Miles Davis

Composition by Bill Evans and Miles Davis from the album Kind of Blue
"Blue in Green" is the third track on Miles Davis' 1959 album, Kind of Blue. One of two ballads on the LP (the other being "Flamenco Sketches"), "Blue in Green"'s melody is very modal, incorporating the presence of the dorian, mixolydian, and lydian modes. The first measure is a G minor chord with an added natural 13 (Gm13), which contains an F natural but the modal tonality of the piece is already evident as the opening note of the melody is an E natural, which is the leading tone of the F major scale. The natural 13 of the chord is E natural.
It has long been speculated^{[by whom?]} that pianist Bill Evans wrote "Blue in Green",^[1] even though the LP and most jazz fakebooks credit only Davis with its composition. In his autobiography, Davis maintains that he alone composed the songs on Kind of Blue. The version on Evans' trio album Portrait in Jazz, recorded in 1959, credits the tune to 'Davis-Evans'. Earl Zindars, in an interview conducted by Win Hinkle, said that "Blue in Green" was 100-percent written by Bill Evans.^[2] In a 1978 radio interview, Evans said that he himself had written the song.^[3]
In a recording made in December 1958 or January 1959 for Chet Baker's album Chet (prior to the Kind of Blue sessions), Evans' introduction on the jazz standard "Alone Together" has been directly compared to his playing on "Blue in Green".^[4]
Jazz fusion guitarist Lee Ritenour covered the song from his 2005 album "Overtime."[5



From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Miles Davis

 "So What" 

Is the first track on the 1959 Miles Davis album Kind of Blue.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane play one of the best renditions of SO WHAT ever captured on film-Live in 1958. Edit : in fact, was in New York, april 2, 1959. Recorded by CBS producer Robert Herridge. Cannonball Adderley had a migrane and was absent from the session. Wynton Kelly played piano--he was the regular band member at this time--but Bill Evans had played on the original recording of "So What" on March 2, 1959. The other musicians seen in the film were part of the Gil Evans Orchestra, who performed selections from "Miles Ahead". Jimmy Cobb on drums.

"So What" is one of the best known examples of modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D Dorian, followed by eight bars of E♭ Dorian and another eight of D Dorian.^[1] This AABA structure puts it in the thirty-two bar format of American popular song.

The piano-and-bass introduction for the piece was written by Gil Evans for Bill Evans (no relation) and Paul Chambers on Kind of Blue. An orchestrated version by Gil Evans of this introduction is later to be found on a television broadcast given by Miles' Quintet (minus Cannonball Adderley who was ill that day) and the Gil Evans Orchestra; the orchestra gave the introduction, after which the quintet played the rest of "So What".

The distinctive voicing employed by Bill Evans for the chords that interject the head, from the bottom up three perfect fourths followed by a major third, has been given the name "So What chord" by such theorists as Mark Levine.^{[citation needed]}

While the track is taken at a very moderate tempo on Kind Of Blue, it is played at an extremely fast tempo on later live recordings by the Quintet, such as Four and More.

The same chord structure was later used by John Coltrane for his standard "Impressions".^[2]

Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959. The sessions featured Davis's ensemble sextet, which consisted of pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul Chambers, and saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. After the inclusion of Bill Evans into his sextet, Davis followed up on the modal experimentations of Milestones (1958) and 1958 Miles (1958) by basing the album entirely on modality, in contrast to his earlier work with the hard bop style of jazz.

Though precise figures have been disputed, Kind of Blue has been cited by many music writers not only as Davis's best-selling album, but as the best-selling jazz record of all time. On October 7, 2008, it was certified quadruple platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It has been regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz album of all time and Davis's masterpiece. The album's influence on music, including jazz, rock, and classical music, has led music writers to acknowledge it as one of the most influential albums of all time. In 2002, it was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2003, the album was ranked number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia