Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue , the biggest-selling jazz album of all time. As the NPR jazz profile noted on the fortieth anniversary :
To the musicians who recorded it, Kind of Blue was just another session when it was released in August, 1959. But the disc was quickly recognized by the jazz community as a classic. Jazz musicians were startled by the truly different sound on an album that laid out a clear roadmap for further modal explorations.“So What” became the tune, the one that every musician — not just the practitioners of jazz—simply had to know. The other tracks also quickly became standards and the individual solos throughout the record continue to inspire musicians to this day.
Kind of Blue still sells dozens of copies an hour, steadily expanding its audience more than 40 years after its release. Musicians from all genres perform, record and study the album’s songs, and the influence of the songs on culture beyond music continues to grow.
Drummer Jimmy Cobb puts it all down to simplicity—the reason Kind of Blue has remained so successful for so long. And because of its inherent balance, historian Dan Morgenstern adds, the album never wears out its welcome.
Listen to the album’s first track, “ So What ”:
