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Is Kind of Blue the Best Jazz Album Ever

Let me begin by qualifying "best", in this case I use the word best to mean the most representative or widely accepted.

Kind of Blue is not my favorite album, but whenever I listen to it I feel that if someone were to ask me what is Jazz I would be compelled to play it, more specifically "So What".

Maybe it is the star studded cast, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderly. On their own these guys are legends. Together?

So the question can be twisted, are they any other jazz albums that could represent what Jazz so perfectly?
nick_sr

Showing 1 response by larryi

larryi
3,759 posts
 
Certainly a great album and a gateway for many listeners. The same could be said of Brubeck's "Time Out" or Mingus' "Ah Um," Oliver Nelson's "Blues and the Abstract Truth" and a whole bunch of other great albums.

In 1959, the same year "Kind of Blue" was issued, Ornette Coleman put out "The Shape of Jazz to Come." This probably is NOT a gateway album, but, arguably, it is more influential than "Kind of Blue."

The problem with a label like "the greatest" is that, for a lot of listeners the album becomes not the gateway, but the endpoint. Why go any further if I've heard the "greatest" (particularly if I didn't like it all that much)?
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