"So What" is the first track on the 1959 album Kind of Blue by American trumpeter Miles Davis.
[1] This AABA structure puts it in the thirty-two-bar format of American popular song.
An orchestrated version by Gil Evans of this introduction is later to be found on a television broadcast given by Miles' first quintet (minus Cannonball Adderley who was ill that day) and the Gil Evans Orchestra; the orchestra gave the introduction, after which the quintet played the rest of "So What".
This arrangement was later performed and recorded as part of the album Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall.
While the track is taken at a very moderate tempo on Kind of Blue, it is played at a speedy tempo on later live recordings by the quintet, such as Miles Davis & John Coltrane The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol.