I also sure hope that Sdcampbell checks into this thread.
For me, Kind of Blue hit me like a thunderbolt.
I bought it because it is de riguer, the essential jazz piece, and at the time I had been diving deeper into jazz. At first, I played it, then maybe played it again, and maybe even once more. Nothing.
Then, all of a sudden...
Like the liner notes which quote Duane Allman in an interview raving about it. I am paraphrasing, but it was something like, "It's all I listen to, and it's been that way for a few years now." The influence on music has been mentioned, but I would like to say that THE American rock and roll band, The Allman Brothers Band, was formed pretty much trying to recapture what had been achieved in Kind of Blue. Just listen to the interplay between the two guitars or two drum kits in the first 4 ABB albums.
It was basically in my listening every day for something like a year. I could play it over and over and over again and it never seemed like it wasn't the freshest piece of music I have ever come across.
Even in the year 2002, I sometimes listen and marvel that it sounds more original, captivating, and spellbinding than almost anything else I can play. Strange.
I have met a lot of people who hate the album, including most of the people who have lived in my home. But, if it grabs you, it just won't let go. The modal jazz, first popularized in this piece, is absolutely hypnotic. I cannot say it's the notes, or the sound when the notes are being played, but there must have been some kind of deal made with the Devil when this album was recorded. There is something along the lines of magic in these songs.
From afar, there is nothing much to the music. In fact, some early critics laughed at it. A bunch of musicians simply playing scales? Others derided it as slow, morose, maudling.
To this day, more than 40 years after its release, it remains on the Top 10 Jazz Sales list, year after year after year. My biggest shock of the 40th Anniversary Edition of Stereophile(November, 2002) was its lack of inclusion into the most important albums of all time, jazz category. Unforgivable!!!
For me, Kind of Blue hit me like a thunderbolt.
I bought it because it is de riguer, the essential jazz piece, and at the time I had been diving deeper into jazz. At first, I played it, then maybe played it again, and maybe even once more. Nothing.
Then, all of a sudden...
Like the liner notes which quote Duane Allman in an interview raving about it. I am paraphrasing, but it was something like, "It's all I listen to, and it's been that way for a few years now." The influence on music has been mentioned, but I would like to say that THE American rock and roll band, The Allman Brothers Band, was formed pretty much trying to recapture what had been achieved in Kind of Blue. Just listen to the interplay between the two guitars or two drum kits in the first 4 ABB albums.
It was basically in my listening every day for something like a year. I could play it over and over and over again and it never seemed like it wasn't the freshest piece of music I have ever come across.
Even in the year 2002, I sometimes listen and marvel that it sounds more original, captivating, and spellbinding than almost anything else I can play. Strange.
I have met a lot of people who hate the album, including most of the people who have lived in my home. But, if it grabs you, it just won't let go. The modal jazz, first popularized in this piece, is absolutely hypnotic. I cannot say it's the notes, or the sound when the notes are being played, but there must have been some kind of deal made with the Devil when this album was recorded. There is something along the lines of magic in these songs.
From afar, there is nothing much to the music. In fact, some early critics laughed at it. A bunch of musicians simply playing scales? Others derided it as slow, morose, maudling.
To this day, more than 40 years after its release, it remains on the Top 10 Jazz Sales list, year after year after year. My biggest shock of the 40th Anniversary Edition of Stereophile(November, 2002) was its lack of inclusion into the most important albums of all time, jazz category. Unforgivable!!!