3 Shades of Blue : Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans & The Lost Empire of Cool

by Kaplan, James | Biography: arts & entertainment
Published 07/03/2024 by Canongate Books in the United Kingdom
Hardback | 496 pages, B&W images throughout
240 x 165 x 42mm | 732g

1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles's sextet come together to record the seminal jazz album of all time Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue is a magnificent, blended biography on the meandering paths which led Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and the aftermath. It's a book about music, business, race, addiction and the cities that gave jazz its home; from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City. Kaplan meditates on creativity and the great forebears of this golden age who would take the music down strange new paths.

Above all, this is a book about three very different men - their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan's hands, an American Odyssey, with no direction home.