At a certain point it’s no longer enough to call Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue the best-selling jazz album of all time. It is assuredly that — an album certified quintuple platinum, with over 5 million copies sold — but it’s also a piece of American iconography, and its own cottage industry. There are whole books devoted to the topic, countless albums and tribute concerts. You may recall that a decade ago, there was a note-for-note remake.
Earlier this year, Penguin Press published 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool, by James Kaplan. And though it’s not literally a book about the making of Kind of Blue, it uses the album as an axis around which everything turns. Today, we also have news of a deluxe vinyl release of material recorded almost a year before Kind of Blue, in the same studio, by the same personnel.
This album, titled Birth of the Blue — in a shrewd tandem nod to Kind of Blue and another iconic Davis album, the 1957 compendium Birth of the Cool — will be released on Dec. 13 by the audiophile label Analogue Productions, founded and run by Chad Kassem, a leader in the field.
As any devotee of Kind of Blue can tell you, the sextet on the album features Davis alongside Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on saxophones, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. The session took place on May 26, 1958, from about 7 to 10 p.m., yielding four finished tracks: the songbook standards “On Green Dolphin Street,” “Stella By Starlight” and “Love for Sale,” as well as a Davis-credited piece titled “Fran-Dance,” which is closely based on the traditional children’s song “Put Your Little Foot Right Out.”
The four tracks are hardly fresh discoveries, having appeared on various compilations and collections over the years, including the Grammy-winning boxed set Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961. But as Ashley Kahn, author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, points out in a gatefold liner essay, this studio material has been handled as “archival lagniappe — a stepchild undeserving of its own release.”
“Together these tracks capture a very rare and special group of improvisers in their first weeks as an ensemble, and have their own story to tell,” Kahn continues. “Together, they merit their own release — musically, historically, undeniably.”
In his book, Kaplan emphasizes the fresh magic of the ensemble’s new pianist. Referring to “On Green Dolphin Street” in particular, he writes: “Evans’ voice, fully realized on the first song recorded at this historic session, was altogether new in jazz.” But the searching harmonic expression that Coltrane had been developing as a soloist — his “sheets of sound,” per the famous Ira Gitler coinage — met with initial resistance, even from within the record label.
Birth of the Blue takes as a given the understanding that these are master musicians coalescing at the height of their powers. (It doesn’t mess around with alternate or incomplete takes, though it might have been amusing to hear Take 5 of “Stella By Starlight,” which is interrupted when Adderley, who doesn’t play on the tune, begins snoring. “Don't snore on my solo, bitch," Davis admonishes, to laughter all around.)
The new album was sourced from the original three-track session tapes, mixed to a new stereo master at Battery Studios. Matthew Lutthans mastered the album at The Mastering Lab, and it was pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings. As for the album’s look, it was conceived by designer James Wolf to precisely evoke the aura of Kind of Blue, down to the typography on the album cover.
As Kassem tells WRTI, the evocation is carefully considered. “These songs were nearly lost to time, yet they capture one of jazz’s most legendary lineups,” Kassem says. “We felt the world needed to experience this music, honoring its legacy with a release of the highest quality, complete with artwork that reflects the era of its creation.”
On Dec. 4, a week before the release of Birth of the Blue, Analogue Productions and Acoustic Sounds will host a public playback session and panel discussion at the New York listening room All Blues, which of course is named after a track on Kind of Blue. The panel will include Kassem, Kahn, and producer and archivist Steve Berkowitz.
Birth of the Blue will be available on Dec. 13; preorder here.
