Billboard : 08/31/1959
Spotlight Winner of the Week

Miles Davis, with his almost-regular group, composed of Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, James Cobb, Johnny (!?) Coltrane, Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans, turns in some wonderfully bluesy and yet imaginative jazz on this new recording. Staying within the confines of what might be called the “interior” style of cool jazz, with much help from Evans, Adderley and occasionally Coltrane, Davis performs his solos with feeling and skill and the arrangements are intriguing. The tunes are originals, titled So What, Freddie Freeloader, Flamenco Sketches and All Blues.

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Cashbox : 08/29/1959
Jazz Pick of the Week

Extraordinary blues session, featuring, along with Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, James Cobb and Wynton Kelly (on one track). Five numbers, all new Davis compositions, provide frameworks for fully improvised solos, and the musicians acquit themselves creditably throughout. Another great Davis session.

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Austin American
John Bustin : 11/05/1959

Another recent Columbia LP that should be of interest to the modern-jazz devotee is Miles Davis‘ Kind of Blue, a provocative package offering by the trumpeter’s current sextet.

Here Davis’ cool, controlled trumpet, both muted and open, is pitted against Julian (Cannonball) Adderley‘s biting alto, John Coltrane‘s abrasive-toned tenor, along with pianist Bill Evans (and, on one track, Wynton Kelly), bassist Paul Chambers and drummer James Cobb, on a set of five Davis originals in, as the album’s title suggests, a pleasantly relaxed, blues-inspired vein.

The selections range from adroitly embellished 12-bar blues (one, for example, is in 6/8 tempo) to some intricately woven creations, marked by free rhythmic and melodic passages and shifting harmonies and scales, but they all come off as unique and quietly exciting chamber jazz, done in the disciplined but almost offhandedly casual style that keeps trumpeter Davis not only among the forefront of jazz innovators but, according to Columbia’s Wayland Stubblefield, along the best sellers in the Columbia stable.

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Cincinnati Enquirer
Arthur Darack : 08/23/1959

The total effect of Miles Davis and his group on their French Lick Jazz Festival concert recently was that of a fog descending upon a sunny valley. It was not so much Davis, whose muted trumpet occasionally reflected glints of that higher despair that any creative artist must constantly struggle against in order to gain higher ground, as it was his solid, motionless, Sargasso Sea combo.

Davis’ concept of music is simply odd. His trumpet (mostly muted and pointed into his microphone) carries on an engagingly gloomy discourse while the combo plays earnest, monochromatic whisperings, like a group of bored debutants discussing the clothes of a non-deb sauntering by.

Davis’ latest Columbia record, Kind of Blue, presents more of same. These stern, troubled conceits, that express only a miniature concern for the listener – that meet him about a quarter of the way – are best sampled on record.

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Cincinnati Post
Dale Stevens : 08/29/1959

Increasingly interested in legitimate jazz, Columbia offers a beautifully melancholy Kind of Blue package by Miles Davis, and a better than average Dave Brubeck performance on nine standards in Gone With the Wind.

The Miles Davis album is an excellent example of where modern jazz is going – to romanticism harmonic effects booted by lyrical soloists. And who’s more lyrical than Miles?

Aided by Cannonball Adderley on alto, John Coltrane on tenor and Bill Evans on piano, the groups gets a chance to say something on each arrangement, with five charts covering about 40 minutes.

Flamenco Sketches in 6/8 time is a remarkable examination of the 12-bar blues.

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Memphis Commercial Appeal
Unknown : 10/25/1959

The five tunes on this record have names, but each was improvised in a progressive type of jazz fashion and the result is a jam session such as the guys gather round of an early morning after a long night on New Orleans’ Bourbon street. Davis has surrounded himself with fine musicians, the rhythm is bursting out all over. Melody? It’s there, but what it is is a mystery. But, like the name of the first tune – So What.

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Indianapolis Star
Lynn Hopper : 12/20/1959

In a much more modern vein, jazzman Miles Davis admits on Columbia he’s Kind of Blue. But man, it’s a cool blue. Davis and his trumpet are backed by a picked personnel, including Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and James Cobb.

Davis came up with five “sketches” for his musicians to improvise on in this recording session. It was the first time the group had ever played the pieces, yet they come up with delicate, intricate studies. This was a session left up the musicians and they came through with skillfully woven music.

