Sketches of Spain

Davis's wife Frances took him to see the flamenco dancer Roberto Iglesias, after which he bought every flamenco album he could find at Colony Records. Evans said they had meant only to do the Concierto de Aranjuez. A friend gave Davis the only album containing it, and Evans copied the music off the record because there was no score. The folk pieces that followed were inspired by Alan Lomax recordings made in Galicia and Andalusia and issued by Columbia Masterworks in 1955. It was the first Davis album produced by Teo Macero.

The opening piece, almost half the record, is an arrangement by Evans and Davis of the adagio of Joaquin Rodrigo's guitar concerto, with Davis on flugelhorn and later trumpet. He had not asked Rodrigo's permission. Rodrigo's wife Victoria Kamhi called the recording an act of piracy, and his suit against the Spanish authors' society SGAE failed. Will o' the Wisp comes from de Falla's ballet El amor brujo, and Saeta and Solea are Evans originals. The Pan Piper is named for a Galician knife grinder's pan flute.

Bill Mathieu wrote in DownBeat that if there is to be a new jazz, a shape of things to come, this is the beginning. J. D. Considine called it a work of unparalleled grace and lyricism, while Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic. Davis, asked whether it was jazz, said it was music and he liked it. It won a 1961 Grammy for best jazz composition of more than five minutes, went platinum, entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1997 and stands at number 358 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums list.