Miles Davis
"Kind Of Blue"
This is the one jazz record
owned by people who don't listen to jazz, and with good reason.
The band itself is extraordinary (proof of Miles Davis's masterful
casting skills, if not of God's existence), listing John Coltrane
and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on saxophones, Bill
Evans (or, on "Freddie Freeloader," Wynton Kelly) on
piano, and the crack rhythm unit of Paul Chambers on bass and
Jimmy Cobb on drums. Coltrane's astringency on tenor is counterpoised
to Adderley's funky self on alto, with Miles Davis moderating
between them as Bill Evans conjures up a still lake of sound
on which they walk. Meanwhile, the rhythm partnership of Cobb
and Chambers is prepared to click off time until eternity. It
was the key recording of what became modal jazz, a music free
of the fixed harmonies and forms of pop songs. In Davis's men's
hands it was a weightless music, but one that refused to fade
into the background. --John Szwed |
