The reason this CD is a "mile"stone is that virtually all music after 1955 was influenced by this album. The "background" music, as you call it, is accompaniment for the soloist, and yes, it is repetitious because jazz, by nature, cycles through a set pattern of chord changes during soloing.
The "random" saxophone lines from Cannonball Adderly and Coltrane are all impromtu, and their style is the reason this album is so groundbreaking. They use scales never before experimented with in jazz, called modes (if you are familiar with music, you'll know what these are). Imagine improvising music for nearly an hour, using a musical foundation that had never been heard before! It would be like you driving your car backwards one day, but doing it so perfectly and charismatically that everyone else decided "Wow, that looks amazing and works fantastically. We should all do that." That's how innovative this stuff is. Modal jazz, created by "Kind of Blue," serves as the foundation for virtually every genre of music since then. Modes had been used before: a variant of the dorian mode is the basis for the blues. Davis took this a step further. Even Korn and Limp Bizkit wouldn't have the harmoniously dissonant sounds they create without modal scales.
To appreciate this album, try to slip in their shoes. Listen to the track "Blue in Green," close your eyes, and imagine these guys, 20 years ahead of their time, playing in a smokey club, trying to convey their emotions through a language that nobody has yet heard. There is some of the most poignant musical inflections in these improvisations.
The audience couldn't understand what they were saying, but they could FEEL what Davis was expressing. Pretty powerful stuff. Hope this helps in your journey through jazz. Cheers!
Brian
The "random" saxophone lines from Cannonball Adderly and Coltrane are all impromtu, and their style is the reason this album is so groundbreaking. They use scales never before experimented with in jazz, called modes (if you are familiar with music, you'll know what these are). Imagine improvising music for nearly an hour, using a musical foundation that had never been heard before! It would be like you driving your car backwards one day, but doing it so perfectly and charismatically that everyone else decided "Wow, that looks amazing and works fantastically. We should all do that." That's how innovative this stuff is. Modal jazz, created by "Kind of Blue," serves as the foundation for virtually every genre of music since then. Modes had been used before: a variant of the dorian mode is the basis for the blues. Davis took this a step further. Even Korn and Limp Bizkit wouldn't have the harmoniously dissonant sounds they create without modal scales.
To appreciate this album, try to slip in their shoes. Listen to the track "Blue in Green," close your eyes, and imagine these guys, 20 years ahead of their time, playing in a smokey club, trying to convey their emotions through a language that nobody has yet heard. There is some of the most poignant musical inflections in these improvisations.
The audience couldn't understand what they were saying, but they could FEEL what Davis was expressing. Pretty powerful stuff. Hope this helps in your journey through jazz. Cheers!
Brian