Miles Davis - The (almost complete) Kind Of Blue Sessions

If you know anything about jazz, you've almost certainly heard Kind Of Blue, the album generally considered one of the best in the history of jazz and looked at by many as Miles Davis' tour-de-force. Yeah, it's great. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic work but it's simply not my favorite Miles' record, but that's beside the point. The point is it is beloved by fans and critics throughout the world, which makes it an exception to the unspoken rule that critics and fans alike can't have the same opinion across the board. For this reason, it's also beloved by Columbia Records, the label which owns the album and continues to reissue it in varying formats throughout the years. The album's wikipedia reference counts at least thirteen official issues, although the discography at Miles Ahead lists a few additional versions. This is important because several of the releases have seen significant revisions regarding the actual recordings, mostly correcting slight pitch issues on the first side of the album but also going so far as to include an alternate take of Flamenco Sketches as a bonus track on some versions. While this is nice for fans of the album, Sony, Columbia's parent-label, continues to reissue the album every few years with some new kind of twist intended to make fans break their banks, and the most recent of those reissues was the deluxe, 50th Anniversary Box Set which included a two-disc reissue of the album, a blue vinyl edition of the album and a DVD with interviews and such. The two-disc CD version of the album saw a separate release a few months after the box was issues in September of 2008, but it was a thorn in the side of many collectors. It included lots of new liner notes, most of which can be ignored, unrelated sessions included because of the similar line-ups of Miles' band, a live set from this era (this part is pretty nice) and another remaster of the original album with unreleased excerpts from the recording sessions. The sessions are where I get upset though.

If you've followed my other posts about Miles, you probably know that I'm a big fan of his electric years. I've got the "complete" sessions box sets for Bitches Brew, In A Silent Way, Jack Johnson, On The Corner and the Cellar Door Sessions. All of these releases are thoroughly misleading because none of them are truly complete, although the Cellar Door, Silent Way and Jack Johnson boxes at least focus specifically on those sessions. The Bitches Brew and On The Corner boxes contain material completely unrelated to the sessions in question and leave out significant recordings for unspecified reasons. None of this is to say that the boxes aren't nice, as they are rather amazing! There are tons of previously unreleased recordings, alternate versions, fantastically detailed liner notes and lots of session and discographical (is this really a word?) details. They are amazing releases, but labeling them "complete" is a bald-faced lie, and judging by the fact that the On The Corner box had not been labeled complete when it was tentatively announced, it seems clear the individuals organizing it knew better but were most likely usurped by their superiors from the label. And it's worth noting that Teo Macero, Miles' long-time producer, was furious when the Bitches Brew box was released for these same reasons and because it contained newly remixed versions of everything in the box.

Now, all of this said, the "complete" box sets are still fantastic releases, simply misleading in their titles, but Kind Of Blue is a different story. The truly complete Kind Of Blue sessions are apparently less than eighty minutes in their entirety, making it possible to issue them on one CD or, if the label wants to be greedy, two discs, likely one for each date of the sessions. Instead though, they've been satisfied to ignore the majority of those sessions until 2008, and then only issue small excerpts. One can argue that there isn't much music left from the sessions that hasn't already been issued, and there is a lot of truth there as there are only six complete takes from the Blue sessions and all of them are available on the standard single disc version of the album, but if you're going to include some of the additional content why not include all of it? Are they waiting for the absolute death of the CD to make these recordings available? The 75th Anniversary? The 100th Anniversary? Whatever they are waiting for, the bootleggers beat them to it as there have been excellent quality versions of the complete sessions circulating for several years now, most likely leaked during the remastering process in the early nineties which led to the album being issued for the first time completely at it's correct pitch.

Now, and this is very important, what I'm sharing here today is NOT the complete Kind Of Blue sessions, but it's close. I wasn't able to find a complete lossless version of the sessions but did find a seventy-three minute version which is very close to complete. I've also found MP3s of the additional recordings, but as I'd already edited the seventy-three minute version into separate tracks, I decided not to chop up the MP3s. At some point, hopefully I'll have a complete lossless version of the sessions to source clean MP3s from and post for you, but until then, this is pretty damn close. Also, I want to give credit to Miles Ahead for their fantastic database of session information and Ashley Khan's book, Kind Of Blue: The Making Of The Miles Davis Masterpiece, which also reviewed the sessions in detail, both of which I used as resources to make certain I was cutting the files into the appropriate pieces.

All in all, I hope you find this as entertaining as I do, with it's incredible performances and content. There is something about hearing the musicians in the studio, which included Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, "Cannonball" Adderly and John Coltrane, chatting back and forth, occasionally making a mistake or joking about something while Teo or an engineer counts off a take. I'm sure the label thinks these things are inessential to the average consumer, and they're probably right, but a true jazz lover is not the average consumer and they're missing point by the ignoring these fabulous recordings.


Miles Davis - The (almost complete) Kind Of Blue Sessions
UPDATE: No real shock that the DMCA made me take down the links. Sorry guys.


01 Freddie Freeloader (Take 1, False Start)
02 Freddie Freeloader (Take 2, Incomplete)
03 Freddie Freeloader (Rehearsal)
04 Freddie Freeloader (Take 3, Incomplete)
05 Freddie Freeloader (Take 4, False Start)
06 Freddie Freeloader (Take 4)
07 Freddie Freeloader (Piano Solo Insert)
08 So What (Take 1, False Start)
09 So What (Take 1, Incomplete)
10 So What (Take 2, False Start)
11 So What (Take 2, Incomplete)
12 So What (Take 3, False Starts)
13 So What (Take 3)
14 Blue In Green (Take 1, Incomplete)
15 Blue In Green (Take 2, Incomplete)
16 Blue In Green (Take 3, False Start)
17 Blue In Green (Take 3, Incomplete)
18 Blue In Green (Take 4, False Start)
19 Blue In Green (Take 5)
20 Flamenco Sketches (Take 1)
21 Flamenco Sketches (Take 2, Incomplete)
22 Flamenco Sketches (Take 3, Incomplete)
23 Flamenco Sketches (Take 4, Incomplete)
24 Flamenco Sketches (Take 5, Incomplete)
25 Flamenco Sketches (Take 6)
26 All Blues (Take 1, False Start)
27 All Blues (Take 1)



So, who wants to place bets as to how fast this post gets taken down by the DMCA?