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Nashville Banner
Pinckney Keel : 09/14/1959

Kind of Blue – Just five tunes, but what tunes they are: At the helm is trumpeter Miles Davis, and under his baton are such greats as Julian Adderley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Paul Chambers. So What, Freddie Freeloader, Blue in Green, All Blues and Flamenco Sketches are the titles, and you won’t put it down until it has played a few times. It’s artistry from beginning to end.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 09/19/1959

The merit of a work of art, Andrew Malraux says in “Voices of Silence,” is in direct proportion to its density.

This applies very strictly to jazz performances on record in the following manner: The work of any major jazz artist is of such density (i.e. will bear unlimited rehearing) that any album on which he appears is worth owning.

The jazz musicians of whom this can be said are only a few, but their names are like a musical seal of approval and any album on which they appear is worth the money to buy it.

Four such albums have recently made their appearance: Kind of Blue, Miles Davis; Bal Masque, Duke Ellington; Have Trumpet, Will Excite, Dizzy Gillespie and Laughin’ to Keep from Cryin’, Lester Young.

Miles Davis is a highly unusual jazz artist. No virtuoso of the trumpet, he has managed to pack into the limited space in which he chooses to operate a remarkably high caliber of creative inspiration. His audience is worldwide, immediate and total in the sense that anything he does is of importance to them. Of how many contemporary artists in any field can this be said? This album, which consists of first playings of material currently featured with his group, has innumerable qualities to recommend it. Chief among them, however, are two remarkable tracks: All Blues and Flamneco Sketches. The first is a blues waltz with an exquisite solo by Davis in a high-voltage mood; the second contains a solo by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane that is as moving as any I have heard on record, a wailing minor cry that sounds like La Niña de los Peines. The titles are transposed on the label and this fact has confirmed by long-standing suspicion that disc jockeys only play records, they don’t listen. To date I haven’t heard one who has noticed the difference between the two tracks.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 10/11/1959
Recapturing the Magic of Miles

I will always believe that the greatest period in San Francisco jazz was the six weeks last Spring when the Miles Davis sextet – the GREAT Miles Davis sextet with Adderley, Coltrane, Kelly, Chambers and Cobb – played its farewell engagement at the Blackhawk.

For most of us who jammed the club night after night (and particularly for us who crowded our way into the little area set aside by Blackhawk tradition for critics, columnists, disc jockeys, record executives and freeloaders in general) this was, man for man, the greatest jazz group ever formed. There was no trumpeter in the world like Miles; there had been no alto since Bird to compare with Cannonball; Coltrane (though he confessed himself in a period of musical stalemate) was still blowing the most interesting tenor in the business. Great as the front line was, the rhythm section matched it: Chambers’ bass seemed to “belong” to the group as no other bass ever could; Wynton Kelly was proving himself as great a pianist as Red Garland and Jimmy Cobb a more tasteful, knowledgeable drummer than Philly Joe Jones.

There was something elegaic about it, too; most of us in Freeloader’s Corner knew that the band was breaking up after this engagement and many of us felt we would never hear so great a group again. So we would go back, night after night when we should have been attending to other business; we would watch Miles turn his back on his audience and press his muted horn up close against the mike and wail out the sadness and loneliness that is always in Miles Davis’ horn; we would hear Cannonball cut in and hand him back his own lonely story – a little saltier, a little more bitter, though Cannonball is essentially a happy man – and we would hear Coltrane hung up on a phrase, going back over it, time after time, trying to fight his way out and building up, more and more, the frustration that is so much at the heart of the best of modern jazz.

As solace for the fact that we would never hear jazz like this again, Miles told us that the group had recorded many of these same numbers for Columbia and that the LP would be released soon after he had left the Blackhawk. So we stayed till the last bar was played (and the bar itself was closed) and went home and waited for the record.

The record – Kind of Blue – has now arrived – and it is good. There is nowhere, I think, where it matches the completely unforgettable magic of the best of the Blackhawk sets yet – after playing it perhaps 40 times in the last two weeks – there is more magic in it than at first hearing.

All the numbers are by Miles and all were written (or, rather, sketched and then improvised) shortly before the record was made. Some are not as thoroughly worked out on the vinylite as they were at the club – and for those of us who treasure very closely the auditory presence of those sets at the club, this is a weakness.

Particularly is this true of the number which appears on the LP under the title of Flamenco Sketches. (At the club, Miles repeatedly introduced this as All Blue; on the record it is titled Flamenco Sketches and the title All Blue is given to the final track on the same side. But such goofs are not uncommon in the record business.)

