Ruth Leon recommends… Kind of Blue

Miles Davis – So What

Some years ago, while moving house, I decided to limit myself to packing just one music recording per genre. For jazz, I picked Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. I still have it and play it often. But then I thought, how could I have Kind of Blue without Milestones, or Bitches Brew or ‘Round About Midnight? Quickly, I identified my chamber music, opera, pop and musical theatre picks but my jazz choices were all Miles Davis and choosing between them was impossible.

Armed with a single album each of Schubert, Mozart, Sarah Vaughan and West Side Story, I packed my box of music and sallied forth without a backward glance but I took all my Miles Davis recordings because I couldn’t decide which I loved best. 

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music.

Whether in Cool Jazz, Bebop, Hard Bop or orchestral fusion in his collaborations with Gil Evans orchestra, Miles was leader of the pack and each foray into a new direction had jazz fans avid to hear what he would come up with next, who his collaborators would be, how he would lead the music into another place nobody else had imagined. He wasn’t showy, often taking a back seat to his fellow musicians but he had unbelievable control and subtlety with a tone which reaches outside of jazz into that rarified world which transcends technique into art.

He became addicted to heroin which interrupted his professional life several times, married three times, and worked with every great jazz musician of his era from Charlie Parker to Wayne Shorter.

Here is a rare official video of the recording session of “So What” from the session on April 2nd, 1959. “So What” is the first track on Kind of Blue.The line-up was John Coltrane, tenor sax; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; Gil Evans Orchestra, with, of course, Miles Davis on trumpet.

He died on 28th September 1991, aged 65.

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