Kind of Blue

I guess its FREE Jazz....sorry it's just noise...

I don't understand the more extreme reactions to "labelling" genres of Jazz expressed here.  

It can be very helpful to know which sub-genre a particular recording falls into, simply for the sake of finding other recordings one might enjoy. This is especially true for those who've just begun to dip their toes into Jazz.  

it doesn't have to be anything more than this. 

No reason to get one's undies in a knot!    

The usefullness of labels is evident for classyfying music files by genre, instruments, names, countries, eras etc ...

But in my musical habits they means no more... Only the musician name count and had real value ...

The point is over any useful labels only the musicians matter as musicians...

Jimi Hendrix as Bach is a musician... The best  and more useful labelling if we keep only one is the musicians name ... For me...

I don’t understand the more extreme reactions to "labelling" genres of Jazz expressed here.

It can be very helpful to know which sub-genre a particular recording falls into, simply for the sake of finding other recordings one might enjoy. This is especially true for those who’ve just begun to dip their toes into Jazz.

it doesn’t have to be anything more than this.

No reason to get one’s undies in a knot!

@stuartk I’ll clarify.
You may have experienced this scenario one or several times in your life:
Someone says, “you should check out (insert artist name). You’d like it. They are (insert genre/sub-genre label, a label that may or may not have one or several hyphens).” You say, “ok. Will do,” then go and check out said artist, only to find the label/genre used to describe it seems wildly inappropriate. You say, “what? THIS is (genre/sub-genre label)?!?! This doesn’t sound like (genre/sub-genre label)!!”

On top of being lazy, conformist, and disrespectful to the specificity of an artist’s personal and individual expression, that type language and communication is not even useful, practical or helpful.  
It’s the opposite - very often, it’s just unhelpful and inefficient communication.

For instance, on this very thread, a perfect example is shown of the unhelpful, inefficient communication that occurs when this sort of label-mongering is flippantly (and with an almost indignant air of authority) employed.  
This was actually uttered, “(Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield) is firmly in the prog-rock genre…”    
“Prog-rock,” is a term most commonly associated with music like Yes, Rush, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, etc.   
Imagine a person (understandably) being under the impression that “prog-rock” sounds like Yes, Rush, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Jethro Tull.  
Now imagine what they would think after checking out Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, doing so thinking that it would sound like Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, or Jethro Tull.  
If you know what those bands sound like, and you know what Tubular Bells sounds like, it’s easy to see how, in this instance, objectively bad communication took place.  
Such is the nature of walking around and tossing out willy-nilly these generic, cookie-cutter labels to describe music.  
“Indie-psych-folk?”  
WTF is that?  
It’s nothing. Just worthless word salad. That’s just one of many examples of worthless label-mongering that commonly occurs in communication about music.

You seem to think valuing the individuality of an artist, putting our big-boy pants on and “using our words” to describe music instead of lazily trotting out generic label-mongering, and taking issue with poor communication is “extreme” and an instance of one “getting their undies in a knot.”

Surprised that great Oliver Nelson record isn’t mentioned. A warhorse to be sure, but to me, at the level of Kind of Blue.

I think the reason that the old recordings can sound so good is manifold:

• the studio equipment was far more primitive, less outboard gear, less fiddling with tracks;
• the musicians were extremely capable- they could play the whole song in a single take, even stuff that had orchestrated parts; no "oh, we’ll fix it later" mentality.

I do have a lot of the warhorses, but lost interest. My interest was renewed a little over a decade ago. I got into so-called "spiritual" and "soul" jazz through the recommendation of someone I knew. There were a few labels that concentrated on this-- mostly top notch sidemen who had no work on mainstream records in the post-Monterrey "youth" explosion. Perry Como was out; new sounds were in, thanks to people like Chris Blackwell at Island who signed an amazing roster of talent (Traffic, Crimson, Free, Tull, Fairport Convention, John Martyn, eventually Bob Marley, etc.)

Meanwhile, in the "jazz" world, it became much more local, community oriented stuff- in NY, Detroit (Motown moved to the West Coast), the West Coast sound, including all the acolytes of Horace Tapscott. Nate Morgan was a killer pianist who did stuff for Chaka Khan when he wasn’t doing deep jazz.

I’m only scratching the surface here, but to paraphrase David Lindley (RIP), the brilliant string player, you can make almost any song "jazz" (Lindley said "reggae" but I think it’s all the same).

If you like straight ahead stuff, check Art Pepper’s last recording of Patricia (he released it three times), this last version, with Cecil McBee (one of the most tuneful bassists I’ve ever heard), Roy Haynes and the recently departed Stanley Cowell (co-founder of Strata-East, one of the wellsprings of spiritual jazz). It is accessible and McBee’s bass work is classic, as is Cowell’s piano work. Pepper was a great altoist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKUz2763fDo

@tylermunns

Actually, I haven’t had the experience you describe.

And, as a creative person whose played guitar for 50 years, has a studio art degree in drawing/printmaking and enjoys photography and writing poetry, implying I'm  someone who disrespects/devalues the arts or artists is absurd,

As you sound emotionally triggered by this topic, I don’t see much possibility for rational conversation.

@mahgister

I’m speaking purely in practical terms, not in terms of "pigeonholing " or otherwise restricting artists. Would you also reject the use of the Dewey Decimal System in libraries?

Do Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, and Rush all sound the same? Of course not. Why should Tubular Bells be any different? Prog rock covers a lot of territory.

@stuartk Having a system that allows customers or patrons to efficiently locate a thing (dedicated aisles in a grocery store, Dewey Decibel system in a library, etc.) is helpful.  
Describing music to another person is different.  
Conflating the two things is false equivalence.

“And, as a creative person whose played guitar for 50 years, has a studio art degree in drawing/printmaking and enjoys photography and writing poetry, implying I'm  someone who disrespects/devalues the arts or artists is absurd
As you sound emotionally triggered by this topic, I don’t see much possibility for rational conversation.”

After you said such qualms were “extreme” and “getting undies in a twist,” I went on to further clarify why I took issue with label/genre-mongering. You took it personally (i.e. ‘…as a creative person whose played guitar for 50 years…’).  
I’m the “triggered” one, the one with comprised rationality.
Sure. You bet.  
The ol’ “you’re emotional/irrational” dismissal bit. An oldie-but-goodie.

Instead of saying an artist is (blank), what if we…Egads! Heaven forbid!…described the music?  You know, with words.  
That’s an option.  
Is I already said, applying some generic label contrived by record companies/radio stations/Rolling-frickin’-Stone magazine God-knows-how-many-years, labels invented to make it easier for them to become more rich, labels that rarely, if ever, provide an accurate/useful description, we could just use our words to describe something.  
Just a thought.

@mahgister

I’m speaking purely in practical terms, not in terms of "pigeonholing " or otherwise restricting artists. Would you also reject the use of the Dewey Decimal System in libraries?

I already admitted that this is practical... Labels are inevitable...😁

I class my music by names of composers and very large denomination : classical and Jazz and Arabic , Persian And Indian and South America and chinese and others ...

I never proposed to trash Dewey... 😊

I only said that labels with too much sub-sub-sub labellings  too much details like the 60 possible  jazz  genre distinctions are less useful than names of musicians for me and in a way restricting passed some  threshold ... General classification of jazz by years and era are enough for me ...

Once this is said i can understand why some musician can hate labelling ...

No poet like to be put in a drawer...

I agree entirely with simonmoon’s and sturartk’s comments and I see no need to react defensively. simon’s description of Jazz as a genre is pretty darn good. Seems to me that there is a lot of value in being able to accurately describe what it is that defines a genre.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the classification of music by genre or sub genre, even when the lines get blurred and it has to be done in broad(er) terms. Classification does not, in any way, give any one genre ultimate “superiority” nor “inferiority” as an art form if there is respect for the idea that “there are are only two kinds of music, good and bad”. An idea that, interestingly enough, was promulgated by and is most commonly associated with a Jazz artist. Duke Ellington, one of the greatest.

I believe that sometimes there is confusion about what that idea actually means and was intended to mean. It does not suggest that music should not be classified (by genre), or that there is no value in doing so. Rather, it is about recognizing and respecting the simple fact that in any genre there can be good music, just as there can be bad. There is a tendency on the part of some to put an entire genre of music that is liked on a pedestal higher than that of music that is not liked (understood), as concerns artistic value and validity. Level of creativity and emotional impact are barometers that apply to all genres and keeping an open mind can only be a good thing.

@jjbeason14 If you are a fan of this recording The Atlantic ran an article on March 6th of this year about it written by James Kaplan.Beautifully written article I,m sure you’ll enjoy it, won’t let me post a link you’ll have to look it up.

