"Portrait in Jazz Portrait in Jazz is an album by American jazz pianist Bill Evans, released in 1960. Eight months after his successful collaboration with Miles Davis on the album ""Kind of Blue"", Evans recorded ""Portrait in Jazz"" with a new group (the Bill Evans Trio) that helped change the direction of modern jazz. Most noticeably, LaFaro's bass is promoted from a mere accompanying instrument to one of almost equal status to the piano (though not to the extent that it would be on later albums such as ""Sunday at the Village Vanguard""). It is one of Evans' more up-tempo"
"the music had been planned around Evans's piano style. Both Davis and Evans were familiar with George Russell's ideas about modal jazz. But Davis neglected to tell pianist Wynton Kelly that Evans was returning, so Kelly appeared on only one song, ""Freddie Freeloader.” The sextet had played ""So What"" and ""All Blues"" at performances, but the remaining three compositions they saw for the first time in the studio. Released in August 1959, ""Kind of Blue"" was an instant success, with widespread radio airplay and rave reviews from critics. It remains the best selling jazz album of all time. In October"
"group were scored for instruments rarely used in jazz such as French horn and tuba. These recordings, which were labeled cool jazz and eventually appeared on the album ""Birth of the Cool"" in 1957 by Capitol Records, marked an important influence on the future jazz. He later signed to Columbia and released ""'Round About Midnight"" on March 18, 1957. His acclaimed 1959 album ""Kind of Blue"" is generally stated to be the best-selling jazz album of all time, although the data are not conclusive. The follow-up album in 1960, ""Sketches of Spain"", went gold. He formed his Second Great Quintet"
"acoustic jazz to post-modern ambient—in every genre imaginable."" Later in an interview, renowned hip-hop artist and rapper Q-Tip reaffirmed the album's reputation and influence when discussing the significance of ""Kind of Blue"", stating ""It's like the Bible—you just have one in your house."" The 2014 album ""Blue"" by Mostly Other People Do the Killing is a note-for-note reproduction of ""Kind of Blue"". The ""Kind of Blue"" musicians appeared together in further recorded ventures through the 1960s. Davis had made a rare post-1953 sideman appearance in 1958 on Adderley's ""Somethin' Else"" album; Evans and Adderley collaborated on the latter's LP ""Know"
"while he was working in Charlie Parker's quintet in the late 1940s. The composition later became a popular jazz standard. Another example is the introduction to ""So What"", attributed to Gil Evans, which is closely based on the opening measures of French composer Claude Debussy's ""Voiles"" (1910), the second prelude from his first collection of preludes. Since its release on August 17, 1959, ""Kind of Blue"" has been regarded by many critics as Davis's greatest work; it is his most acclaimed album, and has been cited as the best-selling jazz record released, despite later claims attributing the achievement to Davis's"
"a leader in the 1960s, leavening his music with Coleman's ideas as the decade progressed. According to Acclaimed Music, ""Kind of Blue"" is the 49th most ranked record on critics' all-time lists. In 1994, the album was ranked number one in Colin Larkin's ""Top 100 Jazz Albums"". Larkin described it as ""the greatest jazz album in the world"". It has been ranked at or near the top of numerous ""best album"" lists in disparate genres. In 2002, ""Kind of Blue"" was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording"
"2003 it was ranked number 12 on ""Rolling Stone"" magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Though precise figures have been disputed, ""Kind of Blue"" has often been named Davis's best-selling album and the best-selling jazz record of all time. In 2008, it was certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), indicating sales of at least four million copies. By late 1958, Davis employed one of the most acclaimed and profitable working bands pursuing the hard bop style. Long-serving bassist Chambers had been with the band from its beginning in 1955; alto saxophonist"
"the album, stating: ""It wasn't just one tune that was a breakthrough, it was the whole record. When new jazz styles come along, the first few attempts to do it are usually kind of shaky. Early Charlie Parker records were like this. But with ""Kind of Blue"" [the sextet] all sound like they're fully into it."" Along with the Dave Brubeck Quartet's ""Time Out"" (1959) and Coltrane's ""Giant Steps"" (1960), ""Kind of Blue"" has often been recommended by music writers as an introductory jazz album, for similar reasons: the music on both records is very melodic, and the relaxed quality"
