Why Miles Davis Stopped Playing “Kind Of Blue” Live

It was one of the greatest albums of all time, the best selling Jazz album of all time, and songs like “So What” and “All Blues” easily gathered the most requests from fans. Yet Miles Davis steadfastly declined to play the songs from Kind of Blue live. This article explores why, and when he stopped playing them.

One consistent thing about Miles Davis was his intrinsic need to change… to move forward, not to be sucked into the trappings of “nostalgia,” which he equated to creative death.

Once Miles had entered his “electric period”, by the late 60’s and 70s, he flat refused to play his old hits.

Miles did talk several times about the reason he stopped playing Kind of Blue live.

Probably the single biggest factor was that the specific conditions of that time (around the 1959 era when Kind of Blue was released), and the environment in which those specific artists practiced, lived, thought and interacted simply no longer existed.

And it’s true. In fact, the album Kind of Blue itself really changed the game after its release. Popular jazz went from being dominated by bebop and hard bop and cast a wider creative net.

He felt that playing those to play those songs 20 years later would be inauthentic.

“I don’t play that stuff no more. I’m not that person. That was then. This is now… you can’t go back. Why would I want to play like I used to play? That’s like a person trying to wear their high school clothes.” – Miles Davis

Miles also felt like songs from that era became something of a “museum piece”, and he didn’t want to share that fate.

By 1969 Miles was bored with playing his old songs he same old way, and so he rather infamously began playing his most-demanded classic song “So What” at double speed. The melody was so fast it’s almost unrecognizable. And he continued performing it like this for some months, until 1970, when he never performed it again.

You can hear the fast-tempo “So What” in some recordings, like “Four” & More (our favorite), 1969 Miles or Bitches Brew Live.

Next, discover the fascinating story behind the recording of “Kind of Blue”

Why Miles Davis stopped playing trumpet for five years

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there”.

– Miles Davis

Here’s the Miles Davis “So What” Official Music Video:

Here’s a sped-up “So What” from ‘Four’ & More Live, from the Philharmonic, New York, New York: