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From the New York Times bestseller, the story of jazz, told through the journeys of three towering artists
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.
“[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
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“Kaplan evokes a pivotal moment in modern music … Entertaining”
financial Times
”3 Shades Of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans And The Lost Empire Of Cool [is] an absorbing, deeply musical and sad account of what led up to their collision on Kind Of Blue, and how they proceeded to wreck themselves, at their own speeds, afterwards. Different times, different artistic problems, hard drugs hugely influential on all three of them … And yet there was much to learn about writing in it”
Nick Hornby
“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
James Kaplan
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.