‘So What’ is the opening track on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (1959), considered one of the most influential albums of all time and by many estimations the best selling jazz record ever.
According to John Scofield, guitarist for Miles in the ’80s, the trumpeter said, “Everybody likes ‘So What’.”
Miles was joined by Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums.
‘So What’, and every other track in the record, was a first take, “which indicates the level everyone was playing on”, Miles wrote in his autobiography.
In the documentary Kind of Blue: Made In Heaven, Evans said the fact that all the tracks were first takes might have contributed to the record’s success. Herbie Hancock, who joined the band as pianist four years later, said Miles wanted to capture the “spirit of discovery”.
Miles wrote that Kind of Blue “came out of the modal thing” he started on Milestones, released the previous year. The title track on that album was where Miles started experimenting with modal jazz.
Modal jazz de-emphasised chord progressions and gave musicians more freedom in their solos. They didn’t have to follow rapidly changing chords, as they did in the bebop era.
Modes are “scale patterns other than major and minor” (as succinctly described by Britannica). They are less obviously happy or sad than a major or minor key.
Hancock described Kind of Blue as “a door opening.” Horace Silver said that Miles “led the way and everybody else would copy”.
‘So What’ is in an AABA structure; it uses the D Dorian scale in its A sections and modulates up a half step to E-flat Dorian in the B section. The mode stays the same.
There’s nothing unusual about that, especially not the AABA structure, which is a common 32-bar jazz format.
The unusual thing is (or was) the lack of harmonic progression. That’s what creates the sense of stasis, or time going slowly.
It wasn’t the first modal jazz record, but it’s the biggest.
Kind of Blue is often recommend as an entry way into jazz – not least due to ‘So What’: there’s a memorable, hummable hook with Chambers’ bassline and the piano chords’ reply (then the horn players in unison), and the fewer chord changes give the listener more time to find their bearings.
Miles composed all of the album’s music (to the degree that anyone composes largely improvisational music), contrary to what others said, as Miles wrote: “that Bill was co-composer of the music”.
Miles gave Evans credit for introducing him to some classical composers who influenced him, but not composition:
“That isn’t true; it’s all mine and the concept was mine.”
Miles gave the other musicians “sketches” but left room for “spontaneity”. He was aiming for the kind of spontaneity he had sensed between the dancers, drummers, and finger piano (kalimba) player with the Les Ballets Africains.
He was also “trying to get close to” the “bad gospels” he’d heard walking home from church with a cousin in Arkansas when Miles was six years old.
Miles wrote that he missed on both accounts. When he’d tell people – who all said the “record was a masterpiece” – that he didn’t accomplish what he’d set out to, they just looked at him like he was “crazy”.
Top image from Miles Davis YouTube channel.