Tracks: So What//Freddie Freeloader//Blue in Green//All Blues//Flamenco Sketches//Flamenco Sketches (First Take)
I don’t know that bop ever sat very comfortably with Miles Davis. Even as far back as The Birth of the Cool, he wasn’t really playing by the rules. So it makes sense, some ten years down the track, that he would be the one to sit down and push things... somewhere else?
“Somewhere else” certainly seems to describe this album. Davis had experimented with modality before, but here you have an entire album freed-up from rigid chord structures and opening into a whole new sonic universe. The bassist and pianist lead through on loose scales, and often the songs are built around little more than a two-note vamp. The result is that each of the players is free to do a lot more moving around within the parameters set for them, giving the songs on this album a very open and airy sound despite there actually being an awful lot going on at any given moment. It’s certainly a contrast with the “busy” sound of a lot of the other jazz albums we’ve had to this point (I am thinking of Brilliant Corners in particular).
This is a very lovely, pretty album. “So What” drifts down out of a cloud of Bill Evans’ gentle impressionist piano (most of this album sounds like Satie or Debussy), and then suddenly slides into life on a truly wonderful, bouncing bass riff, accented by a two chord sting that shifts around from piano to trumpet and so on throughout the song. And then the drum kit snaps into life, the bass starts walking down into the depths of an ocean of cymbals (the production by Teo Macero is exceptional, and key to the album’s success), and Davis comes in on some wonderful, low, peaceful trumpet. The start of “So What” is one of my favourite starts, to any song. And the rest of the piece is quite nice, too. It just sort of wanders around, while the soloists (Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly!) take turns.
This sets a pattern for the rest of the album. With the exception of “Blue in Green” and “Flamenco Sketches”, which trade in less rhythmic, more mournful tones, you get a very steady procession of brisk, beautiful, simple rhythmic and harmonic frameworks over which is presented some truly lovely soloing. Evans’ classically influenced piano work is wonderful throughout, and one of the cornerstones of the album. Coming back to this album after a long time away, I was initially dismissive of Paul Chambers’ bass work; after a bit of thought, I’ve decided I really do quite like it. Yes, it’s omnipresent and “busy”, but it works, and the frequent interplay between the soloists and the lines that Chambers is playing is a great deal of fun. And then you have Jimmy Cobb on the drum kit, doing all sorts of weird things. A repeated snapping, cracking sort of noise that carries the momentum through stretches of “Freddie Freeloader” is one of my favourites, but then you get these neat little fills that have the habit of spinning the entire song around so it sounds like it’s just started again, which contributes a great deal to the constant feeling of freshness.
Of course damned near anyone reading this is shaking their head at this point; they’ve both already heard this album, and know just how bad a job I’m doing of describing it. Well, I’ll stop describing it then, and talk about more general things. Although honestly, despite never having written on Kind of Blue before I feel as though I’m repeating myself. What more can one say about it? This is one of the most revered and beloved albums in history. At some point, it went from merely being “a very good jazz album” to “the very good jazz album”. People have written whole books on the thing! Its influence in contemporary popular, classical and jazz music is inestimable.
But why is that? I don’t know. I guess a part of it might be that, like most great works, it’s helped to create a world of which it is a cornerstone. People might point to Kind of Blue and declare it a masterpiece because it so obviously is – it’s been so influential, and so many people love it, and ergo so on and so forth... Well, I won’t deny that Kind of Blue is a masterpiece, but if we lived in a world where jazzists hadn’t been sitting around, feeling hemmed-in by bop, wanting a new language to fiddle with, would people still praise this? I mean, if Kind of Blue hadn’t been a massive success, then would we consider it a massive success?
Well, the swinging rhythm and the tight, focused soloing on “All Blues” makes me say “yes”. But then let’s consider another Miles Davis album, his On the Corner from 1972. A completely different album. Can-like, mind-bending funk-rock that frequently sounds like someone tuning a spaceship's radio in to the frequencies of a Jovian Sabu tribute night. It’s a great, great album, but it was a critical and commercial disaster on its release. If hip-hop hadn’t come around to give people context for the sort of things he was doing, would it’s stature as an artwork ever have recovered to the levels it did?
I’m not sure what my point is. I guess my point is that Kind of Blue is a brilliant album, but no album with “Blue in Green” on it can be considered “the greatest jazz album of all time”. What the hell does that even mean? That’s like declaring Ege Bamyasi the greatest rock album of all time. They’re both utterly amazing, but it’s just sort of ridiculous to do such a thing. It has it’s stature as “the only jazz album non-jazz fans own”, “the best-selling jazz album of all time” and “the first jazz album most people buy” (it doesn’t get to keep its “recorded all in first takes” stature, as apparently the tracks included are only the first complete takes). It’s certainly absolutely beautiful on its own terms, but I guess I dislike hagiographical statements. I don’t see why the fact that everyone likes it makes it perfect.
The real strength of Kind of Blue, I feel, is that it hangs together. Davis has done some individual tracks elsewhere that are better than the lesser cuts from this album, and other people certainly have (anyone who tries to tell me that “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” isn’t as good as almost anything here will get slapped). But, as an album, it works. I think this might be because they find one simple, compelling idea and run with it. The Jesus and Mary Chain of jazz!
I don’t know. It’s a masterpiece. I get bitter about masterpieces because I can’t complain about them as much.
“Flamenco Sketches” is pretty (both takes).
10/10
Download: Miles Davis - So What Mp3
And here we have Davis' legacy in action:
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