Sketches of Spain got Miles Davis accused of theft by a living classical composer, enraged jazz purists, and drove a future rock critic to abandon jazz entirely, yet it became a platinum-selling, Grammy-winning masterpiece. This episode traces the 1960 album from a night out that Frances Taylor Davis insisted on, watching flamenco dancer Roberto Iglesias, to Miles clearing out the flamenco section at Colony Records. The original plan with arranger Gil Evans was modest: a single jazz version of the Adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. With no sheet music available, Evans transcribed the entire concerto by ear from a mono record, then dug into Alan Lomax's Spanish field recordings for the folk material that became The Pan Piper, Saeta and Solea.

The hosts explain the Third Stream idea behind the record, how Evans inserted an e ...