"Out of the Blue (Sonny Red album) Out of the Blue is an album by American saxophonist Sonny Red recorded in late 1959 and early 1960 and released on the Blue Note label. In 1996, it was released on CD, as a limited edition, with five bonus tracks from the same sessions. The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 4½ stars and stated ""Sonny Red, a fine altoist inspired by Charlie Parker and Jackie McLean, never really made it in jazz, and some of his recordings are rather uninspired. However, that does not hold true for his Blue"
"well as on numerous concert recordings. On 1959's ""Kind of Blue"", often mentioned as the best-selling jazz album ever, Kelly replaced Bill Evans on the track ""Freddie Freeloader"". Even though Kelly was Davis' regular pianist, the trumpeter had planned his album with Evans in mind, so this was the only piece that Kelly played. Kelly toured 22 cities in Europe as part of Davis' quintet in the spring of 1960. Fellow pianist McCoy Tyner commented on Kelly's playing with Davis: ""His harmonic colorations were very beautiful. But I think above all it was his ability to swing. John [Coltrane] used"
"and his whole beautiful family. We are indebted to him for having produced many of our favorite and most satisfactory records."" Irving Townsend Irving Townsend (1920–1981) was an American record producer and author. He is most famous for having co-produced, with Teo Macero, the Miles Davis album ""Kind of Blue"", which is the best-selling jazz album of all time according to the RIAA. He later served as president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States. Townsend, a former jazz bandleader, became an advertising copywriter for Columbia Records. He then convinced George Avakian to have"
"Teo Macero Attilio Joseph ""Teo"" Macero (October 30, 1925 – February 19, 2008) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and record producer. He was a producer at Columbia Records for twenty years, and most notably co-produced, with Irving Townsend, ""Kind of Blue"", the Miles Davis album which at No. 12 is the highest-ranked jazz album on ""Rolling Stone's"" 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and according to the RIAA is the best-selling jazz album of all time. Macero also produced Davis' ""Bitches Brew"", and Dave Brubeck's ""Time Out"", which, along with ""Kind of Blue"", are three of the best-selling and"
"the addition of Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone. Coltrane's return to Davis’s group in 1958 coincided with the ""modal phase"" albums: ""Milestones"" (1958) and ""Kind of Blue"" (1959) are both considered essential examples of 1950s modern jazz. Davis at this point was experimenting with modes—i.e. scale patterns other than major and minor. In mid-1958, Bill Evans replaced Garland on piano and Jimmy Cobb replaced Jones on drums, but Evans too left after eight months, replaced by Wynton Kelly in late 1958. This group backing Davis, Coltrane, and Adderley, with Evans returning for the recording sessions, would make ""Kind of Blue"","
"first official gold record ""Bitches Brew"" (1970). Music writer Chris Morris cited ""Kind of Blue"" as ""the distillation of Davis's art."" ""Kind of Blue"" has also been noted as one of the most influential albums in the history of jazz. One reviewer has called it a ""defining moment of twentieth century music."" Several of the songs from the album have become jazz standards. ""Kind of Blue"" is consistently ranked among the greatest albums of all time. In a review of the album, AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated: In 1958, however, the arrival of Ornette Coleman on the jazz"
"and Adderley, with Evans returning for the recording sessions, recorded ""Kind of Blue"", considered ""one of the most important, influential and popular albums in jazz"". Adderley left the band in September 1959 to pursue his own career, returning the line-up to a quintet. Coltrane departed in the spring of 1960, and after interim replacements Jimmy Heath and Sonny Stitt, Davis plus Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb continued through 1961 and 1962 with Hank Mobley on tenor sax. The two rhythm sections from the Davis Quintet also achieve fame on their own. Garland, Chambers, and Jones recorded as a unit on ""Art"
"possibilities of improvised performance. His approach, owing largely to the African-American performance tradition that focused on individual expression, emphatic interaction, and creative response to shifting contents, had a profound impact on generations of jazz musicians. ""Kind of Blue"" remains the best-selling jazz album of all time. On November 5, 2009, U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a measure in the United States House of Representatives to commemorate the album on its 50th anniversary. The measure also affirms jazz as a national treasure and ""encourages the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz music."" It"
"scene via his fall residency at the Five Spot club, consolidated by the release of his ""The Shape of Jazz to Come"" LP in 1959, muted the initial impact of ""Kind of Blue"", a happenstance that irritated Davis greatly. Though Davis and Coleman both offered alternatives to the rigid rules of bebop, Davis would never reconcile himself to Coleman's free jazz innovations, although he would incorporate musicians amenable to Coleman's ideas with his great quintet of the mid-1960s, and offer his own version of ""free"" playing with his jazz fusion outfits in the 1970s. The influence of ""Kind of Blue"""
"the tenor artistry of John Gilmore. Although the Arkestra is notorious for its outside playing and cacophonous tendencies, this album shows they could play it straight as well as anyone in the game. Wonderful stuff"". ""All compositions by Sun Ra except as indicated"" Some Blues But Not the Kind That's Blue Some Blues But Not the Kind That's Blue is an album by jazz composer, bandleader and keyboardist Sun Ra and his Arkestra recorded in 1977 and originally released on Ra's Saturn label in 1977 and rereleased on CD on Atavistic's Unheard Music Series in 2008. The Allmusic review by"
"and the more consistent and improving sextet, would hint at the music later featured on Davis' next album, the 1959 jazz masterpiece ""Kind of Blue"". As parts of ""Jazz Track"" and ""Jazz at the Plaza"", respectively, the ""'58 Sessions"" chronicled the transition from the brawny agitation of ""Milestones"", to the cerebral tranquility of ""Kind of Blue"". The recording sessions also became known as a stepping stone in Davis' move from bebop to modal jazz. The live side in particular was seen by critics as a glimpse at the sextet that would record ""Kind of Blue"". The complimentary and seemingly spontaneous"
"composition with the title track of his studio album ""Milestones"" (1958). Satisfied with the results, Davis prepared an entire album based on modality. Pianist Evans, who had studied with Russell but had departed from the Davis group to pursue his own career, was drafted back into the new recording project, the sessions that would become ""Kind of Blue"". ""Kind of Blue"" was recorded on three-track tape in two sessions at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio in New York City. On March 2, 1959, the tracks ""So What"", ""Freddie Freeloader"", and ""Blue in Green"" were recorded for side one of the"
"play-by-play liner notes) of America's indigenous art, releasing the most important LP's by the music's founding father, Louis Armstrong, but also signing to long-term contracts Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis, the two modern jazz artists who would in 1959 record albums that remain—more than a half century later—among the best-selling jazz albums by any label—viz., ""Time Out"" by the Brubeck Quartet and, to an even greater extent, ""Kind of Blue"" by the Davis Sextet, which, in 2003, appeared as number 12 in ""Rolling Stone's"" list of the ""500 Greatest Albums Of All Time"". With another producer, Teo Macero, a skilled"
"Fantastic Frank Strozier Fantastic Frank Strozier is the debut album by American saxophonist Frank Strozier, recorded in 1959 and 1960 for Vee-Jay Records. The personnel includes the rhythm section from part of Miles Davis's ""Kind of Blue"", recorded earlier in 1959. Scott Yanow of AllMusic describes the music of ""Fantastic Frank Strozier"" as ""advanced hard bop"" that ""is both enjoyable and (due to Little's presence) somewhat historic""; (trumpeter Booker Little died in 1961 after a short but brilliant career, making this album one of Little's few recordings). Critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton of ""The Penguin Guide to Jazz"" gave"
"the instrument; bassist Ray Brown (1926–2002), known for backing Beboppers Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, and forming the Modern Jazz Quartet; hard bop bassist Ron Carter (born 1937), who has appeared on 3,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, including LPs by Thelonious Monk and Wes Montgomery and many Blue Note Records artists; and Paul Chambers (1935–1969), a member of the Miles Davis Quintet (including the landmark modal jazz recording ""Kind of Blue"") and many other 1950s and 1960s rhythm sections, was known for his virtuosic improvisations. The experimental post 1960s"
"with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis's sextet, where he was to have a profound influence. In 1959, the band, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded ""Kind of Blue"", the best-selling jazz album of all time. During that time, Evans was also playing with Chet Baker for the album ""Chet"". In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1961, ten days after finishing an engagement at the New"
"which would become the best selling jazz album of all time. In contrast to Davis' earlier work with hard bop and its complex chord progression and improvisation, ""Kind of Blue"" was composed as a series of modal sketches in which the musicians were given scales that defined the parameters of their improvisation and style. ""I didn't write out the music for ""Kind of Blue"", but brought in sketches for what everybody was supposed to play because I wanted a lot of spontaneity,"" recalled Davis. The track ""So What"" has only two chords: D-7 and E-7. Other innovators in this style"
