Kind of Blue

CTL-E-6019 · Work · album · 1959

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-00121 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-W-0005 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6019. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Kind of Blue is the 1959 studio album by trumpeter Miles Davis, recorded at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959, and released on August 17, 1959. Davis led a sextet of saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, who plays on one track. Building on the modal experiments of Milestones, Davis based the album entirely on modes rather than chord cycles, handing the musicians brief sketches and scales and capturing mostly first full takes across five compositions: 'So What,' 'Freddie Freeloader,' 'Blue in Green,' 'All Blues,' and 'Flamenco Sketches.' The result redefined what a jazz record could do, influencing jazz, rock, and classical musicians alike. The Library of Congress selected the album for the National Recording Registry in 2002, its inaugural year, and it is routinely described by critics as the greatest jazz album ever made and as Davis's masterpiece.

The record

• Year: 1959
• Work type: album

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 3 — 747 Program, Wave 10; third Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Kind of Blue entity in the live graph at 3,683 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6019 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 2 packet ordered reserve, position 14 of 25 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1102). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Canonical album record in the graph's jazz holdings; the album's author entity, Miles Davis, is already in the graph as CTL-E-1449. Vital status: Not applicable — a work, not a person. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Sales certifications shown as a dated sequence, not blended: RIAA quadruple platinum (4 million) certified October 7, 2008, per the album's encyclopedia summary; the New York Public Library reports a five-platinum standing (5 million copies), consistent with the later 5x platinum certification reported for 2019. The common description 'best-selling jazz album of all time' is attributed to music writers, and the underlying precise figures are noted as disputed in the same sources. MEDIA: photo HELD (Named candidate: the album's original 1959 Columbia cover photograph of Miles Davis performing (label artwork; rights held by the label — PHOTO-001 record and clearance required, HELD). named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6019-kind-of-blue.svg); video FILLED (CTL Short #66, matching-entity; Link Map binding caveat in the media record); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = FILLED (CTL-owned @culturetechlens YouTube Short whose subject is this album (matching-entity rule); catalog row and U) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Columbia Records — released by
  Kind of Blue was released on August 17, 1959, by Columbia Records (label: Columbia) and recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio, New York City. Closes the blocked edge documented in Scan Tail Wave 3.
• Miles Davis — authored by
  Kind of Blue (Work) was authored by Miles Davis (Person CTL-E-1449), its bandleader and composer of record, per the New York Public Library's album record.

Sources

• New York Public Library, Music Division — draft of Bill Evans's liner notes for Kind of Blue: 1959 album, five-platinum standing, National Recording Registry 2002, 30th Street Studio recording, full personnel listing — https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/performance/item/11321 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia-derived album summary carried by Tower Records — sessions March 2 and April 22, 1959; released August 17, 1959, by Columbia Records; modal method; RIAA quadruple platinum October 7, 2008 — https://tower.com/products/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-mono-vinyl (build store)
• https://loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/registry-by-chronology.pdf (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Album title: Kind of Blue Artist: Miles Davis Release year: 1959

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Record CTL-E-6019 · Combined Graph record U-00121 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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