights hero
and, as much as anything, legitimatized him
with blacks and with the young as something of
a rebel with a cause. That image of himself
may have been tarnished and a bit battered
over the years, but Davis was never to lose it.
GERALD EARLY, June 2008
Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at
Washington University in St. Louis. His liner notes have been
nominated twice for Grammy Awards. He is currently the series
editor for Best African American Essays and Best African
American Fiction. Both volumes will debut in the spring of
2009.
i
T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays,
1909-1950, p. 145
ii
Gary Carner (ed.), The Miles Davis Compan-
ion: Four Decades of Commentary, (New York:
Schirmer Books, 1996), p. 153
iii
Gary Carner (ed.), The Miles Davis Compan-
ion: Four Decades of Commentary, p. 94
iv
Gary Carner (ed.), The Miles Davis Compan-
ion: Four Decades of Commentary, p. 122
v
Gary Carner (ed.), The Miles Davis Compan-
ion: Four Decades of Commentary, p. 89
vi
Gary Carner (ed.), The Miles Davis Compan-
ion: Four Decades of Commentary, p. 155
vii
Gary Carner (ed.), The Miles Davis Compan-
ion: Four Decades of Commentary, p. 120
BETWEEN THE TAKES


 oday at Sony, an official re- star cast of improvisers. The cool confidence

T
quest to review the reel-to- of a star bandleader.
reel tapes from the typical, To Miles and his men in 1959, Kind of
late 50s session at 30th Blue was another day at work. The closest we
Street StudioJohnny Mathis may come to witnessing such a melodic, mas-
or Doris Day, Duke Ellington terpiece of a workday follows.
or Miles Davisbrings up boxes upon boxes of
reels. But the Kind of Blue sessions hardly
dented the tape budget. Three reels of Scotch
190, at the time a workhorse product of the
recording industry, hold all that was recorded
at those two historic dates in 1959.
One reel is the assembled master, spliced
together from two master session reels to cre-
ate the original release of Kind of Blue in its fa-
miliar sequence. It is this reel from which
successive editions of the album were created
for almost forty years; despite the estimable
shelf life of the tape brand, it was retired as
splices fell apart and the tape began to deteri-
orate. Then there is a safety master from each
of the sessions. It is on these two reels that one
can hear what is normally dismissed as record-
ing detritus: a few false starts, a number of
take breakdowns, and the studio chatter that
took place when the record button was lit.
Its not much, but it reveals a lot. Beyond
the mere novelty of hearing Miles Daviss
hoarse voice, much can be gleaned through fo-
cused listening: the innovative methods used
to create the unusual styles and exceedingly
simple structures on Kind of Blue. The analog
recording process in the heyday of high-fidelity.
The camaraderie and comedy shared by an all-

FIRST SESSIONMARCH 2, 19592:30 PM
FREDDIE FREELOADER
studio sequence 1
Irving Townsend: The machines on . . .
Miles Davis: Him, me, him, you . . .
IT: Here we go: CO 62290, no title, Take 1 . . .
Unidentified: . . . B-flat on the end?
MD: Hey Wynton, after Cannonball, you play
again and then well come in and end it.
Freddie Freeloader, Take 1Davis whistles
after the eighth bar, cutting off the take.
MD: It was too fast.
IT: Miles, where you going to work now?
MD: Right here.
IT: OK, cause if you move back we dont get
you. You were right when you played before . . .
MD: When I play Im going to raise my horn a
little bit. Can I move this down a little bit?
(moves microphone)
Cannonball Adderley: The unions gonna bust
you.
IT: Its against policy to move a microphone . . .
(laughs)
Fred Plaut: Just remain . . . (Townsend releases
the talk-back button, cutting off the engineers
German-accented remark)
IT: Here we go. Ready? Number 2 . . .
Between production budgets, the studio clock,
technical snafus, and other unforeseen pres-
sures, recording sessions can be intense
enough to bring even the most laid-back band-
leader to a boil. Miles Daviss short-fuse repu-
tation was well established by 1959, yet from
the outset of the first of two sessions that
yielded Kind of Blue, all seems easy-going and
. . . fun. Out of the public eye and in his
circleamong familiar sidemen and studio
staffDavis was in his element. He and the
producer Irving Townsend share a laugh when
he moves a microphone, both Adderley and
Townsend pointing out that maneuvering
equipment in Columbias studio was exclu-
sively a union responsibility.
Daviss dialogue also revealed a flexibility
in restructuring music in the moment. As the
tape started rolling, Davis was caught instruct-
ing Wynton Kelly to return for one chorus after
Cannonball Adderleys statement on Freddie
Freeloader, which effectively creates an en-
ergy-shifting buffer between the cycle of solos
and the closing theme of the tune.
