3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans & The Lost Empire of Cool looks like a very interesting read.
The work of bestselling author James Kaplan and published by Canongate Books in hardback, this hefty volume, coming in at 496 pages, looks at the jazz scene in one of its most pivotal moments – 1959.
1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles’s sextet come together to record one of the most famous and significant jazz albums of all time – Kind of Blue.
3 Shades of Blue is a blended biography on the meandering paths that led Miles, Coltrane, and Evans to ‘the mountaintop of 1959 and the aftermath’.
According to the write-up:
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.
It sounds like the kind of thing that would sit well on any modernist’s bookshelf. In fact, it’s a shame to have it spine-on as the cover art is just wonderful.
The book hits retailers on 7th March 2024, and you can pre-order a copy now for £23.
Find out more at the Amazon website
