was born on this date in 1926. If you do not own the Davis album Kind of Blue, you should purchase it immediately. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine tells us at the All Music Guide,
Kind of Blue isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence. … It may be a stretch to say that if you don’t like Kind of Blue, you don’t like jazz — but it’s hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection.
Kind of Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. Listen to their report here.
“Sketches of Spain” is absolutely excellent, too.