All Blues

This article is about the Miles Davis composition. For other uses, see All Blues (disambiguation).

"All Blues"
Song

"All Blues" is a jazz composition by Miles Davis first appearing on the influential 1959 album Kind of Blue. It is a twelve-bar blues in ⁶
₈; the chord sequence is that of a basic blues and made up entirely of seventh chords, with a ♭VI in the turnaround instead of just the usual V chord. In the song's original key of G this chord is an E♭7. "All Blues" is a modal blues in G mixolydian.

A particularly distinctive feature of the piece is the bass line that repeats through the whole piece, except when a V or ♭VI chord is reached (the 9th and 10th bars of a chorus). Further, there is a harmonically similar vamp that is played by the horns (the two saxophones in the case of Kind of Blue) at the beginning and then (usually) continued by the piano under any solos that take place. Each chorus is usually separated by a four-bar vamp which acts as an introduction to the next solo/chorus.

While originally an instrumental piece and usually performed as such, lyrics were later written for it by Oscar Brown Jr.

Personnel

• Miles Davis – trumpet
• Julian "Cannonball" Adderley – alto saxophone
• John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
• Bill Evans – piano
• Paul Chambers – double bass
• Jimmy Cobb – drums

Covers

• A cover was made by Ron Carter on his album All Blues which came out in 1973.
• A cover was made by Colin Hodgkinson on his album The Bottom Line (1998).
• A cover was made by Larry Coryell on his album Monk, Trane, Miles & Me (1999).
• A cover was made by Rachel Gould and Chet Baker on their collaborative album All Blues (1979)
• The song "Strange Feelin'" sung by the folksinger Tim Buckley in 1968 on his album Happy Sad (album)/Happy Sad shares similarities to All Blues, including the vocals
• Alto saxophonist Phil Woods uses the classic bass line through his interpretation of Willow Weep for Me on his 1974 album Musique du Bois