Kind of Blue (Re: Davis' Modal Stuff)

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

Anyone who knows music and listens to that album can hear that the
reviewers did not always describe it correctly. In fact the musicians
did not play more in a modal way at all. What happened was simply that
no one explicitly played the rapid chord changes, as usual in be bop.
But there were definitely be bop style rapid chord changes in the
music! You still hear the chord vamps - as understood - in every
soloist's lines. My guess is that reviewers took an easy ride on the
work, thinking "well I don't hear the usual piano banging every eighth
note to mark out the chord vamps - guess that must mean the soloist is
improvising more freely... eh... like in modal style". Wrong. The
truth is that many of the song's lead lines will work just as well if
a jolly good banjo player would sit in to strum those rapid chord
changes. The cool thing with that record IMHO is rather that they
still played be bop but doing so while sonically leaving out much of
the sounding be bop characteristics - the explicit marking of rapid
chord changes.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com