Unquestionably, the best album under Cannonball's name. The quintet/sextet albums are mostly geared to a more pop market and contain much "packaged" soul and funk, while the dates Cannonball shared with Miles, Bags, Bill Evans, Coltrane, and Gil Evans often find him deferring to or competing against musical temperaments not wholly sympathetic with his own…
Kind of Blue isn't merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it's an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album. To be reductive, it's the Citizen Kane of jazz – an accepted work of greatness that's innovative and entertaining. That may not mean it's the greatest jazz album ever made, but it certainly is a universally acknowledged standard of excellence…
Milton "Bags" Jackson (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999) was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with hard bop and post-bop players…