Why is it, as Bri­an Gilmore writes at Jaz­zTimes, that “even peo­ple who hard­ly lis­ten to jazz adore this album”? Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue hard­ly needs an intro­duc­tion. Many thou­sands of words have been writ­ten about its leg­endary com­po­si­tion and record­ing, about the extra­or­di­nary ensem­ble respon­si­ble for its existence—Davis, John Coltrane, “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, Paul Cham­bers, Jim­my Cobb, and a young Bill Evans—and about the year of its release, 1959, a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of jazz, and of near­ly all mod­ern music.

“It’s no longer nec­es­sary to remind music lovers that Kind of Blue is essen­tial lis­ten­ing,” argues The Guardian’s John Ford­ham, “and that every­body who wants to make sense of the music of our time ought to have at least some idea of what’s good about it.” Should your edu­ca­tion in Kind of Blue be lack­ing, you can get caught up on the basics in the Poly­phon­ic video just above, which quick­ly gets to the heart of Davis’ musi­cal inno­va­tion: mak­ing the defin­i­tive break with bebop and set­ting the stan­dard for modal jazz, and thus the explo­sion of free jazz inno­va­tions to come.

Where most forms of jazz had built increas­ing­ly com­plex chord changes over which soloists impro­vised, Davis shift­ed to using modes (the sev­en modes of mod­ern music) as the basis for song struc­ture. With­out need­ing to get over­ly tech­ni­cal with music the­o­ry, you can under­stand imme­di­ate­ly upon lis­ten­ing to the album that modal com­po­si­tion allowed Davis and his band to slow down, sim­pli­fy, and cre­ate sub­tle, com­plex shifts in mood that can be at once lilt­ing, cool, and kind of… blue. Davis had exper­i­ment­ed with blues-based modal forms before. Here, he inte­grates that knowl­edge with clas­si­cal ideas and impro­visato­ry bril­liance.

“As is now part of jazz folk­lore,” notes Ford­ham, “the New York ses­sions that pro­duced this remark­able album were com­plet­ed in a hand­ful of takes over just a few hours, with a min­i­mum of com­po­si­tion­al mate­ri­als.” From there, a rev­o­lu­tion. It is “The most exquis­ite­ly refined of ambi­ent music,” writes Richard Williams in his defin­i­tive mono­graph The Blue Moment, and the one record many music fans would res­cue “from a burn­ing house.” It may be the best-sell­ing jazz album of all time. Steely Dan’s Don­ald Fagen called it “the Bible.” Quin­cy Jones called his “orange juice,” because he lis­tens to it every day

“No one could dis­agree with Williams when he con­nects this with the devel­op­ments of John Coltrane,” writes Sholto Byrnes, from his “shock­ing demo­li­tion of the dain­ty brick­work of Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein’s ‘My Favorite Things,’ ” to his mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme. Its influ­ence, accord­ing to Williams, runs through the work of Ornette Cole­man Steve Reich, John Cale, the Vel­vet Under­ground, James Brown, Sly Stone, Soft Machine, Bri­an Eno, Moby, and so on and so on. If you’ve nev­er quite under­stood what makes Kind of Blue so great, get a crash course in the video explain­er above. Then sit down and lis­ten to it a few hun­dred times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Miles Davis Dish­es Dirt on His Fel­low Jazz Musi­cians: “The Trom­bone Play­er Should be Shot”; That Ornette is “F‑ing Up the Trum­pet”

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Just what, exact­ly, is Roxy Music? Those encoun­ter­ing the band for the first time when their self-titled debut came out in 1972 had ques­tions. Were these 50s R&B throw­backs? Zig­gy Stardust/Slade/T‑Rex like glam rock­ers? Exper­i­men­tal art-rock-retro-futur­ists dressed like a Stax funk band on acid? Yes, yes, yes, and then some. The album, “at once post­mod­ern, strange, sen­su­al and thrilling,” writes Chica­go Tri­bune’s Greg Kot, “mapped out a new fron­tier, even as bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zep­pelin dom­i­nat­ed the rock land­scape.”

