TITLE: Kind of Blue 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition. (Legacy)

ARTIST: Miles Davis

STARS: 5 Out of 5 Stars (I could give it 6 out of 5 stars. It’s that good.)

SOUNDS LIKE: Inarguably the most influential and important jazz album of all time. A true historical jazz masterpiece.

If a space alien wanted to know what jazz sounded like you’d play him “Kind of Blue.” This 1959 modal jazz masterpiece is widely esteemed as the definitive jazz album. It should be the first piece of music to start any serious jazz collection.

“Kind of Blue” begins with the smoldering bass line and pensive piano groove of “So What.” From there it never changes pace, but flows along on a relaxed, subtly shifting wave of music. It’s sparse in delivery but dense in emotion.

“Improvising on the sparest and starkest of scales as an alternative to bebop’s dense thicket of chord changes. ...A return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation,” Miles Davis told Francis Davis of the Jazz Review in describing the album the year it was released.

Miles assembled one of the greatest bands in jazz history for “Kind of Blue.” It’s a small lineup of jazz legend that includes John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on saxes, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on Bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. More than anything else it cement Miles’s trumpet playing as a true romantic voice in jazz. It’s simply what “cool” sounds like.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this landmark recording Legacy/Columbia Records is releasing a super deluxe box set of the recording. The box set features two CDs, the original album plus studio banter, false starts and alternate takes plus a 17 minute live version of “So What.” There’s also a DVD documentary, a full color booklet with lots of photos and get this... an 180 gram blue vinyl 12 inch LP.

“Kind of Blue” is an important piece of jazz history. That makes this 50th anniversary set is a must have for any true music fan not just of jazz.