Miles Davis played trumpet on the 1959 album Kind of Blue.
Davis was the album’s leader and principal soloist, performing alongside John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. The sessions were recorded for Columbia Records in New York.
Kind of Blue is strongly associated with modal jazz. Instead of relying mainly on rapidly changing chord progressions, its compositions often give musicians scales or modes as frameworks for improvisation. That approach helped create the album’s spacious, uncluttered sound.
The trumpet is a valved brass instrument, while the saxophones heard on the record are woodwind instruments with single reeds. Davis’s muted trumpet sound is especially prominent on tracks such as “So What” and “Freddie Freeloader,” making the instrument central to the album’s identity.