Miles Davis’ seminal album Kind of Blue was released fifty years today. What can I say about this record that hasn’t been stated a million times before?

I purchased this as a cassette around my sophomore year of college and didn’t like it. I had purchased a cassette of Coltrane at the same time and was much more taken with it and its incendiary flavor. Miles’ album was too calm, too melancholy. The statements it made were like whispers in a dimly lit corridor, compared to Coltrane’s album which seemed to scream its urgency across my tiny bedroom. Maybe that is where my head was during that time. Who knows?

Little by little, however, I found myself repeatedly returning to Kind of Blue. In time, I realized that it was an incredibly seamless, warm and dare I say “sagacious” album. The space between Miles’ notes. The swooping grandeur of Coltrane’s tenor. The interplay between Cannonball and Coltrane. And Bill Evans. Such a light and poignant touch came from that old soul’s fingertips. So much was said on an album that runs only forty-five minutes long. Unforgettable music from what deserves to be the best-selling jazz album of all time.

One of the greatest things about Kind of Blue is the fact that it is so accessible to those who may not be at all familiar with the jazz idiom, yet it sacrifices nothing in its approach and contribution to the art form. And fifty years later, it is as relevant (and after hundreds of plays — beautiful) as it was upon its release in 1959. Take that, Kenneth Gorelick.

sidenote: in case you missed it, the Slate website had a nice write up about the album today.