It was this blues in 6/8 time which, more than any other, entranced the Blackhawk audiences. According to the liner notes, Miles came to the record date with the sketch for the piece and showed it to his musicians just before they sat down to play. Their response, as recorded, was by no means sketchy. But it was infinitely more full after they had weeks to work it over; the difference is like the difference between Beethoven’s Eroica Variations for piano and the fullness of the same variations worked out in the symphony.

But to stress this complaint is to be over-critical. This is one of Miles’ great records; because of the strength, the saltiness, of Adderley it is, perhaps his greatest record since his days with Bird – when Bird, too, pulled him back from the sweetness to which he is so often prone.

Buy it and play it – quietly, around about midnight, when you can afford to listen to Cannonball talking with his horn, to Miles’ sadness, to Chambers’ bass and Bill Evans’ piano (Kelly is absent from most of the tracks) and you will agree that this is a jazz which, in all likelihood, will never be duplicated.

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New Orleans Times-Picayune
Ruth Lafranz : 10/04/1959

A fresh season is here, bringing a crop of new albums that is as varied as fall days. Some albums are soft and blue. Other have the color and sparkle of a golden autumn morning. Together they add up to listening pleasure for the long, lonely nights…

Kind of Blue presents the great jazz horn of Miles Davis as he leads a group improvising on five Davis-conceived settings. The result is an album that is the heart and soul of jazz, reflecting the naturalness, the urgency, the drama of topflight artists achieving the ultimate in musical togetherness. James Cobb on drums, Bill Evans at the piano – it is just as difficult to single out one member of the group as to pick the top selection. Give a listen to Blue in Green and you’ll know why jazz has the ability to get under your skin… and stay there.

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Washington Post
Tony Gieske : 09/06/1959

It’s hard to avoid getting hysterical about a record as lovely, mysterious, and delightful and Miles Davis‘ Kind of Blue, so I won’t bother.

We all expect Davis to bring off astounding melodic feats with a rhythmic sophistication and ease unsurpassed among today’s players. He transcends our expectations.

The Middle-Eastern scales piped by John Coltrane are among his most affecting and Cannonball Adderley subsumes his boisterousness in an unusually friendly and unconceited way.

But it is Bill Evans, his pianisms at once sweet and rigorous, who by reaching unsuspected heights lifts this group of performances to a rank among the finest a Davis group has yet achieved.

The tunes are as beautiful as and structurally a little more advanced than anything the Modern Jazz Quartet has done.

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Down Beat : 10/01/1959
Don DeMichael : 5 stars

This is a remarkable album. Using very simple but effective devices, Miles has constructed an album of extreme beauty and sensitivity. This is not to say that this LP is a simple one – far from it. What is remarkable is that the men have done so much with the stark, skeletal material.

All the compositions bear the mark of the Impressionists and touches of Béla Bartók. For example, So What? is built on two scales, which sound somewhat like the Hungarian minor, giving the performance a Middle Eastern flavor; Flamenco and All Blues reflect a strong Ravel influence.

Flamenco and Freeloader are both blues, but each is a different mood and conception: Sketches is in 6/8, which achieves a rolling, highly charged effect, while Freeloader is more in the conventional blues vein. The presence of Kelly on Freeloader may account partly for the difference between the two.

Miles’ playing throughout the album is poignant, sensitive, and, at times, almost morose; his linear concept never falters. Coltrane has some interesting solos; his angry solo on Freeloader is in marked contrast to his lyrical romanticism on All Blues. Cannonball seems to be under wraps on all the tracks except Freeloader when his irrepressible joie de vivre bubbles forth. Paul Chambers, Evans, and Cobb provide a solid, sympathetic backdrop for the horns.

This is the soul of Miles Davis, and it’s a beautiful soul.

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Liner Notes by Bill Evans

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation.

This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.

Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking. there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved on this recording.

As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time. Miles Davis presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with a sure reference to the primary conception.

Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings and I think without exception the first complete performance of each was a “take.”

Although it is not uncommon for a jazz musician to be expected to improvise on new material at a recording session. the character of these pieces represents a particular challenge.

Briefly, the formal character of the five settings are:

So What is a simple figure based on 16 measures of one scale. 8 of another and 8 more of the first, following a piano and bass introduction in free rhythmic style. Freddie Freeloader is a 12-measure blues form given new personality by effective melodic and rhythmic simplicity. Blue in Green is a 10-measure circular form following a 4-measure introduction, and played by soloists in various augmentation and diminution of time values. Flamenco Sketches is a 6/8 12-measure blues form that produces its mood through only a few modal changes and Miles Davis’ free melodic conception. All Blues is a series of five scales, each to be played as long as the soloist wishes until he has completed the series.