Miles Davis's 1959 album Kind of Blue is the best-selling instrumental jazz album of all time. As the music-buying public is rightly suspicious of jazz, that makes Kind of Blue the kind of jazz that people who don't like jazz can stand. This was not what Davis had in mind when he convened a six-piece for two sessions at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio in March and April 1959. Jazz was then still young enough to follow Ezra Pound's 1934 advice, "Make it new," but old enough to have the technique and self-consciousness to do it.