3 Shades of Blue cover art

3 Shades of Blue

Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans & the Lost Empire of Cool

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3 Shades of Blue

By: James Kaplan
Narrated by: Dion Graham
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About this listen

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.

©2024 James Kaplan (P)2024 Canongate Books Entertainment & Celebrities History & Criticism Music Celebrity New York
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The magic of this story is the interconnectedness of the lead characters, their relentless pursuit of musical nirvana as they saw it and the trail of destruction that pursuit left in its wake. So many other great jazz musicians suffered similar fates which leads one to ponder whether musical genius must be accompanied by addiction?

So much more than a biography

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