In the very same year that Bowie’s Zig­gy land­ed to re-make rock in its image, Bri­an Fer­ry and his vir­tu­oso band—including stand­outs Phil Man­zan­era on gui­tar and Bri­an Eno on synths, tape effects, and var­i­ous “treatments”—prefigured a some­how even sex­i­er, weird­er, funki­er, more dis­turb­ing future for pop, chart­ing the ter­ri­to­ry for bands like Duran Duran, the Cars, Eury­th­mics, Pulp, and too many more to name. Roxy Music was so effort­less­ly orig­i­nal that once Bowie exhaust­ed his space alien phase, he turned to Fer­ry and Eno for inspi­ra­tion.

Like Bowie, Roxy Music favored sax­o­phones, cour­tesy of Andy Mack­ay, who also played… the oboe? Manzanera’s psy­che­del­ic flights were rem­i­nis­cent of The Doors’ Rob­by Krieger, with a Latin Amer­i­can fla­vor from his ear­ly days play­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary Cuban folk songs. Paul Thompson’s rhyth­mic pound­ing and smooth, coun­try-ish grooves improb­a­bly mar­ried Moe Tuck­er and Ken­ny But­trey.

Gra­ham Simp­son played the bass with “an exu­ber­ant rush,” writes Kot.  “They were spe­cial­ists in their field,” remarks Fer­ry,” who him­self drew from the rock­ers every British child of the 50s loved, but was also obsessed with Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bil­lie Hol­l­i­day, Kurt Weill, the Beats, T.S. Eliot, Fred Astaire, and Cole Porter.

And Eno? “With his deep inter­est in exper­i­men­tal music,” says Fer­ry, Eno turned raunchy retro-fusion rock ‘n’ roll into sound­tracks for space­ships, his synth lines swoop­ing wild­ly and bur­bling omi­nous­ly behind Ferry’s qua­ver­ing melis­ma. “Those tex­tures,” the singer recalled recent­ly, “the synth sounds were wash­es, colours, tex­tures, mood enhancers, and so on.” Arriv­ing ful­ly-formed in 1972, they “sound­ed as if they had just beamed down from out­er space and brought along the music of the spheres,” Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher writes. “Roxy Music was the sound of the future—but we just didn’t real­ize it then. Roxy was so over­whelm­ing­ly new. No one knew what to think.”

“Try to imag­ine,” writes Gal­lagher, “how insane this TV footage looked” at the time. Imag­ine tun­ing in to Top of the Pops and catch­ing them play­ing their debut sin­gle “Vir­ginia Plain” (top), a song “named after a pack­et of cig­a­rettes.” (Read about how they record­ed those motor­cy­cle sounds.) Imag­ine see­ing Mack­ay dressed like a Flash Gor­don vil­lain, play­ing oboe over Eno’s sci-fi synth wash­es in the intro to “Ladytron” on the Old Grey Whis­tle Test, or see­ing the band con­fi­dent­ly stomp through “Re-make/Re-mod­el,” “Ladytron,” and “Grey Lagoons,” on the BBC’s Full House, fur­ther up.

In that lat­er 1972 live tele­vised per­for­mance, Roxy Music was already deliv­er­ing the sound of its future with “Grey Lagoons” from the fol­low­ing year’s bril­liant For Your Plea­sure, the final album to fea­ture Eno, who would go on to even stranger things in his solo work. Now imag­ine you hap­pened to tune in to The Old Grey Whis­tle Test in ’73 just in time to catch that album’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” a war­bly, sin­is­ter, Bal­lar­dian love song writ­ten for a blow-up doll.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bri­an Eno Discog­ra­phy: Stream 29 Hours of Record­ings by the Mas­ter of Ambi­ent Music

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Meet the World’s Worst Orches­tra, the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia, Fea­tur­ing Bri­an Eno

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Yes­ter­day, Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his 2017 album, DAMN, a “vir­tu­osic song col­lec­tion,” writes the Pulitzer board, “uni­fied by its ver­nac­u­lar authen­tic­i­ty and rhyth­mic dynamism that offers affect­ing vignettes cap­tur­ing the com­plex­i­ty of mod­ern African-Amer­i­can life.” This is the first time (since its incep­tion in 1943) that the prize has gone, notes NPR, “to an artist out­side of the clas­si­cal or jazz com­mu­ni­ty.” Oth­er recip­i­ents have includ­ed Aaron Cop­land, Wyn­ton Marsalis, and Ornette Cole­man. You can stream DAMN, which comes with a Parental Advi­so­ry warn­ing, on Spo­ti­fy or right below.

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