What to Buy After Kind of Blue: Blue Train and More

The next record is usually printed on the back of the one you already own.

Kind of Blue peaked at number 12 on Rolling Stone's all-time list in 2003, and the best follow-ups are records its own players led: Blue Train, Somethin' Else and Portrait in Jazz.

The ranking held. It was still number 31 in 2020. In 2002 the Library of Congress named it one of the first 50 works in the National Recording Registry, in the registry's first year. That is the front door to jazz for a lot of people. Not a deep cut. The welcome mat.

The trouble starts with record two. Plenty of newer listeners treat Kind of Blue as a starting point, then grab a random classic and land in bebop, with its fast, complex changes and virtuoso soloing. Kind of Blue gave them modal soloing over simpler changes. Lots of air. Different language, same genre name.

A sideman is a musician playing on a session someone else leads. Kind of Blue is stacked with them, and each made records under their own name. Following them works like reading the end credits after a film you loved and looking up who shot it. You liked the picture. Now you know whose eye it was. One five-album list for jazz newcomers puts the same pair, Somethin' Else and Blue Train, right beside Kind of Blue, and I doubt that is an accident.

Turn the jacket over. The names are printed right there, and each one opens a different door.

Who played on Kind of Blue, and which record does each player lead to?

Kind of Blue lists seven musicians across two sessions, and the answer to what comes next is printed right there: follow Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans into their own records.

Before you open a marketplace tab, do three things:

1. Turn the jacket over and read the personnel, not the praise.
2. Pick the player whose solo you keep replaying.
3. Buy that player's own record from the same years, then come back for the next name.

The bopdb channel's breakdown of the album sums up the date as seven musicians, one room, two sessions. Miles Davis on trumpet. John Coltrane on tenor sax. Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto. Bill Evans on piano for four tracks, Wynton Kelly on piano for "Freddie Freeloader" only, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. One credit deserves a squint: Adderley's surname was misspelled Adderly, an error Classic Records' audiophile reissue never corrected. Still, that is the whole map.

Evans almost missed the date. He had already left the band and Davis had already hired Kelly, yet Davis brought him back anyway, making Kind of Blue the third and final album the two recorded together. Somebody wanted that piano badly. Keep that in mind.

Here is the map I would hand anyone holding the record for the first time:

• Coltrane leads to Blue Train. Paul Chambers is on bass again, alongside Lee Morgan on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Kenny Drew on piano and Philly Joe Jones on drums.
• Cannonball leads to Somethin' Else. Released in August 1958, it puts Miles Davis on trumpet under Adderley's name, with Hank Jones on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Art Blakey on drums.
• Bill Evans leads to Portrait in Jazz. Same pianist, very different room.

Guitarist John Robson, building a five-album list for jazz newcomers, put Somethin' Else and Blue Train right beside Kind of Blue. He also called Davis's bands "something of a finishing school" for players headed toward bigger things. The common assumption is that your second record should be whatever aficionados rank highest. Robson argues the opposite, warning that many of those consensus classics are a hard listen for someone new.

The idea runs deep. In 2024, a biographer framed a whole book on Davis, Coltrane and Evans around following the three before, during and after this record. Combining 6 sources points to the same first move. Search for the player's own record by name, because a plain eBay search for Miles Davis Kind of Blue showed 1,168 results in October 2026. Then ask which player on the jacket you could pick out blind, and start with that one.

Our catalog snapshot from October 12, 2026 lists 543 products from 150 vendors, and our data shows Blue Note as the most-stocked label with 137 products. Two of the three first buys are Blue Note sessions, so this branch is the easiest to shop as a checked copy, whether you want a new pressing or an older one from our rare jazz vinyl shop.

Do not trust the genre tag either: one eBay listing for a Very Good Kind of Blue CD at $7.58 sits under Bebop, a label that tells you nothing about who actually plays on the record.

Which record after Kind of Blue sounds most like Kind of Blue?

Read the back cover of Kind of Blue and your next three records look obvious. Sort its players' records by recording date instead, and a different shortlist appears.

Listeners really do follow the names. In 2023 someone asked the r/Jazz forum for albums like Kind of Blue, and most answers pointed to records featuring people who play on it: Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers. John Robson, a guitarist who makes videos for jazz newcomers, put Adderley's Somethin' Else and Coltrane's Blue Train on his five-album starter list in 2024. On a record collectors' podcast, one host recalled years when Kind of Blue was the only jazz record in the collection, until Mad Men prompted a second purchase: Blue Train.

The same thread carried specific warnings. One commenter said Evans's own albums are "largely piano trio not horns." Another loved Adderley's live Quintet in San Francisco but heard "a bit different feel than Kind of Blue partly because of the classic bebop piano style of Bobby Timmons." A third noted that the title track of Coltrane's Giant Steps "literally changes key every four beats." Robson calls that album "not an easy listen" for newcomers and says A Love Supreme "is a bit out there."

In stock at Miles Waxey A Love Supreme · John Coltrane 1LP Vinyl · Near Mint (NM) $39.99 Shop this record →

Timing explains part of the difference. Blue Train was a 1957 hard bop session built on what Wikipedia calls "conventional diatonic harmonies," set in unconventional ways. Portrait in Jazz came eight months after Kind of Blue, from a new Evans trio. Put the records in order and a pattern shows.

Record	When	Kind of Blue players besides Davis	Davis plays?	What you will hear differently
Blue Train	Recorded September 15, 1957	Coltrane, Chambers	No	Hard bop, with Lee Morgan's trumpet and Curtis Fuller's trombone
Milestones	1958	Coltrane, Adderley, Chambers	Yes, as leader	The modal idea on the title track, next to bright, energetic tunes
Somethin' Else	Released August 1958	Adderley	Yes, on trumpet	A 24-chord "Autumn Leaves" that ends in a modal piano coda
Miles '58 sessions	A year before Kind of Blue, released later	The Kind of Blue band, Evans included	Yes	Philly Joe Jones on drums
Kind of Blue	March 2 and April 22, 1959	All of them	Yes, as leader	The reference point
Portrait in Jazz	Recorded December 28, 1959	Evans	No	Piano trio, with Scott LaFaro's bass close to an equal partner

The closest records sit just before Kind of Blue, and Davis plays on every one. Somethin' Else came out under Adderley's name, with Davis on trumpet. Mike Bangert-Drowns, who traced Kind of Blue's roots in a 2023 essay, reads its liner notes as a sign that Davis "seems to have wielded a good amount of control." Its "Autumn Leaves" moves through 24 chord changes, against two in "So What." Then, at 7:45, Hank Jones plays a two-minute modal improvisation where you would expect the usual wrap-up. One r/Jazz commenter called the album "kind of blue ish."

Milestones puts Coltrane, Adderley and Chambers beside Davis in 1958. The jazz explainer channel bopdb says Davis tested the modal approach there, and Kind of Blue was "the full realization." Matt Fish, who writes about Davis's catalog on Substack, calls the Milestones title track the real conceptual breakthrough and may prefer the album. He also calls "Two Bass Hit" "one of the brightest, most energetic tunes of its era," so expect more heat than hush.

Closest of all on paper are the Miles '58 sessions, which the hosts of the You'll Hear It podcast picked as their next listen in 2026: "the exact same band as Kind of Blue, but from a year earlier," with Evans still in the band and Philly Joe Jones on drums.

One player links most of the table. Paul Chambers, 23 when Kind of Blue was made according to those hosts, plays bass on Blue Train, Milestones and Kind of Blue. An r/Jazz commenter adds Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, where Chambers plays alongside Evans. Bangert-Drowns says the Kind of Blue rhythm section kept "popping up on many of the great jazz albums of the time."

"Miles was a master shape shifter, meaning he felt a constant need to move on. Say something once, why say it again?"

r/Jazz commenter, 2023

Kind of Blue's mood seems to have belonged to a band at a particular moment. When Davis gathered these players in 1958, the records lean toward that sound. When they led their own dates, the records we checked went their own ways. Another r/Jazz commenter suggests listening the other way around: "Listen to like 5 or 10 albums from 1955-1958 then listen to Kind of Blue." The back-cover roadmap still teaches you who these players are, and the 1958 rooms Davis shared with them are where the overlap runs deepest.

• If you want more of the Kind of Blue mood, start with the 1958 records where Davis plays: Somethin' Else, Milestones and the Miles '58 sessions.
• On Somethin' Else, let "Autumn Leaves" run past the 7:45 mark to hear Hank Jones's modal coda.
• If Evans's piano drew you in, expect a trio on Portrait in Jazz and listen for the bass as a near-equal voice.
• With Coltrane, take the beginner advice: Blue Train before Giant Steps or A Love Supreme.
• Check the bass credit on any jacket from these years. Paul Chambers's name tells you one Kind of Blue player is in the room.