In choosing to first record Freddie Free-
loader that afternoon (it would become the
second track on Kind of Blue) Davis even
seems mindful of his sidemen. It would be the
sole album track featuring Wynton Kelly, who
was then holding the piano chair in Daviss
group vacated the previous November by Bill
Evans.
Kelly had been informed of the recording
session, but not that his predecessor was play-
ing on most of the tracks. Wynton used to
come to the gigs from Brooklyn by cab because
he couldnt stand the subway, Jimmy Cobb re-
members. So he saw Bill sitting at the piano
and was flabbergasted! He said, Damn, I
rushed all the way over here and someone else
is sitting at the piano! I said, Hold it before
you go off, youre on the date too.
Whether to minimize Kellys time at the
session, reassure him of his continuing posi-
tion at Daviss side, or both, Davis helped mat-
ters by calling on Kelly first. When the clock is
ticking, a smart bandleader knows the value of
avoiding dramaor of fueling it, as Davis was
also wont to do.
FREDDIE FREELOADER false start
Take 3 of Freddie Freeloader makes it
through the familiar theme (loosely based on
the melody of Soft Winds) and makes it into
Wynton Kellys solo. Before the second chorus
of the piano ends, Miles whistles off the take.
MD: Hey look Wynton, dont play no chord
going into the A-flat . . .
Three points of interest here: first, even after
the third take of Freddie, Miles is still tin-
kering, making small structural changes after
calling off the performance with a whistle
rather than a shout (made necessary by the
permanent damage he caused his vocal chords
in 1955 after getting into a shouting match
with a club manager).
Second, despite Daviss general compul-
sion to simplify harmonic rigidity using a modal
approach on most of Kind of Blue, he was still
a stickler for structural precisionwilling to
call off a take as Kelly misses an unusual, but
significant structural twist during his solo.
Davis created Freddie as a 24-bar blues aesthetic.
rather than the standard 12-bar formand he
wanted that form followed.
And third, as a bandleader, Davis gave
minimum instruction. He never told anyone
what to play but would say, Man, you dont
need to do that, Adderley recalled in a 1972
radio interview. Miles really told everybody
what not to do. I heard him and dug it.
FREDDIE FREELOADER
studio sequence 2
IT: Here we go. This is Insert 1, Take 1
Sound of finger-snapping
muffled voice: . . . last 4 bars?
MD: No. Wait a minute . . . its the last 12 bars.
Chambers solos for one chorus, and the horns
join in for the closing theme.
MD: All right?
IT: Yeah.
MD: Lets hear a little bit of it.
IT: Right.
Yes, in the studio or on the stage, Davis fol-
lowed a first idea, best idea philosophy. He
once famously admonished George Coleman,
one of a string of renowned saxophone players,
when he heard him practicing in his hotel
room; the bandleader wanted him to save his
freshest ideas for that nights gig. Of more than
30 albums in the Davis discography, Kind of
Blue is one of the strongest examples of that
Yet, that Davis felt the need to rerecord
the closing theme of Freddie with the intent
of later splicing it onto the end of the first com-
plete take (hence Townsend dubbed it an In-
sert) shows Davis also felt a priority in the
final product. He was never the puristneither
in jazz styles nor record making. Tape splicing
created almost all of the tracks on Miles
Ahead, his first collaboration with Gil Evans,
in 1957. Echo made his lonely trumpet sound
all the lonelier on Kind of Blue (an echo cham-
ber had been built into the basement at 30th
Street Studio). Synthesizers and MIDI technol-
ogy helped Davis update the sound of fusion
thirty years later. If it created a better record-
ing, he was all for it.
This is the first time the only Insert take
for Freddie Freeloader has been available.
SO WHAT studio sequence 1
The door to the control room closes and foot-
steps approach the talkback microphone.
IT: Here we go.
MD: Wait a minute.
IT: CO 62291, number 2, Take 1.
MD: Wait one minute
Cannonball Adderley: One short second . . .
PC: Gimme a D, Bill.
Bill Evans plays a note on the piano to help
Paul Chambers tune his bass, which he
checks, playing with the bow.
IT: Number 2, Take 1.
Chambers plays the opening sequence to the
So What prelude and Evans answers with a
series of haunting chords. A voice calls off the
take in the studio.
IT: Start again please.
With deliberate focus and at an even more lan-
guid tempo than the released take, Evans and
Chambers played the So What prelude. The
bassist ended the section with a long, low note
that edged toward distortion (begging the ques-
tion why Townsend did not halt the take at this
point). Chambers played the familiar So
What theme, Evans added punctuation, and
as they completed the first chorus the rustle of
paper is heard.
