"Blue Moment" Examines Influence of "Kind of Blue"

Richard Williams acknowledges early on in “The Blue Moment" that there is not much more to say about Miles Davis' jazz masterpiece “Kind of Blue" that hasn't already been covered in two 2001 books by other authors.

Rather, his book is an attempt to examine the groundbreaking album's impact on the music that followed it: “Like the ripples from a pebble dropped into an ever expanding lagoon."

Recorded in 1959, “Kind of Blue" is certainly one of the most popular and influential jazz albums of all time with its modal approach signaling a shift away from conventional chord changes to more static patterns that freed up the musicians to improvise in new directions.

But while there is little doubt about the album's importance, Williams follows the pebble's ripples a little too far, spotting its influence in everything from the minimalist pioneer Terry Riley's semirandom composition “In C" to the misshapen drumming of The Velvet Underground's Maureen Tucker to U2's anthemic arena rock.

Williams' overly inclusive approach is apparent by the third chapter, where he discusses Greco-Roman conception of the color blue -- they didn't give it much thought, apparently -- to the use of blue dyes in Asia during the Neolithic period. Picasso's Blue Period gets a mention, as do blue jeans and the indigo rags of nomadic Tuaregs.