“Flamenco Sketches” by Miles Davis

"Flamenco Sketches" is one of the pieces on Kind of Blue, the album Miles Davis released on Columbia on August 17, 1959, and Davis shares its composing credit with his pianist, Bill Evans. That fits: Evans had played in the group in 1958 and was called back for these dates, and his influence helped steer Davis off the hard bop path and toward modes.

Davis built the whole album that way, handing each player a set of scales to improvise within and more room to shape a melody, and the freedom shows. The sextet is Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor and Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Irving Townsend produced and Fred Plaut engineered at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York, where the album was cut in two sessions in March and April 1959.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.