Draft of liner notes for Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue

Miles Davis’s 1959 album Kind of Blue has consistently been considered one of the most influential and bestselling jazz albums of all time. It received a five-platinum rating after selling 5 million copies and was elected to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2002, the registry’s inaugural year. The album, recorded in Columbia Records’ famed 30th Street Studios, includes an all-star line-up of Miles Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, Wynton Kelly on piano, and Bill Evans on piano. In writing the liner notes for the album, Evans began with an analogy of an improvised brushstroke that does not leave the page until completion. Evans’s metaphor could apply equally to his own writing—the draft required only minimal revision —and to the recording of the album itself; most of the tracks are the first full takes of the recording sessions.