Kind of New

In 1959, at least one jazz critic greeted the release of “Kind of Blue” by the Miles Davis Sextet with the words “morose” and “sluggish and low in energy output.” Wouldn’t he be surprised to learn that, by some estimations, it has become the largest-selling mainstream jazz album of all time.

“It just continues to sell and sell and sell,” says Kevin Gore, vice president of jazz promotion and marketing at Columbia Records.

“One edition alone, the Jazz Masterpiece version, No. 40579, was recently certified platinum,” Gore says, meaning that the album has sold 1 million copies. Cumulative sales, including more than 400,000 LPs, have exceeded 1.5 million units--which, given the original production cost in 1959, estimated at less than $10,000, makes this one of the best returns on investment Columbia has ever realized.

But recognizing its escalating value, Columbia on Tuesday released what it describes as the “definitive” version on its Legacy imprint, in hopes of attracting new listeners to a product that has become a virtual Holy Grail of jazz releases.

Reissued and restored recordings such as “Kind of Blue” have always been a significant part of the jazz record market. Jazz is far more like classical music than pop in that performances never really go out of style and that many new converts to jazz are attracted to works from its colorful history as much as they are to its current performers and activities.

For record companies, this is a significant boon. And especially in the case of major labels such as Verve, Columbia, RCA and Blue Note, their contemporary schedules are heavily funded by income from the revenue-producing reissues. With original costs recouped long ago, and with few expenses beyond packaging and minimal royalties, jazz reissues--if not exactly cash cows--help make it possible for labels to sign and record new talent.

They also make it possible to investigate new technologies, as Blue Note is doing with an interactive CD version of a similarly seminal album, John Coltrane’s “Blue Train.” (See accompanying story, Page 85.)

*

With or without interactivity, few reissues have performed in a league with “Kind of Blue.” In an effort not only to reach new audiences but also to motivate previous owners to buy the current version, Columbia is using the package to repair a number of mistakes that have persisted through past versions, including the misspelling of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s name (as Adderly) on the cover of previous releases. There are now six tracks (the album includes two takes of “Flamenco Sketches” in addition to “So What,” “Freddie Freeloader,” “Blue in Green” and “All Blues”), and remixing has increased the prominence of Paul Chambers’ bass and Jimmy Cobb’s drums.

More important, musically, is the correction of inaccurate pitch reproduction present in three of the tunes throughout the album’s history. Project director Seth Rothstein, reissue producer Michael Cuscuna and the Columbia engineers discovered that the original three-track tape machine employed for the recording had been running slightly slow. When the tape it created was remixed and played at correct speed, the music that emerged was slightly sharp, made so by the increased speed of the playback unit. A vintage three-track Presto all-tube machine similar to that used in the original sessions was located, and the album was remixed at correct speed, bringing the tracks in question back to accurate pitch.

“Our primary concern” from the beginning, Rothstein says, “was not to enhance the music, not to change it, but to make it be as definitive a version of what was done in that recording session as we possibly could.”

Not everyone agrees with the term “definitive,” however. Veteran producer Teo Macero, who worked in the studio with Davis for three decades and was deeply involved in Davis albums ranging from “Sketches of Spain” to “Bitches Brew” and “Water Babies,” prepared an earlier restoration of “Kind of Blue.” And he is not pleased with the current reissue nor, for that matter, with the Miles Davis-Gil Evans boxed set that preceded it.

“Definitive to who?” Macero asks. “Were the guys who are doing this project in the studio with Miles? I was.”

Macero agrees with the desire to release the tunes on “Kind of Blue” at their proper pitch levels, but he strongly opposes efforts to remix the music’s elements.

“Look,” he says, “the records that we put out were what he [Miles] wanted. It wasn’t just because of what happened in the studio but because of what was done afterwards, with the mixing and equalizing and putting stuff together. And I don’t think Miles came into the studio after a session to mix or do the final assembly on an album more than three or four times in all the years we worked together. What’s on those original releases is what Miles wanted to hear.”

What is it that has made “Kind of Blue” such a persistent bestseller? Of the many attractive Davis albums, why has this one become the single vital entry in everyone’s jazz catalog, the album that has become the introduction to jazz for generations of listeners?

Pianist Bill Evans, in his liner notes for the original LP, offers one clue: “You will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances.” Evans recognized that what really makes “Kind of Blue” work was Davis’ intuitive leap into a new kind of improvisation--of a sort that held implicit, and immediate, audience appeal.

Always a consummate melodist, Davis placed melody in the forefront in “Kind of Blue.” He did so by going against the then-prevalent tendency to emphasize improvisations in which melodic expression was not necessarily expected to be lyrical and that usually tended to be structured around complicated harmonies.

What Davis proposed, instead, was the use of scales or “modes” as the basic foundation for the improvisations on the album. By encouraging the soloists--saxophonists Adderley and John Coltrane--to apply their imaginative skills to the creation of melodic solos that were unbound by frequent harmonic demands, he essentially allowed them to soar freely.

“I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional strings of chords,” Davis reported in a Jazz Review interview in 1958, “and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.”

Curiously, Davis himself believed that the album didn’t quite hit its mark. His displeasure traced to his original desire--which became displaced as the musicians themselves began to interpret the music--to find linkages with a sound he was entranced with at the time, the sound of the mbira, or African thumb piano.

Davis had recently been impressed by a touring African music and dance company called Ballet Africaine. He envisioned the album achieving something like “the interplay between those dancers and those drummers and that finger piano player,” according to “Miles: The Autobiography,” written with Quincy Troupe (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster).

“When I tell people that I missed what I was trying to do . . . getting the exact sound of the African finger piano up in that sound, they just look at me like I’m crazy,” he wrote. “Everyone said that record was a masterpiece--and I loved it too. . . . But that’s what I was trying to do on most of the album, particularly on ‘All Blues’ and ‘So What.’ I just missed.”

If Davis really did believe that the album just missed, he’s just about the only person who thought so. For Columbia, the recording has never been a miss. And, with the current reissue, the label is taking every measure it can to ensure its continued success.

“We’re taking the opportunity to make the most not only of this recording but of the other Legacy reissue editions,” Gore says. “We’re putting it in press kits at press conferences, we’re doing point-of-purchase posters, co-op advertising and so forth in a major effort to remarket it. We don’t just want the inner circle of jazz to know about this album--we want to get the word out to everyone. We’re selling 100,000 units right now, and in all honesty, we’re hoping, we’re expecting, to sell even more.”