Kind Of Blue is Miles Davis’ (and jazz’s) Thriller, the moment when a genuine artistic breakthrough was rewarded with unprecedented commercial success. In 2008, the RIAA certified itas quadruple platinum — the best-selling jazz record of all time. It’s also one of the most beautiful jazz records you’ll ever hear. Completely unified, it plays like a suite rather than a collection of five discrete songs, and even when pianist Wynton Kelly replaces Bill Evans on the second track, “Freddie Freeloader,” the simmering mood remains intact.

By 1959, when this album was made, Davis was growing weary of the increasingly complex chord changes dominating jazz composition. He decided to make an entire album based on modality, a type of composition that uses scales, not chords, as its foundation and is much more rhythmically stable — almost trancelike at times. The five pieces on Kind Of Blue seem to drift in like mist; although they swing (if you don’t tap your foot to “So What” once Paul Chambers’ bass locks in with Jimmy Cobb’s drums, you may be in a coma), they do so in such a cool and subdued manner, it’s like they’re challenging the entire orthodoxy of jazz, the idea that you had to sweat to get your point across. This is music that has an almost skipping, loping groove — it’s head-nodding jazz, and the solos have a lyricism that says much more than “look how fast I can run through the blues scales I know.” Kind Of Blue is like a meditation; you can listen to it anytime, and it will always feel like just before or just after midnight. It’s the only jazz record a lot of people own because, in some ways, it can be the only jazz record you need. It’s so pure, so cohesive, that every time you listen to it is like you’re hearing it for the first time.