What kind of artist creates one of the most foundational works in his field and then refuses to play it, saying it physically hurts and comparing it to eating day-old reheated leftovers? This episode is a narrative biography of Miles Davis at the most pivotal turning point of his creative life, the making of the 1959 album Kind of Blue. In late 1958 Davis was leading one of the most acclaimed and profitable hard bop bands in jazz, with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and Wynton Kelly, yet he felt the rapidly changing chord structures were strangling creativity.

We explain how George Russell's 1953 theory of modality gave Davis an escape route, why improvising on a single scale is harder than it sounds because it removes the safety net of chord changes, and how Davis brought back pianist Bill Evans for the proje ...