Kind of Blue is fifty years old. Jazz at Lincoln Center had a concert for both Kind of Blue and Coltrane's Giant Steps, which also is fifty years old. Both records have first-rate songs through-and-through, but both records in and of themselves also were singular recording achievements ... a convergence of design and of luck (but, as they say, is not luck the residue of design?).

Kind of Blue's design ... Bill Evans and Miles Davis wrote the template for modal jazz - harmonically spacious and open - the musicians with room to breathe and to explore. And Miles Davis assembled such great musicians - Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, Wynton Kelly, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, and Davis & Evans. Everyone on the same page and everyone at the height of their powers.

Kind of Blue's luck ... songs in one take, almost miraculous in how sublime they are. The sum of the music greater than its constituent parts. But, then again also the residue of design. Davis assembled and coached the personnel.

Kind of Blue is the album that both lovers of jazz and general-dislikers of jazz love. I've always thought its that incredible openness of the album, both harmonically and spiritually, to which so many people of varying tastes respond. To me, that harmonic and spiritual openness has a certain American ethos to it, like Copland. And at the same time, the musicians who create that harmonic and spiritual openness are a larger part of the music - even when one musician is "soloing."

Don't get me wrong ... I think Giant Steps too is an amazing album. It's just as much design and miracle as Kind of Blue. (That much of the personnel for both albums overlap is pretty cool.) Indeed, it would seem that jazz for the most part took toward the Giant Steps direction than the Kind of Blue direction - more and more playing "outside" of the harmonic framework of the song. The soloist often in a sense becomes oppositional to the harmonic structure ... individual inventiveness and virtuosity become a premium. The group lives or dies for the most part on the individual musicians. This too is an American ethos.

To get really cliché, Kind of Blue and its progeny is like basketball and Giant Steps and its progeny is like baseball. Basketball has this individual element ... the good shot, the player who can drive the lane, the player who can rebound ... but all of those things are so very dependent upon how the other players on the team interact and interplay with each other - how they set it up. Baseball too is a team game, but so much more of being a successful team hinges on discreet instances of individual performance ... the situational skill and inventiveness of the hitter and of the pitcher.

Both sports are fantastic. Both albums are fantastic. But musically-speaking, I guess I am more a basketball fan than a baseball fan.

Here's a nice documentary on Kind of Blue: