It's hard to quarrel with the suggestion to start with Kind Of Blue, although I have gotten a bit cynical about seeing it as the only jazz cd in someone's entire collection, which I have seen many times. Just that I think the album has been very coopted, which is no fault of its own, and it was one of the first ones I ever heard (although it was the 58 sessions with Green Dolphin Street, cut by the exact same band of trane-adderly-evans-chambers-cobb, that made me want to learn everything I could about miles.)
However, it's important for a joni fan new to miles to consider what it was that she saw in him, and I think in that context it's very important to hear nefertiti and the other albums made before (esp, miles smiles, sorcerer) and after (miles in the sky, filles de kilimanjaro) by the same band of shorter-hancock-carter-williams. Especially since joni has worked with shorter and hancock so many times. This might be my favorite period, and i'm one of the only people I know who actually digs everything he did from 1945 to 1991. I'd say the best of that period is nefertiti, it's the easiest one to dig, which does not at all mean that it's easy music, just that it's so good that it takes hold.
