The 'So What' of Kind of Blue

"The word 'timeless' has become a cliché, a spelling tool for luxury goods. And yet Kind of Blue is a timeless album," James Kaplan writes in 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool, his book about what may be the most popular jazz album of all time. As Kaplan's history explains in detail, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue was recorded in three largely improvised sessions in the winter and spring of 1959, at Columbia Records' Thirtieth Street Studio in Manhattan.

A pair of three-hour sessions on March 2 yielded three songs: "So What," "Freddie Freeloader" and "Blue in Green." The third session, on April 22, lasted just three hours and produced two songs: "Flamenco Sketches" and "All Blues," the second captured in one take.

"Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played," Bill Evans explained in the album's liner notes. "Therefore, you will hear something close to spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings ... ."

That group was like no other: Davis, Coltrane, Evans, Florida's own Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Paul Chambers, James Cobb and—in Evans' stead on "Freddie Freeloader," the sessions' first song—Wynton Kelly. As Kaplan notes, these musicians never performed together again following the recording of Kind of Blue.

Expect to hear songs from the album November 7 at Kind of Blue: Celebrating the Music of Miles Davis, the first show in the 2025-26 season of the Jazz Roots concert series. Saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (John Coltrane's middle son) and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire will perform alongside vocalist Veronica Swift, pianist Shelly Berg, conductor Scott Flavin and the Frost School of Music's Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. The program will offer music from other Davis albums such as Milestones, Tutu and Miles Ahead, as well as a selection of Coltrane classics.

Kind of Blue, Kaplan argues, "marked a kind of fermata in the onrushing torrent of jazz. ... It was an island of quiet mystery in a world growing faster and louder by the day." What could be more timeless?