I love talking about and describing music. 
I see the act of describing a “genre” (and the subsequent stringent segregation and put-everything-in-a-box attitude) as being useful only to a person for whom doing so helps them maximize their profits (corporate marketing execs, radio station programming execs, etc.).  
As I said before, outside of someone with such an occupation where the shoving of a square peg in a round hole helps them make more money, choosing that type of ideation and communication regarding music in lieu of thoughtful descriptions of music (you know, art made by individual human beings with individual feelings, thoughts and views) is not a positive thing for music.  
The genre-mongering itself is the bad thing.  
I think a person should use their words instead of mindlessly shoving the work of an individual human into an ill-fitting category of “(blank)-(blank)-(blank),” with all the hyphens and everything.

**** Jazz is not a "style" of music that has a certain sound. It is a way of thinking about music, using sophisticated musical vocabulary, spontaneous composition ability, amazing levels of musicianship, musical communication with musicians while playing, etc. 

Make no mistake, those early 70's Miles recordings and "Crossings", are most definitely jazz. The musicians are all using jazz techniques, the vocabulary of jazz, jazz improv, etc. **** - simonmoon

Pretty thoughtful,  I would say.

"Crossings" is almost a compendium of jazz styles and motifs turned on its ear. It keeps morphing. I compared a sealed Green Label to the Kevin Gray cut a few years ago. Listening to that album was a revelation.

My impressions fresh from a comparison at the time of reissue: https://thevinylpress.com/herbie-hancock-crossings-speakers-corner/

in my opinion any labels put on jazz hide  the problem but will not decrease it  😁:

@whart , great article.  Great record.  Thanks.

The vocalists: Carmen Mccrae: Carmen Sings Monk

Carmen Mccrae /Betty Carter: Live

Kevin Mahogany: Another Time Another Place

Toney Bennett /Bill Evans: Tony Bennett and Bill Evans

@rdschicago "I find the jazz recordings of the late ‘50’s and ‘60’s sound SO much better than the rock albums in later years, eg, Led Zeppelin, the Stones, etc. Wonder why that is? Better recording engineers in the jazz genre? "

A lot of popular music was mixed to sound good on car stereos with stock audio.  It all about the audience.

The 4-channel version of "Bitches Brew" is astounding.  Multichannel sound is the perfect medium for a studio recording that is so dense with musical ideas. 

I'd lived with (and loved) the stereo Columbia release all my life but the surround version (avaialable only as import only at this point, I believe) gave me one of those goosebumpy, uber-thrilling musical experiences that keep us in this hobby.

@frogman -thanks very much, nice to see you.

I'd be interested in looking at how a music librarian catalogs stuff. Oh, I'm getting on the phone with one in a minute or ten. I'll ask her.

I tend to like material that bends the genre a little- whatever it is. Not for novelty's sake, but to make something new and different. 

OK, FWIW, one of the challenges in musicology librarianship is descriptions in catalogs with appropriate cross references. Not easy. But think about a large repository that is made available not only to scholars but to the average person- how do they access material that is "on file"? That's one of the challenges, according to the person I just finished speaking with. Along with making sure the artifact (recording) is shelved properly. I have that problem here and I'm not a library or archive. When I had guests over the weekend, playing the system, I was trying to find a record I knew I had- but where the hell was it? I found it moments after they left. 

One facet of how to characterize a recording and "index" it if you are compulsive or have a large collection. I trimmed my collection substantially and still have issues- the record will pop into my hand afterwards, but sometimes, trying to find something on demand is a challenge. I know this doesn't address "short hand" genre classifications, but the issue is one that is taken up in library science. 

It seems like we’re simply incapable of considering that it is not the definition of the “genre” that is the problem, but the “genre”-mongering itself that is the problem.

In lieu of talking about how to define a “genre” and then describing music in those woefully over-simplified, dismissive, unhelpful/inefficient terms, a person could simply address music by saying things like,
- “it’s not particularly aggressive, more mellow, but with similar song structures to their previous LP”
- “to me it sounds similar to Bitches Brew but more tightly structured, more conventional harmonic relationships / composition,”
- “it reminds me of Ace of Spades but with more overt melodicism,”
- “it has harmonically sophisticated melodic composition provided by rich, lush orchestral instrumentation with simple percussion arrangements and impressionistic lyrics that depict desolation, squalor with a touch of gallows humor”  
- “the harmonic composition and song structure is unremittingly formulaic, be it I-IV-V, or I-VI-IV-V, and the arrangements and lyrics are rich in vapid cliches,”. 
- “it has pedal steel guitar, brilliant James Burton-esque guitar, but employs more orchestral accompaniment and more sophisticated harmonic composition than a typical Merle Haggard record”

I can't pick a #1 because for me the jazz i like at any particular moment depends on my mood and jazz covers every mood you can have

But i will mention one artist i haven't seen listed--apologies if someone did and i missed it, but i can listen to just about anything by

Art Tatum

@viridian Kind of Blue or “free jazz” is the cliche you’d be happy to never hear again?