How we checked this

We used two r/Jazz discussion threads, a video by a guitarist who makes beginner guides, two podcasts, a short video from a jazz explainer channel, an essay on Medium, a Substack post on Davis's catalog, and Wikipedia entries for Blue Train and Portrait in Jazz, checked October 18, 2026. None of the figures here come from our own sales or catalog. Whether one record sounds like another is a listening judgment made by commenters, writers and podcast hosts. None of our sources compared the records in any measured way, and forum comments are one person's view. We sell jazz records, including records named here, so we have a stake in what you buy next. Still unknown: how and when the Miles '58 sessions were first issued, and when the San Francisco live album was recorded. Our sources do not say.

1. r/Jazz, thread on albums like Kind of Blue, April 2023.
2. r/Jazz, thread on what makes Kind of Blue great, December 2022.
3. John Robson, five jazz albums for newcomers video, October 2024.
4. Apple Podcasts, record collector podcast episode on Kind of Blue and Davis, December 2021.
5. Mike Bangert-Drowns, essay on Kind of Blue and Somethin' Else, December 2023.
6. Matt Fish, post on important Miles Davis albums, May 2026.
7. bopdb, short video on the making of Kind of Blue, May 2026.
8. You'll Hear It, podcast episode on Kind of Blue, May 2026.
9. Wikipedia, Portrait in Jazz entry, retrieved October 18, 2026.
10. Wikipedia, Blue Train album entry, retrieved October 18, 2026.

Why don't the albums by Kind of Blue's players sound like Kind of Blue?

Because Kind of Blue was the outlier. Davis, Adderley and Coltrane were bebop masters first, and the records around it mostly speak that faster, chord-driven language instead of open modal space.

Here is the warning before you drop the needle. If you expect "So What" when Blue Train starts, you will feel lost fast. Not because the record is worse. Because the rules changed.

Two terms first. Bebop is jazz built on chord changes: the soloist follows a harmonic road that keeps turning, and the best players take those turns at speed. Modal jazz holds one scale, or mode, for a long stretch, which unties the soloist from the chords and moves the melody into the solo itself. Bebop was the main language of the day, and all three horn players on the Kind of Blue date had mastered it. George Russell's 1953 book, Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, offered the alternative, and the title track of Milestones in 1958 had already put the idea to work. Kind of Blue did not invent the approach. It made it famous.

Count the changes and the gap gets concrete. "So What" has two chord changes. "Autumn Leaves," the opener on Somethin' Else, has 24. Same Miles Davis on trumpet. Two completely different maps.

In an r/Jazz thread asking what makes the album great, one commenter described the jazz before it as "incredibly fast and complex changes with virtuosic soloing," and suggested some listeners were getting tired of that sound. A bassist in the same thread asked the question every new listener eventually feels: "What do you do with 16 bars of one chord/mode?" Kind of Blue answered with space. Much of its players' other work answers with motion.

So what should you expect from each first buy?

• Blue Train: three horns up front instead of two saxes and a muted trumpet. Expect more traffic and more chord-running, and give it a few spins before you judge it.
• Somethin' Else: the bridge record. It opens on that change-heavy "Autumn Leaves," yet late in the track Hank Jones takes a two-minute modal improvisation where you would expect a tidy wrap-up. You can hear the door opening.
• Portrait in Jazz: no horns at all. A commenter in a separate r/Jazz thread, one asking for albums like Kind of Blue, cautioned that Evans's records are "largely piano trio not horns." Lovely. Different.

That second thread also offers a useful frame for all of this. "Miles was a master shape shifter," one commenter wrote, and nobody in that band stayed in the room once the session ended. Even the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco, a record fans of the album keep getting pointed toward, has "a bit different feel," the same commenter said, partly because of Bobby Timmons's bebop piano.

None of that is a reason to skip these records. If anything, it is the reason to buy them, because hearing a band leave the modal room teaches you more than hearing it stay. That difference is easier to catch on a quiet, well-cut copy, so a look through the audiophile vinyl pressings shelf can pay off before you settle for a noisy one.

The players still lead somewhere good. You just need a way to choose which name to follow next, and when to stop.

How do you keep finding jazz records by following the sidemen?

Read the personnel, pick the player you liked most, buy a record that player led, then read that new jacket and repeat.

The loop never changes. What changes is how much each jacket gives you. Run it like this:

1. Write down every name, including bass, drums and the second pianist.
2. Note the track that hooked you and who was playing on it.
3. Buy one record that player led, from roughly the same years.
4. Flip the new jacket and start the list again.

Do not skip the rhythm section. The bopdb breakdown of the album hears Wynton Kelly, on piano for just one track, giving "Freddie Freeloader" "a bluesier, more grounded feel" than the Evans tracks. If that is the cut you keep replaying, Kelly is your next name, not Evans. Paul Chambers is the other quiet guide. His bass is on Kind of Blue, on Blue Train, on Milestones, and on Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, where Bill Evans turns up too.

