Kind of Blue: A five-part seduction fantasy

1. So What (09:22)

SO WHAT started this whole thing was when I bought my first copy of ‘Kind of Blue’ from a woman at the CD store with that slightly quizzical expression animals sometimes have. The loudspeakers in the shop were oozing the irony of Warren Zevon’s Genius, but she regarded me from the far side of the counter as though she might be interested in what she saw. I watched her flipside closely as she walked away to try and find a CD of pianist Elan Sicroff’s ‘Journey to Inaccessible Places’, a recording consisting of G.I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann collaborations. I knew she wouldn’t have it; it’s been out of print since shortly after it was released.

As she walked away, her backside in those tight jeans looked like two meringues rubbing against one another and I tried to stop myself imagining whipped cream being piped between them.

She looked up the Sicroff on the computer and she was so patient that she lulled me into a false sense of security. After knotting her brows over the database, she told me what I already knew: ‘Journey to Inaccessible Places’ has been out of print for 19 years. Somehow, coming from her, this was good news.

The following day, after reading about a re-release of ‘Kind of Blue’ in 5.1 Surroundsound in the latest issue of my favourite audio magazine, I returned to the store with the discounted CD and my receipt and exchanged it for the re-release.

“You realise this one’s a Dualdisc? That’s why it costs more,” she said as she took my credit card. It felt like a coded message, an invitation. I know, it’s tragic; she’s a young woman and I’m an old man. But sadly, not only am I old enough to know better, I’m old enough to forget that I know better.

I’m not the spontaneous type, but Miles’s spirit of discovery on this record must have inspired me to be more adventurous than usual. Either that, or the hangover that had been trailing me all morning had made a yet more irrational person out of me. I banished the mental image of John Coltrane’s pensive expression in Don Hunstein’s famous photograph from the ‘Kind of Blue’ sessions, screwed my clichés to the sticking post and asked her, “How about dinner?” The question hung on the air like Jimmy Carr’s cymbal crash at the beginning of Miles’s solo on So What.

She put her head on one side, blushed slightly and replied, “Dinner sounds good.” I was so shocked that I pulled a Celine Dion album out of the bargain bin until I noticed she was staring at its cover, so I jammed it back into the rack.

Her name was Jade, and she was certainly in tune with my new spirit of discovery: her rear-end in tight jeans, the slit up the back of her black top showing a triangle of bare skin, that little animal look. I swung home like a walking bass line, feeling jubilantly blue for the first time in ages — yes, still blue about being old and about life not being as easy as planned, but upbeat nevertheless: a beautiful woman wanted to go out to dinner with me. Somewhere, a far-off football crowd roared.

We dined at a restaurant overlooking the harbour and it went well, except that the vast dining room was so noisy with chat and laughter that I couldn’t stay focused on seduction. But somehow, Miles’s confidence stayed with me throughout: I remembered reading that even though his band had played So What on gigs before, the version on the record was their first complete run-through in the studio.

Throughout our first date Jade had a smile on her face, as though she knew the score and I didn’t. “We should have had dinner at your place,” she shouted. “I have to keep asking you to say things twice.” I smiled; I didn’t mind and I minded dinner at my place even less. We covered-off the usual conversation topics — work, family, holidays, movies — without ever getting stuck for something to say. We shared a cab home and I dropped her at her place on the way to mine.

On our second date, the music was the easiest choice of all. It had to be ‘Kind of Blue’. Apart from the fact that Jade had sold it to me, it was perfect; ideally suited for seduction — the right length, the right mood, the correct air for me to create an illusion of being cool. As Herbie Hancock says, “If you want a record to make love to, ‘Kind of Blue’ is the record.” Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen has said that its powers of seduction made it “the Barry White of its time”.

More ominously, though, the ‘Kind of Blue’ documentary had some words of warning from the late Ed Bradley, the Sixty Minutes journalist: if you haven’t got over by Flamenco Sketches you won’t, and she isn’t going for your little games. It was a challenge, but I was determined to remain light-hearted. Upon its release, the Downbeat magazine review for ‘Kind of Blue’ said of alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley that he seemed to be under wraps on all the tracks, “except Freeloader when his irrepressible joie de vivre bubbles forth”. I disagree. To my ears, Cannonball gives Trane a run for his money, to the extent of occasionally aping his phrasing, and his humour shines through as I hoped mine would do, although I’d never tried seducing a woman with jazz.

Jade was due at 20:00. I had my mise en place together, onion and garlic peeled and the stock on the boil, and started cooking at ten to eight, so when the doorbell rang I was ready. I stood in the doorway clean-shaven and in clean clothes, ushered her in and hung up her coat. Tonight she was wearing her jeans with a dark blue top and she was glowing. She looked better in a pair of jeans than any woman I remembered seeing since 1976. How I knew that and yet couldn’t remember what happened last week is a mystery to me.

The bass and piano intro to So What was already playing, so I asked her whose solo she preferred, Trane’s or Cannonball’s. This was one of my standards, like, “Cary Grant in North by Northwest or Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep?” She said she’d never heard any Miles Davis. I was off to a shaky start and it placed me firmly across from her, leaning forward in my favourite armchair to face her on the sofa. She observed me closely as I marvelled at the curlicue of her top lip.

It might not seem to have been an auspicious start but it was one with integrity: I hadn’t struck the right note, but I’d struck it defiantly, as though that was what I’d meant to do.