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

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1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the other members of Miles's sextet come together to record the bestselling jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue.

3 Shades of Blue follows the paths of Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and their roads on from there. It's a book about music and business, race and heroin, and an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. But above all this is the story of three very different men - their struggles, their choices, their inspiration. The tapestry of their lives is, in James Kaplan's hands, an American Odyssey.

Reviews

'[Kaplan] has written the definitive book on how that decade came to be and the three men . . . vital, marshalling with a light touch countless snippets of material' - Sunday Times

'Kaplan evokes a pivotal moment in modern music . . . Entertaining' - Financial Times

'A compelling read . . . [Kaplan] knows how to tell a story, and in 3 Shades of Blue he has a good one to tell. Or, rather, three good ones. . . . Kaplan has framed 3 Shades of Blue as both a chronicle of a golden age and a lament for its decline and fall. One doesn't have to accept the decline-and-fall part to acknowledge that he has done a lovely job of evoking the golden age' - New York Times Book Review

'A superb book . . . [Kaplan is] a master biographer, a dogged researcher and shaper of narrative, and this is his most ambitious book to date' - Los Angeles Times

'3 Shades of Blue, raises the bar . . . At a time when jazz is re-emergent and viral, seeping into virtually every musical genre (and vice versa), we are fortunate that the author has conjured this hothouse flower of a book - as rarified, intricate and haunting as an orchid' - Vanity Fair

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Author Bio

James Kaplan's essays, stories, reviews and profiles have appeared in numerous magazines, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire and New York. His novels include Pearl's Progress and Two Guys from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. His nonfiction works include The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious (co-authored with John McEnroe), Dean & Me: A Love Story (with Jerry Lewis), Frank: The Voice, and Sinatra: The Chairman. He lives in Westchester, New York.