A great acoustics/musical understanding revolution is in the making!

It seems that the separations between genre as classical music for example and jazz on the other side , or any other classification by genres is less truthfull to music than the distinctions born from the way each instrumentist use his instruments in his own traditions ...

Here from the mouth of the beast :

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/pythagoras-was-wrong-there-are-no-universal-musical-harmonies-study-finds

What complement this amazing findings is this one about the universal way we can map music perception on the body sensations nevermind the difference between cultures :

https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2308859121

No culture win over the others, any great musician is a world in itself and all musical sensations are mapped on the human body in the same way irrespective of the genre , style or specific cultures...

Musician and their  instrument rules music because they rules our body trough the way they rules their own body when playing , not genres or specific cultural styles... Classical is not superior or inferior to jazz or ragas or tar Persian artistry ...

**** I see the act of describing a “genre” (and the subsequent stringent segregation and put-everything-in-a-box attitude) as being useful only to a person for whom doing so helps them maximize their profits (corporate marketing execs, radio station programming execs, etc.). ****

Couldn’t disagree more. It is useful to many avid listeners and doing so does not suggest that these listeners are incapable of talking about music in an insightful way. Quite the contrary. There is no “mongering” involved. You seem to have a deep aversion to classification. That works for you. Fine. However, as exemplified by your list of “acceptable” ways to talk about music and given how personal/subjective descriptions can be, there are times when it’s best to let the music do the talking. So, along those lines and to get back to the OP’s question, here is one of my very favorites. Sadly little known:

Btw, love KOB.  Great and important record.

Frogman is right labelling not only is useful but inevitable anyway...😊

We cannot censor labels use or worst forbid them only correcting them in a way they dont put an artist in a drawer created by the mapping of some musical factors and not by some others we did not picked..

For sure labelling do not replace reality...

The maps are not the territory ... There is no debating here ... Only a simple distinction ... The way we describe the artistic gesture and the gesture itself when we hear it ...

Larry Young with Joey de Francesco are my Hammond idols ...😊 Thanks to Frogman recommendation for Larry Young ...

@tylermunns 

You are what I refer to as "A long day". I really like women's (that would be female) college softball. 

i recently listened to the entire kob album for the first time in many years and i was struck by how mellow/laid back it sounded--except for "so what" it wouldn't be out of place at a wedding or hotel lobby. which doesn't mean it isn't great for what it is, but i'm more of a "bitches brew" or "agartha" kind of guy.

Yes, but rarely, if ever, does one hear music (Jazz) with even nearly this level of sophistication of execution and sense of purpose at a wedding or hotel lobby. A recording such as KOB takes on special meaning in the context of the evolution of Jazz over the decades and that of a relentlessly evolving artist like Miles. One could say that it is very very sophisticated simplicity, which in a way is precisely the thrust of the modal Jazz movement.

There’s a reason it’s the number 1 jazz selling album of all time. It’s that popular, and a personal favorite that I’ve owned too many versions over the years. My favorites were the 180 gram and 200 gram releases on major vinyl release companies.

KOB is like the 4 seasons of Vivaldi ...

I never encountered someone who disliked these two pieces in my life ...

I dont like people who dont like animals cats or dogs...

I will not trust someone who will trash KOB or the four seasons in an audio thread as uninterestings pieces ... ☺😊

But i like as much many others musical masterpieces ...

There is others as much interesting jazz albums in relatively great numbers as the 4 seasons...

This fact do not decrease their value ...

There is much musical geniuses than we can count on our 20 fingers ...

i have 50 numbers one album on my jazz list ... The same in classical... The same in indian music or on my Persian list ...

Only in these four styles i had then 200 albums as number one album ...

😋

An album i will put beside KOB for me and my listening habit is Pat Martino "formidable" :

but i could had put 50 others .... As my dear Walt Dickerson and Sun Ra two albums together ....

But this is my taste... KOB is way more influential for evident musical reason and timing moment in jazz history ...

Oups! i just put it on my system and as usual i cannot put Pat Martino under the rug... As someone putting KOB cannot stop it playing ... A good test ... It is the same for Vivaldi ...

Fantastic musician, Pat Martino who had one of the most interesting personal life stories.  Thanks mahgister!

The two best documentary i ever seen on jazz is the Pat Martino recovery documentary and the film documentary about Chet Baker ...

Astounding videos i listened two times...

if someone had not seen them he must stop and see ...

😊