Is Kind of Blue the Best Jazz Album Ever


Let me begin by qualifying "best", in this case I use the word best to mean the most representative or widely accepted.

Kind of Blue is not my favorite album, but whenever I listen to it I feel that if someone were to ask me what is Jazz I would be compelled to play it, more specifically "So What".

Maybe it is the star studded cast, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderly. On their own these guys are legends. Together?

So the question can be twisted, are they any other jazz albums that could represent what Jazz so perfectly?
nick_sr
Many do not like HardBop as Lloydc may have mentioned but I find it impossible to listen to ....... lets say..... Art Blakey's Moanin title track with out moving some body parts :) Just one of many. Everyone should own at least Lee Morgan's Sidewinder, John Coltrane's Blue Train,and Grant Green's Idle moments.
I'd definitely put in a word for Kind of Blue as the greatest jazz make-out album of all time. Not to denigrate it from a purely musical standpoint (because it truly is amazingly good playing, especially the miraculous way Miles turned this group into a cohesive ensemble), I wonder how many who consider it the "greatest jazz album" have fond memories similar to my own for which Kind of Blue was merely a soundtrack? =^)
Jiminlongansquare,

I not what you mean, I feel guilty playing it when my wife is around, since I owned the record while I was still a bachelor. If vinyl could talk, the stories my collection could tell...
KOB was stylistically one of the first "modal jazz" albums, I believe, not Be Bop, which was popular prior to KOB in the 1940s and well into the 1950s.
Right. Bebop to modal was from bad to worse.

but seriously, why put KOB over Louis' greatest work?