Here are the branches I would take next, by player:

• Evans and Chambers lead to Blues and the Abstract Truth. Nelson leads on tenor and writes the arrangements, with Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Roy Haynes on drums. One listener called it "an under appreciated masterpiece with an absolutely stellar lineup."
• Coltrane leads to Giant Steps, eventually. Its title track "literally changes key every four beats," running through what became known as the Coltrane Changes. Thrilling. Not a second record.
• Evans leads deeper into the trio. Waltz for Debby and Everybody Digs Bill Evans are where listeners point you for the album's quieter, sadder side, the picks one commenter reserved for "if you want to cry."
• Miles leads to Gil Evans. Miles Ahead in 1957, Porgy and Bess in 1958 and Sketches of Spain in 1960 put that trumpet inside an orchestra.

In stock at Miles Waxey Porgy And Bess · Miles Davis 1LP Vinyl, NM/VG $24.99 Shop this record →

Not everyone follows the sidemen, and that is fine. One podcast host lived with Kind of Blue as their only jazz album for a long stretch before Mad Men nudged them toward Blue Train. Separately, a secondhand dealer once answered their where-to-start question with two more Miles records, Sketches of Spain and Miles Smiles, and the host later found Miles Smiles more dynamic and less melodic than Kind of Blue, still listenable but less relaxing. That is the other road. Follow the trumpet forward instead of the saxophones sideways.

A candid note here. None of these sources can tell you which branch you will love, because they are listeners' picks and one channel's analysis, not a measure of anyone's taste. Your ear settles that part.

Combining 4 sources, the pattern holds anyway: every useful recommendation traces back to a name already printed on a jacket. When you are ready for the next one, our bestselling jazz vinyl records are a sensible place to start hunting for these names.

And watch the Nelson record closely. Dolphy's name on that jacket is its own door, and it opens onto much stranger rooms.

Where does the back-cover roadmap take you after the first three records?

It takes you anywhere the personnel points, because every jacket you buy prints the next set of names, and following players keeps you close to a sound you already trust.

Kind of Blue will keep minting first-time jazz buyers. A record that kept selling until it crossed five times platinum does not suddenly stop. My bet is that most of those buyers will find their second record the same way, on the back of the first one. Not in an algorithm. On the jacket.

That matters more now than it once did. In 2024, biographer James Kaplan told the Jazz Bastard Podcast that jazz has become a "land of a thousand tribes," where in 1957 and 1958 everyone knew Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. No shared map anymore. The personnel list is the map you already own.

Kaplan raised one more point worth carrying forward. He said Coltrane had no "late period," just intense exploration packed into his last three years. So the Coltrane door, once opened, keeps moving under your feet. Pick the player you want to chase, then check which copy you are actually buying before the next name pulls you somewhere new.

Frequently Asked Questions

What else do people ask about buying records after Kind of Blue?

Most follow-up questions come down to three things: which player to follow first, which copy of the next record to buy, and where to find an honest one.

Should I follow Coltrane, Cannonball or Bill Evans first?

Follow the player you kept rewinding. If it was the alto, start with Somethin' Else. If it was the tenor, start with Blue Train. If the piano on the quiet tunes got under your skin, Portrait in Jazz is the move, but expect a trio, not a horn band. Evans had already left Davis's group and was brought back for the session, which became "the third and final album they would make together."

What is a sideman?

A sideman is a musician who plays on a record led by someone else. On Kind of Blue, everyone except Davis is a sideman. Each of them led records too. That is the roadmap.

Which other albums do jazz newcomers get pointed to?

Robson's list for jazz newcomers names five: Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue, Somethin' Else, Blue Train, Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus and Kind of Blue itself. Somethin' Else and Blue Train both come straight off the back cover. I take that as a good sign. Different routes keep arriving at the same players.

In stock at Miles Waxey Saxophone Colossus · Sonny Rollins 1LP Vinyl $44.99 Shop this record →

Do I need an original pressing of my second record?

No. You need a clean copy that plays strong. An original can be noisy, overgraded or priced for collectors rather than listeners. If a listing claims a first press, ask the seller to confirm the label and the deadwax before you pay.

Where can I buy these records without marketplace roulette?

Start with the Miles Waxey shop, browsed by artist. Every record there is hand-selected and inspected by a lifelong collector who checks pressings and jackets before it is ever listed. Pick a name off your jacket and look it up.