Miles and Miles of Music

Having posted the web link on the 60s, I took a walk to the post office, during which I listened to some of my eclectic collection of music including David Bowie, Emerson Lake and Palmer (or - wait - was that a legal firm?), Chris Botti, Diana Krall, Kings of Leon, Donald Fagen, and the incredible Miles Davis. In 1959 Davis brought his sextet including John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly together to record "Kind of Blue", reportedly the all-time top selling jazz album, recognized in 2009 by the US House of Representatives on a resolution honoring it as a national treasure.

I missed all that, unfortunately, and maybe you did, too. I was busy listening - then - to music I don't listen to today (which also includes, by the way, country and most classical), when the tonal quality and sophistication of Miles Davis was available pretty much my whole life. Yes, he was a unique, once-drug-addled character who was known to perform with his back to the audience, but the man could play a horn.

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of listening to my grandson's high school jazz band playing music by Duke Ellington, Bobby Darin, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and others. Bryan is heading to Luther College this fall for a career in vocal music. On Sunday he pulled together his barbershop quartet to perform at his graduation party, and now I know barbershop is not dead. Whoaaa!! Music of the 40s? Barbershop? Didn't we perform some of that while at NKHS? That's going to mean another blog posting sometime.

In the meantime, look up Miles Davis, if you haven't already, and listen to "So What", "Mademoiselle Mabry" or "All Blues" for a real musical treat. (And now I have satisfied the reader who thought we maybe included too many football stories.)