Kind of Blue Morning

I gathered up an A+ stack of music last night to listen to -- some of which I knew already, some of which I had yet to hear. This morning has been a Miles Davis' Kind of Blue sort of morning. 

I've been listening to jazz and classical a lot more during the day -- mostly at work, but also at home when I am writing, because it provides some sort of music background without being distracting. I've never been much of a jazz enthusiast (or classical, for that matter, until I discovered some English composers such as Elgar and Vaughan-Williams), but not for lack of wanting to be. Interestingly, since I work in a bookstore, it has always been bookstores that I associate with jazz. When I was about 14 or so, I was staying north of Milwaukee with my dad, helping him out with an air fair during a summer weekend. In the evening, we stopped into an independent bookstore in some anonymous upper-crust shopping center, and the adjoining coffee shop had a live jazz pianist, whose tunes wafted through the dark-shelved and cozy bookstore and forever impressed upon me the association between bookstores and jazz. Alas.

So now, whenever I have the chance at the bookstore I work at, I put in jazz, because it reminds me where I am. I love it. Yesterday I grabbed a few jazz titles along with some other alternative titles that I knew, but hadn't heard yet, save The Duke Spirit, which I have already and wanted to play in the car on the way home. ;) The 2009 Editors release, In This Light and On This Morning, is really great, and worth a couple listens.

1. Gene Ammons & Sonny Stitt - God Bless Jug and Sonny (Live at the Left Bank), Prestige

2. Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie - Bird & Diz, Verve

3. Editors - In This Light and On This Evening, Faderlabel

4. My Morning Jacket - Chocolate and Ice EP, Badman

5. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue, Columbia

6. Miles Davis - Cool Blues, NewSound

7. The Duke Spirit - The Duke Spirit, Shangri-La

8. The Walkmen - Bows & Arrows, Record Collection

9. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - A Night in Tunisia, Bluebird

10. Elgar - Symphony No. 2, EMI

Not Shown: Gene Ammons/Sonny Stitt - Boss Tenors, Verve