So why is Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
There are roughly three phases to my personal experience with the music of There are roughly three phases to my personal experience with the music of Miles Davis.
When I first discovered who Miles Davis was, my knowledge of jazz was just starting to form. I came to have a vague understanding that Miles was a famous jazz musician and… I didn’t like his stuff very much.
That was mainly because my first exposure to Miles Davis was through his ‘later’ and more experimental work. As example, here’s “One and One,” off of On The Corner from 1973.
Listening to this song in 2024, I do find some things to admire about it… even if it’s still mostly just not my thing.
Okay, so that was Phase I. Phase II added nothing to my actual knowledge of Miles Davis or of music at all, but it weirdly increased my appreciation of him as an Artist of Renown, shall we say, and set things up for Phase III.
It was the movie Billy Madison, starring Adam Sandler, that did it, of course.
The titular Billy (Sandler) is a man-child who finally begins to show signs of maturity and empathy when he… well, when he pretends to pee all over himself to protect the feelings of a little boy, Ernie, who accidentally has done the same.
Billy insists in front of a group of third graders that peeing on oneself is “the coolest.” The kids buy it… the adults, not so much. And then, it happens.
An older woman says, “If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.”
It’s a crude joke, but funny. And after seeing the movie “about ten times,” to quote a line from There’s Something About Mary, it started to sink in that… you know what, maybe Miles Davis is cool. So thank you, Billy, and thank you, Adam, for that one.
Now we’re in Phase III, and I’m arguably a little older and wiser. And it finally breaks through that Miles Davis had a long and astonishing career, with the pinnacle coming in the form of Kind of Blue.
I came to understand over time that 1950s and 1960s jazz is what’s most in my wheelhouse, and I also came to revere John Coltrane. So here we have in Kind of Blue a 1959 collaborative masterwork between Miles and Coltrane and other accomplished jazz musicians in Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly.
Whereas later Miles can be inaccessible to those not deep into the jazz scene, Kind of Blue is all kinds of accessible. It’s beautiful and inviting, swinging and languid at turns.
Somewhat unbelievably (to me, at the least!), we’re very nearly to the three-quarter mark on this long march through the best 1,000 albums ever. Kind of Blue is #264, meaning it’s the 767th album “entry” or “review” or “piece” I’ve written.
Which feels like the perfect moment to stop blabbing and just luxuriate in the jazz orbit that Miles, Coltrane, and crew conjured. Here are samples for each of the five tracks that comprise Kind of Blue, all of which are well worth spending time with.
Some stats & info about Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Jazz, Instrumental
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #31
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Kind of Blue released? 1959
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #264 out of 1,000
Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.