The last surviving member of the musicians who performed on Miles Davis' ground-breaking jazz album 'Kind of Blue', has died of lung cancer, at 91.
Jimmy Cobb's role as a drummer on the 'Kind of Blue' jam session would forever change his career. The album also featured saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane.
The album, released on August 17, 1959, captured a moment when jazz was transforming from bebop to something newer, cooler and less structured..
Davis, who died in 1991, had some notes jotted down, but there weren't pages of sheet music. It was up to the improvisers to fill the pages. "He'd say this is a ballad. I want it to sound like it's floating. And I'd say, 'OK,' and that's what it was," Cobb recalled.
'Kind of Blue has sold more than 4 million copies and remains the best selling jazz album of all time. It also served as a protest album for African American men who looked to Davis and the jazz musicians looking to break stereotypes about jazz and black humanity.
Cobb would also work with such artists as Dinah Washington, Pearl Bailey, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Wynton Kelly, and Stan Getz. He'd also release a number of albums on his own.
He performed well into his late 80s and played in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2017, as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival. Jazz fans from throughout the American southwest came to pay their respects in what many felt was a goodbye.
Australian Associated Press