IT: Hold it . . . sorry . . . listen, we gotta watch
it because if theres noise all the way through
this. This is so quiet to begin with, that every
click sounds . . .
MD: (unintelligible, to a sideman)
Unidentified: All right . . .
IT: Watch the snare toowere picking up
some of the vibrations on it.
MD: Well that goes with it.
IT: What?
MD: All that goes with it.
IT: All right (chuckles)not all the other noises
though . . . Take 2.
By 1959, the relationship between producer
and artist was rapidly moving away from the
former in total charge, determining all (song
selection, final takes) to a more equal-minded
approach. Instructions were no longer simply
barked from control room to studio. Producers
were becoming careful to make decisions
jointly and to speak more as a partner over the
talkback.
That Davis answers Townsends chiding
about studio noise certainly stems from a need
to respond with wit or feigned challenge. But
what a perfect and revealing reply: One need
only think of Daviss embracing of electronics
in the 60s, and rhythmic layering in the 70s,
to know Davis was not one to pass up the
chance to exploit an unexpected sound or mu-
sical flavor.
SO WHAT studio sequence 2
The final take of So What ends somewhat
jaggedly; a gentle fade out was eventually used
on the album.
CA: (singing) With a sooong in my heart . . .
Probably PC: (singing the So What theme)
Dik-dik-du-gong . . . dit-dit . . .
Why Adderley chose a Rodgers and Hart com-
position with which to express himself, and
dispel the sobriety of So What, who knows?
Perhaps a certain melodic or harmonic similar-
ity between the two triggered the choice. Per-
haps it was simply Adderleys sense of humor:
juxtaposing the old and the newa slightly
mushy lyric (With a song in my heart/I behold
your adorable face/Just a song at the start/But
it soon is a hymn to your grace) with the hip,
bittersweet elegance of So What.
Speaking of hip: how finger-snappingly
effective is the primary theme to So What? It
is certainly the most instantly recognized
melody on Kind of Blueand arguably one of
the most easily recalled in modern jazz. Its
easy-going yet strong enough to leave its im-
print no matter the fidelity: a high quality stu-
dio recording, a whistle heard from a passing
stranger.
The voice singing the theme probably
belongs to Chambers, who, after playing it for
the first time, apparently could not get it out of
his headthe magical, melodic quality every
songwriter strives to create.
BLUE IN GREEN studio sequence
IT: Just you four guys on this, right Miles?
MD: Five . . . No, you play.
Faintly perceptible in the background is
Evanss voice, directing the structure of the
tune.
IT: CO 62292Number 3, Take 1
The take ends almost immediately. Evans ab-
breviates the introduction, leading to a brief
confirmation of the form.
Bill Evans: We better do that again . . .
PC: Can we start on the last four bars?
BE: Thats what I thought . . .
MD: Last four bars, but then you repeat it.
BE: Oh, do it twice.
MD: So its eight.
BE: All right . . .
Finger snaps
IT: Take 2
Evans plays the introduction, and Miless
muted trumpet is heard as Cobb starts playing
the snare, using only one brush to achieve a
lighter feel than normal. Chambers hits a
wrong note and the take breaks down.
Unintelligible studio chatter
MD: Use both hands, Jimmy.
Jimmy Cobb: Huh?
MD: Just use both hands and play it the best
way you can. You know, itll be all right.
Theres a wealth of details evident in the
dialogue preceding the last tune that day:
As Townsends question seems to suggest,
Blue in Green may have been originally in-
tended as a quartet performancea more con-
tained meeting of Davis and Evans, the two ar-
chitects behind Kind of Blue. At the last
minute, the bandleader informs John
Coltranewhose talent at imbuing a down-
tempo ballad with heart-breaking delicacy was
then gaining renownthat he should play as
well. Note Daviss standard protocol: he
informs the producer first, then asks, or rather
tells Coltrane to play on the tune.
In 1986, keyboardist and journalist Ben
Sidran asked Davis about Kind of Blue: Does
the success of that record surprise you, Miles?
It seems to have been such a simple record in
a lot of ways. Not back then, Davis replied.
Because Bill Evans, his approach to the piano
brought that . . . out. He used to bring me
pieces by Ravel . . . and Bill used to tell me
about different modes, which I already knew.
It seemed to require effort at times, but Davis
never denied Evanss contribution to, or the
collaborative heart of Kind of Blue. Nowhere is
their teamwork more evident than in the ramp-
up to the final take of Blue in Green. Evans
took an active role for the first time during the
session as the two speak and work out the
structure of the tune.
Jimmy Cobb remembers when recording
Blue in Green Daviss instruction was
simple. I want a floating sound. Uhhh, OK.
Cobbs response was to try a one-handed ap-
proach to the brushes. After hearing the result,
Davis urged him to play the brushes normally.
SECOND SESSIONAPRIL 22, 19592:30 PM
FLAMENCO SKETCHES
studio sequence 1
CA: Damn thing, right?
MD: Hey Cannon . . .
Studio chatter and bass playing is heard.
IT: Take 2.
MD: Wait a minute Irving . . . wait.
IT: OK.
MD: (to CA) Hey when you raise up off the stool
man you get . . . oh yeah! (laughter)
MD: (to IT) You know your floor squeaks, you
know. You know what I mean? Can you hear
me?
IT: Yeah!
Unidentified: unintelligible
General laughter.
MD: Lets go!
CA: Thats surface noise you know.
PC wipes bass.
BE: . . . surf-ass noise.
JC: Its all part of the tune, man.
CA: (laughs) Surf-ASS noise!
IT: Here we go. Take 2 . . .
The members of the Miles Davis group arrived
in jolly spirits for the second session that
produced music for Kind of Blue. The feeling
must have been infectious. In reference to
Davis insisting on keeping the rattle from the
open snare on So What at the last session,
Townsend announced (or slated as its known
in studio parlance) the first take of the after-
noon as Surface Noise.
The good humor persisted: Davis pointed
out to Adderley that his chair would make a
noise if he stood up during the take, to which
the alto saxophonist responded with a zinger
that made Davis chuckle, who then baited
Townsend by complaining about the studio
floor squeaking. The producer acknowledged
the ribbing, as Adderley dismissed the con-
cern, calling it surface noise. Unable to re-
sist a quick pun, Evans chimes in with his own
zinger and Coltrane mimics Daviss contention
that any studio noise is part of the perform-
ance. Adderleycatching Evanss pun a beat
laterlaughs and repeats his line. Not a high
point of improvised comedy, but an amusing
snapshot of the bonhomie often in play at
Daviss sessions back then.
FLAMENCO SKETCHES
studio sequence 2
Miles cuts off Take 4 with a long trill.
MD: Lets try it again Irving.
IT: Ready . . . Take 5, Miles.
At the first modal transition, Evans comes in
early.
MD: Youre not watching, Bill.
BE: I know. Im sorry.
MD: Try it again Irving.
IT: Right, 6!

Flamenco Sketches was one of two highly
unusual musical structures on Kind of Blue
(the other being the 10-bar circular form of
Blue in Green). Amazingly, the sextet pro-
duces a relatively smooth, complete take on
the first try. Convinced they can do better,
Davis directed the group through a few more
attempts before nailing the final master with
Take 6.
Essentially a series of five harmonies
with no opening or closing themeSketches terms to describe the tune. Evans noted the
relied heavily on the roles of the pianist and
bassist to define structure and guide solos. Ap-
parently, this was accomplished visually as well
as musically, the soloists signaling as they
switched from one mode to another. At one
point before Take 3, Chambers commented I
forgotI thought I could close my eyes . . .
and Take 5 ended as Evans anticipated Daviss
first transition early while not looking at the
trumpeter. Davis chided Evans, who apologized,
and the next take proved to be the master.
ALL BLUES studio sequence
Unidentified: Ssshhhhooooooo!
Probably PC: (panting) Damn thats a hard
mother!
BE: Boy, if I didnt have coffee . . .
IT: What?
At 11:36, All Blues was the longest perform-
ance on Kind of Blue. After struggling a bit
with Flamenco Sketches at the start of the
session, recording two nine-and-a-half minute
takes of the tune, and then All Blues? If the
session had not been over, it would have been
time for a serious break.
As easy-rolling as All Blues may sound,
the discomfort of repeatedly playing the same
musical phraseeven for veteran musicians
became apparent as the tune ends. Fingers
and lips finally relaxed. One musician breathed
an exaggerated sigh of relief, Chambers panted
like a dog and used one of Daviss favorite
performance-enhancing effect of caffeine.
One other indicator of the unusual length
of the tune is discernible in the liquid rasp of
Daviss trumpet. It had been awhile since he
had the opportunity to clear the instruments
spit-valve. Even thatas the maestro would
saygoes with it.
ASHLEY KAHN, JUNE 2008
Ashley Kahn is a music journalist and author of Kind of Blue:
The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, and other books
on jazz. His voice is often heard on NPRs Morning Edition.
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PHOTOGRAPHY: cover, pages 6, 11: Chuck Stewart; pages 5, 12-13, 15: Don Hunstein/Sony
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