"Some Blues But Not the Kind That's Blue Some Blues But Not the Kind That's Blue is an album by jazz composer, bandleader and keyboardist Sun Ra and his Arkestra recorded in 1977 and originally released on Ra's Saturn label in 1977 and rereleased on CD on Atavistic's Unheard Music Series in 2008. The Allmusic review by Sean Westergaard awarded the album 4 stars stating ""Although recorded about a decade apart, ""Some Blues But Not the Kind That's Blue"" is of a piece with ""Blue Delight"": mostly standards albums that really put the spotlight on Sun Ra's piano playing and"
"beyond jazz, as musicians of such genres as rock and classical have been influenced by it, while critics have written about it as one of the most influential albums of all time. Many improvisatory rock musicians of the 1960s referred to ""Kind of Blue"" for inspiration, along with other Davis albums, as well as Coltrane's modal records ""My Favorite Things"" (1961) and ""A Love Supreme"" (1965). Guitarist Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band said his soloing on songs such as ""In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"" ""comes from Miles and Coltrane, and particularly ""Kind of Blue"". I've listened to that"
"include Jackie McLean, and two of the musicians who had also played on ""Kind of Blue"": John Coltrane and Bill Evans. By the 1950s, Afro-Cuban jazz had been using modes for at least a decade, as much of it borrowed from Cuban popular dance forms which are structured around multiple ostinatos with only a few chords. A case in point is Mario Bauza's ""Tanga"" (1943), the first Afro-Cuban jazz piece. Machito's Afro-Cubans recorded modal tunes in the 1940s, featuring jazz soloists such as Howard McGhee, Brew Moore, Charlie Parker, and Flip Phillips. However, there is no evidence that Davis or"
"1957 album ""Milestones"". Davis and Evans later collaborated on the 1959 album ""Kind of Blue"", which featured modal composition and playing. John Coltrane explored modal playing for several years after playing on ""Kind of Blue."" His Lydian Concept has been described as making available resources rather than imposing constraints on musicians. According to the influential 20th century composer Toru Takemitsu, ""The Lydian Chromatic Concept is one of the two most splendid books about music; the other is My Musical Language by Messiaen. Though I'm considered a contemporary music composer, if I dare categorize myself as an artist, I've been strongly"
"Irving Townsend Irving Townsend (1920–1981) was an American record producer and author. He is most famous for having co-produced, with Teo Macero, the Miles Davis album ""Kind of Blue"", which is the best-selling jazz album of all time according to the RIAA. He later served as president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States. Townsend, a former jazz bandleader, became an advertising copywriter for Columbia Records. He then convinced George Avakian to have him assist on recording sessions, and by the mid-1950s he was a full-time producer. He became Davis's producer after the departures"
"on the modal experimentation of ""Milestones"" by basing ""Kind of Blue"" entirely on modality, departing further from his earlier work's hard bop style of jazz. ""Kind of Blue"" has been regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz record, Davis's masterpiece, and one of the best albums of all time. Its influence on music, including jazz, rock, and classical genres, has led writers to also deem it one of the most influential albums ever recorded. The album was one of fifty recordings chosen in 2002 by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, and in"
"songs released against their wishes. Evans stated it was only half an album and blamed the record company; Davis blamed producer Teo Macero and refused to speak to him for more than two years. Davis noted later that ""my best friend is Gil Evans""; their work was included in the boxed set """" (1996), which won a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes in 1997. In March and April 1959, Davis recorded what many critics consider his greatest album, ""Kind of Blue"" (1959). He named the album for its mood. He called back Bill Evans, as"
"as an improviser and musician"", according to Shadwick. Although based on a ""minor drone-blues"" in the line of ""Voodoo Child (Slight Return)"", Hendrix's performance has been compared to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane's approach to improvisation. Miles Davis, with whom Coltrane had recorded several albums in the 1950s, including the influential ""Kind of Blue"", noted the connection: ""Jimi liked what I had done with ""Kind of Blue"" and some other stuff and wanted to add more jazz elements to what he was doing. He liked the way Coltrane played with all those sheets of sound, and played his guitar in a"