The Timeless ‘Kind of Blue’ Turns 40

It was an album that “missed what I was trying to do,” according to Miles Davis.

Try telling that to the thousands upon thousands of jazz fans who have bought--and often re-bought and then re-bought again--”Kind of Blue,” by almost any estimation the most successful album in jazz history. Although this week is the 40th anniversary of its release, it currently sells in the 100,000-copies-a-year range, according to Columbia, and has surpassed 2 million sales in a variety of formats.

What was Davis’ reservation about the album? In his “Miles: The Autobiography” (Simon & Schuster), written with Quincy Troupe, he noted his original desire to create music that connected with a sound of the mbira, or African thumb piano. Davis had recently been deeply affected by the African music and dance company Les Ballets Africaines, and he imagined the album as a jazz expression comparable to “the interplay between those dancers and those drummers and that finger piano player.”

Davis acknowledged that people “just look at me like I’m crazy” when he explained his feelings about the album.

“Everyone said that record was a masterpiece--and I loved it too,” he wrote. “. . . But that’s what I was trying to do on most of the album, particularly on ‘All Blues’ and ‘So What.’ I just missed.”

Some miss. And, given the impact of the remarkable musical elements on “Kind of Blue,” it’s hard not to suspect that Davis, in characteristic fashion, might simply have once again been leading his readers into the enigmatic territory he knew so well. Because Davis surely realized that whatever the album may have missed in terms of the sound of the mbira, it more than made up for with precisely the kind of creative interplay he was reaching for.

And what is most fascinating about “Kind of Blue” is that it is that rarest of entities, a work that is simultaneously a creative breakthrough and an immediately accessible artistic expression. Recorded with great spontaneity (most of the pieces were strung together quickly; many of the tracks are first takes), the album dared to imagine a jazz generated from modal sources rather than the altered chords and chromatic harmonies of bebop, but one that still retained contact with the blues.

Had it been done before? Sure it had, and there were plenty of revolutionaries around in 1959--Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane (who, of course, is prominent on “Kind of Blue”) and others--pushing the jazz envelope in various directions. But none, for all their accomplishments, managed to come up with a solution with the clarity and ultimate simplicity of the music on “Kind of Blue.”

It’s no accident that most jazz fans, asked to recommend an album to a friend unfamiliar with jazz, will almost unfailingly choose “Kind of Blue.” And it’s a pretty safe bet that when its half-century mark rolls around 10 years from now, it will continue--regardless of Davis’ alleged doubts--to be an eminently effective pathway into the jazz experience.

*

Listening Post: Jeff Clayton may be best known as one of the co-leaders of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and the powerful lead alto in the ensemble’s saxophone section. But Clayton is also a strong improviser in his own right, with roots that reach back into the styles of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and Benny Carter. What’s he been listening to lately?

* “Shirley Horn’s ‘Here’s to Life.’ Because I love ballads and I love Shirley Horn. My favorite album of hers, one that I wore the grooves off the CD, was the one with Miles Davis on it, ‘You Won’t Forget Me.’ You know, there was a time when we would go out and buy an album just because a person’s name was on it. Those days, I feel, are gone except for a few people. And Shirley Horn is one of them.”

* “Benny Carter. A lot of Benny Carter. I’ve been concentrating on listening to sounds lately, and to how much life there can be in someone’s sound. And Benny has a lot of life in his.”

* “Stan Getz with Kenny Barron: ‘People Time.’ It’s a duo album on Verve. I’ve been transcribing ‘East of the Sun’ from that one. What I mean by transcribing is not writing down the solo, but learning it by playing it, in the oral tradition of the music. That way you learn the solos so closely that you get the inflection and the vibrato and the mood, and you really understand what the player was doing.”

* “ Cannonball Adderley. I’m back to him again. A student brought in his solo on ‘Stars Fell on Alabama,’ one of the first things I ever transcribed, and I’d almost forgotten how good it was. Cannonball was impeccable, in every way. Somebody so versatile that he could play inside, he could play outside. He could play with strings, he could play melody, and he could bebop you right out the door. That kind of versatility is unheard of these days.”

But maybe not in the case of Clayton, who will have his small group chops on display tonight in the Club Brasserie at the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood (1020 N. San Vicente Blvd., [310] 358-7776). On Wednesday, his perspective changes when he takes his place in the saxophone section of the CHJO for another Lexus Jazz at the Bowl concert.

*

Guitar Clinic: Guitarist John Pizzarelli’s trio will host a free master class on Tuesday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Hollywood Bowl, the day before the group appears at the venue in the Lexus Jazz at the Bowl concert, “Swingin’ on Six Strings.” The Pizzarelli trio will demonstrate technical and improvisational aspects of jazz, and offer hands-on instruction for audience members. Although the class--which takes place on the second floor of the Hollywood Bowl Museum at 2301 N. Highland Ave.--is free and open to the public, space is limited and reservations are encouraged: (213) 972-0704.