When discussing the development of music over the course of the 20th century, it is impossible to forego the mention of Miles Davis’ quintessential 1959 album, Kind of Blue.

Commonly referred to as the greatest jazz record of all time, Kind of Blue revolutionized jazz as both a genre, and a culture in America. The collaboration of famous jazz musicians, the trademark style of each player’s improvisational lines, the complexity of the harmonies and the modality of sonorities throughout the album establish an innovation look into jazz history. It is because of these unique traits of the improvisation and modality throughout the album that Kind of Blue has solidified itself into the Western musical canon.

Miles Davis was born into a wealthy black family in East St. Louis in 1926. His family’s affluence allowed him to explore his musical talents from an early age, and began trumpet studies. By the time he was 16, Davis was a member of the music society, and played professionally at the Elks Club. In 1944, when Davis was 19, the Billy Eckstine band visited his home town. Famous jazz musicians, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were members of the band, and brought Davis on as third trumpet temporarily while their regular player was out sick.

This opportunity exposed Davis’ talent by leading him to mentors who had a profound influence on his career.1

Davis attended Julliard in 1945 less than a year before he dropped out to learn from

Charlie Parker. Later that same year, Parker hired him for his quintet. Though he had solos on a few of the tunes, his skills were outmatched by the talents of Gillespie and Parker. Davis found himself faced with the dilemma how to develop his own style while remaining in the shadow of his idols. His style was seen as very introverted, preferring the middle register, slower, longer

1 Peter Burkholder, Norton Anthology of Western Music (New York City: WW Norton & Company, 2015). Accessed March, 2015. http://www.wwnorton.com/college/music/jazz/ch/14/outline.aspx notes and timbres rather than quickly moving solo lines. His sound began to develop and was characterized by his restraint rather than flamboyance.

After nearly ten years of honing his skills, Davis finally recorded an album of his own. In

1955, Davis signed with Columbia Records, and composed and produced Round About Midnight which brought together Davis’ first great quintet: John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red

Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Joe Jones on drums. His work with Coltrane and

Chambers particularly would prove to be fortuitous as the two of them would join him later on

Kind of Blue, his most famous collaborative album. Coltrane’s particular style varied greatly from Davis’. While Davis remained reserved, Coltrane preferred demonstrative virtuosity in his solo lines. This pairing would prove to be a potent combination on the Kind of Blue album of

19592.

Kind of Blue brought together seven legendary Jazz musicians in the heat of their career: tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderly, pianists Bill Evans and

Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and the mastermind behind the compositions, trumpeter Miles Davis. Davis’ trumpet stylings had been slowly gathering a following in the years before the album, and by 1958, Davis was world-renowned, and his playing set the standard for jazz musicians of the time. Davis scoured for new talent to join him in his compositions, and in the mid-1950s, he found just that in pianist, Bill Evans.

Davis had been experimenting with the idea of “modal jazz,” or the idea of keeping the background of a tune simple while soloists played melodies using “modes” or scales instead of chord progressions for several years prior to meeting Evans. Evans introduced Davis to classical

2 Burkholder, Norton Anthology of Western Music. composers like Maurice Ravel, and Bela Bartok, who were well known for using modalities in their pieces3. This new knowledge, in addition to his prior insights into modal qualities in blues music, allowed Davis to transform compositions using modality rather than harmonic progression. Modal jazz went in the opposite direction of popular Bop music by decreasing harmonic density, and making the melody the focus. The compositions of Kind of Blue suited

Davis’ mid-range lyrical approach while still providing a vehicle for Coltrane’s exuberance.

Davis brought on Adderly’s drummer, Jimmy Cobb, rather than Joe Jones, for his mutual use of restraint in their musical style.

The whole of the album was recorded over two separate days. The first track off the album is its most famous, “So What.” According to Bill Evans’ program notes, “So What” is a simple figure based on 16 measures of one scale, 8 of another and 8 more of the first. This track is characterized by Evans’ opening chords and introduction. Harmonically, it is based on two

Dorian scales, D and E-flat arranged in a standard AABA pattern. The opening chords can be described as sus chords, particularly Emin7sus and Dmin7sus. These chords are formatted into a call-and-response type structure with the bass. This bass line serves as a melody and also has a foundation for the modal sonority, with D as the tonal center. The following in figure one excerpt is a chart of the chords of the tune:

3 Samuel Barrett. “Classical Music, Modal Jazz and the Making of Kind of Blue.” Dutch Journal of Music Theory 16, no. 1 (2011): 53-63. Accessed April, 2015. http://upers.kuleuven.be/sites/upers.kuleuven.be/files/page/files/2011_1_7.pdf

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The harmonic scheme of this pieces abandons with quick harmonic rhythm normally associated with other forms of jazz. Bebop for example, commonly had two or more harmonies per measure. This is not the case with “So What.” This tune slows down the rate of harmonic rhythm dramatically, so that a single chord lasts for eight to as many as sixteen bars. The modality of the tune changes, however, when each performer does their solo. In every case, the soloists play outside of the Dorian collection, even chromatically altering lines as they please.

Though at first listen, the style of playing may seem simplistic, the harmonic structure is extraordinarily complex. Another point of significance is the tunes lack of cadences. Cadential structure is a feature of tonal jazz rather than modal. Though there are a few in “So What,” there are not nearly as many popular jazz standards, in which cadences fall at the ends of 8 to 16 measure phrases. Eastman School of Music doctorate, Jason Titus had this to say in his 2010 dissertation:

“Whereas tonal jazz is, for the most part, driven by functional progressions, modal jazz seems to

employ a more linear basis for its construction. Furthermore, tonal jazz, particularly bop,

4 Samuel Barrett. "Kind of Blue and the Economy of Modal Jazz." Popular Music 25, no. 2 (2006): 185-200. Accessed April, 2015. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/236978/CUP kind of blue.pdf?sequence=1.

emphasizes a relatively tight harmonic integration between the soloist and the underlying

accompaniment. Modal jazz, on the other hand, favors a looser coordination…between each

player’s expression of the local key center5.”

This distinction between tonal and modal jazz is very important to remember when listening to Kind of Blue. An ear used to the tonality of western music comes to expect melodies and harmonies to progress in a certain way. Modal jazz does not always bolster this expectation.

This is especially the case during this particular album. Old ideas of jazz are transformed and tonality does not always come first. This idea is exemplified in “So What” through its harmonic structure and solo lines.

“Freddie Freeloader,” is known as the most traditionally bluesy track off the album.

Davis builds a solo out of the familiar blues from the Bb blues. However, the timbre of the melody is painted through the introduction of points of tension and release. Davis chooses to deliberately and repeatedly rest of the flattened seventh degree of the chord scale all three choruses of the 12 bar phrase. The color of the bVII in the solo melody complements the harmonic shift to the dominant at the end of progression. Wynton Kelly, the other pianist collaborator on the album, steps in Evans’ place on this track only, lending his blues talents to the track. Bill Evans’ trademark melancholic style would not have been appropriate for this particular tune. The tune’s namesake Fred Tolbert, was a Philadelphia bartender whose business card read “Freddie the Freeloader.” Tolbert was also described by Davis’ wife Frances as a

5 Titus, Jason. “Miles Davis’ ‘So What’ as Modal Jazz Case Study.” Doctoral thesis, Eastman School of Music, 2010. Accessed March, 2015. file:///C:/Users/Jessica/Downloads/Titus%20Diss.pdf

“harmless kook.6” Because of the tune’s playful nature, Kelly’s style of playing was deemed more suited to the tune than Evans’.

Kelly’s playing, as with Evans’, lends character to the piece from its introduction, light piano dances behind the minimalist theme set up by Davis, Coltrane and Adderly. His lead off solo transforms the theme into the epitome of what blues piano embodied; upbeat, elegant, visceral. Davis’ solo follows close behind. “The long tones, deliberate phrasing, and perfect note selection are as authentic in their way as Robert Johnson’s midnight deals with the Delta Devil,” said jazz critic Alan Kurtz. Following Davis, Coltrane begins with his own unmistakable sound, almost interrupting Davis with his typical virtuosic licks. Finally, Adderly finishes the line of horn solos with a warm line somewhere between Davis’ restriction and Coltrane’s ostentation, making for a collaborative figure that suited the styles of each person involved. Figure 2 below shows a transcription of Kelly’s opening solo:

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6 Samuel Barrett. "Kind of Blue and the Economy of Modal Jazz."

7 Ahnert, Seth. “Wynton Kelly on Freddie Freeloader.” The Jazz Language. January 27, 2015. http://thejazzlanguage.com/tag/1959/

Next on the album is perhaps the most tender look into modal jazz on the album, “Blue in

Green.” “Blue in Green” stands out from the songs on the album in particular in that it does not strictly adhere to traditional jazz forms or formal concepts expressed on the rest of the album.

The tonic scale is D Dorian, though many of the harmonies are taken from D Aeolian (D, E, F,

G, A, Bb, C, D). Dominant minors ae used as a tonal center, creating an unsteadiness beneath the slow harmonic rhythm. Evans stays with shifting chordal textures in the mid-range, while lead players stay close to single scales. Harmonies in this particular track are more ambiguous than in other tracks, the sus chords in the piano line, especially.

This complexity runs in direct contrast with the simple D minor scales used by Davis and

Coltrane during their solos. The soloists are simply taking one of the many available harmonies outlined by the piano line, and fitting them into the mode of their choosing. Evans chooses to exchange IV for bVI in his chord progression of I-bVI-I-V-I. There is also quite a bit of irregular metrical distribution throughout the tune, making much of the harmonic rhythm much more abstract. During Davis’ second solo towards the end of the tune, the piano outlines Debussy- esque open parallel chords before segueing back into more traditional dissonances of blues. This exchange of harmonies is watery and blurred, leaving much to the listener to interpret and for the soloist to work with. Figure 3 shows the form’s palindromic nature, with the piano starting the solo lines, followed by the trumpet, piano, tenor sax, piano, trumpet and ending with a piano coda ultimately8.

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Following this tune is more upbeat, “All Blues.” This track is described by Evans on the liner notes as a, “6/8 12-measure blues form that produces its mood through only a few modal changes and Miles Davis’ free melodic conception.”10 It seems that Evans may have inadvertently coined the term “modal jazz” in his notes. Jason Roger Titus said of the composition:

“It is important to note that Evans does not actually link the concepts of scale and mode

in his comments. In fact, he uses the two terms in a way that actually distinguishes one

from the other. The ‘mode’ to which Evans refers…is not a scale, but rather the switching

of the quality of the G tonal center from major to minor.” 11

Titus further explains that modal jazz as a genre grew into the post-bebop style of harmonies, and that modality in jazz became more common as a result of Evans’ term. The main

8 Davis, Miles, Kind of Blue, Columbia Records, 1959, compact disc.

9 Myles Boothroyd. "Modal Jazz and Miles Davis: George Russell's Influence and the Melodic Inspiration behind Modal Jazz," Nota Bene: Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology: 3, no. 1 (2010): 47-61. Accessed April, 2015. http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/notabene/vol3/iss1/5

10 Samuel Barrett. "Kind of Blue and the Economy of Modal Jazz." 185. 11 Titus, Jason. “Miles Davis’ ‘So What’ as Modal Jazz Case Study.” melody of the composition is characterized by a rising 6th pattern from D up to B in the horn section with a trilled piano softly accompanying in the background. The solos start with the trumpet in short, syncopated motifs, followed by Adderly’s alto saxophone with quicker notes and a wider range than the trumpet. Coltrane interrupts with his typical virtuosity, using fast scales and wide range and quick runs. Finally, Evans finishes out with a much calmer improvisation than the other lines with a string of parallel chords under a simple melody line.

Harmonically, the piece is in G major but utilizes a flattened 7th. This scale is simply executed by going from G-G on the piano, only playing white notes. As this is the same as being in the mixolydian mode, we can call this tune an example of modal jazz.

The last track on the album is “Flamenco Sketches,” a tune that has no written melody lines, but is rather defined by a set of chord changes improvised over various modes. Evans’ liner notes comment, “’Flamenco Sketches’” is a series of five scales, each to be played as long as the soloist wishes until he has completed the series.” Because of the lack of sheet music and clear harmonic progression, the five scales used have been somewhat up for debate. Adderly’s chart for “Flamenco Sketches” varies a little from several transcriptions done over the years, an example of one comparison in Figure 4 done by Ashley Kahn. On the top of Adderly’s chart,

Evans had written, “Play in the sound of these scales,” and listed a series of five scales.

However, this means that the soloists did just that—played in the sound and overall sonority of the scales rather than necessarily purely within the scale itself. Figure 4 below shows the comparison between the two modalities analysis: 12

It is in “Flamenco Sketches” that Evans’ influence on Davis through the exposure to classical music is more apparent—specifically, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

Samuel Barrett in his essay on modal jazz and classical music said, “There is also an anticipation of the five levels of modal scales/vamps employed in ‘Flamenco Sketches’ in Ravel’s use of the

5-1 figuration.13” This harmonic similarity shows how the jazz genre and modality developed through and was influenced by other branches of music. Building harmonies on scale over which the blues can be played, and the exploration of timbres and sonorities is what binds the tune together. Its name is well suited to the mood that it sets—sketches of musical lines over a blurred and vague harmony.

When Kind of Blue was first released, the old standards of what was considered the jazz genre were completely revamped. What was once purely virtuosic lines at lightning speeds, moved toward slower more sensuous improvisations and brooding lyricism. The bebop genre dominated by artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, transformed into a more sophisticated, personal listening experience for a wider range of people in America

12 Samuel Barrett. "Kind of Blue and the Economy of Modal Jazz." 190.

13 Samuel Barrett. “Classical Music, Modal Jazz and the Making of Kind of Blue.” 55. and throughout the world. Davis opened new doors in the jazz genre. The foundations of post- bebop modern jazz were solidified with Kind of Blue. Jazz trumpeters now had a new artist to idolize, and new styles to draw influence from, saxophonists immediately learned to recognize the signature of Coltrane and Adderly’s style, and rhythm sections drew new jumping launching points from the smooth accompaniment. Jazz musicians for the next several decades would transcribe the improvisational lines from the album to play for themselves. “So What” soon became, and has remained, one of the most popular lead sheets in jazz fake books. Miles Davis and Kind of Blue gave the jazz genre permission to evolve into something unexpected and new, and catalyzed exciting ideas for this new post-bebop era. Modal jazz is capable of teaching much about the vast capability of the instruments used through theoretical analysis, study and performance. Miles Davis’ compositions have continued to inspire even more than 50 years after the album’s release. Local jazz musician and student Duncan Messler has a great passion for the composition saying, “The simple melodies over consistent modal shifts really force the player to listen hard and find ways to go in and out of the changes and create improvisations that fit on the fly.”14

Since its original recording, the influence of Kind of Blue has reached far beyond jazz.

Improvisatory rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Coltrane’s own modal jazz drew inspiration from Davis’ music. Richard Wright, keyboardist from British band, Pink Floyd has said the chord progressions of Kind of Blue influenced the structure of the introductory chords to the song “Breathe” off their album The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). One of the most significant aspects of Kind of Blue is that the entire record, not just one track, was revolutionary.

Music critic Gary Burton noted, “It wasn’t just one tune that was a breakthrough, it was the

14 whole record.” This album is also often recommended by music critics as an introductory jazz album, due to the melodic qualities and the improvisation that is easy to follow while still upholding the standard of artistry. Rolling Stone magazine stated, “This painterly masterpiece is one of the most important, influential and popular albums in jazz.”15

Across the decades, Kind of Blue continues to inspire, excite and challenge listeners and performers alike. From modest beginnings, Davis’ gift for music transformed into a movement and genre that would influence not only jazz but other genres of music as well. Furthermore,

Kind of Blue’s musicality and uniqueness found its way into the hearts of non-musicians, who have cherished it all the same. These traits have made Kind of Blue an integral part of the western canon, and its influence will carry through to the next generation of musicians.

15 “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” Rolling Stone. May 31, 2012.

Works Cited

Ahnert, Seth. “Wynton Kelly on Freddie Freeloader.” The Jazz Language. January 27, 2015. http://thejazzlanguage.com/tag/1959/ Aitken, Paul. “Unity and Form in Miles Davis’ ‘Blue in Green.’” McMaster Music Analysis Colloquium 4 (2005): 1-11. Accessed April, 2015. http://www.africanafrican.com/folder12/african%20african%20american5/music/aitken_ davis.pdf Barrett, Samuel. “Classical Music, Modal Jazz and the Making of Kind of Blue.” Dutch Journal of Music Theory 16, no. 1 (2011): 53-63. Accessed April, 2015. http://upers.kuleuven.be/sites/upers.kuleuven.be/files/page/files/2011_1_7.pdf Barrett, Samuel. "Kind of Blue and the Economy of Modal Jazz." Popular Music 25, no. 2 (2006): 185-200. Accessed April, 2015. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/236978/CUP kind of blue.pdf?sequence=1. Boothroyd, Myles. "Modal Jazz and Miles Davis: George Russell's Influence and the Melodic Inspiration behind Modal Jazz," Nota Bene: Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology: 3, no. 1 (2010): 47-61. Accessed April, 2015. http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/notabene/vol3/iss1/5 Burkholder, Peter. Norton Anthology of Western Music (New York City: WW Norton & Company, 2015). Accessed March, 2015. http://www.wwnorton.com/college/music/jazz/ch/14/outline.aspx Davis, Miles, Kind of Blue, Columbia Records, 1959, compact disc. Kurtz, Alan. “Miles Davis: Freddie Freeloader.” Jazz. Accessed April, 2015. http://www.jazz.com/music/2009/1/9/miles-davis-freddie-freeloader Titus, Jason. “Miles Davis’ ‘So What’ as Modal Jazz Case Study.” Doctoral thesis, Eastman School of Music, 2010. Accessed March, 2015. file:///C:/Users/Jessica/Downloads/Titus%20Diss.pdf Troupe, Quincy. “A Fresh Look at Miles Davis’ ‘Blue in Green.” NPR Music. May 26, 2006. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5433407 Yudkin, Jeremy. “Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue.’” Oxford University Press Blog. August 17, 2014. http://blog.oup.com/2014/08/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-classic-jazz-album/ “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” Rolling Stone. May 31, 2012. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time- 20120531/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-20120524