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3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans & the Lost Empire of Cool
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.
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.
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Published March 7, 2024
About the author
James Kaplan
40 books98 followersJames Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. The author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman, the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, he has written more than one hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, from Arthur Miller to Larry David.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 17, 2025
James Kaplan swings into a deep dive on not only Miles, Trane, and Moe but of Bebop itself. 3 Shades of Blue has style, class, and baby it grooves.
Kaplan does not solely deify the three but gets into the tragedy of their humanity, too. And as great as their music is, the sadness of the addictions that ruined their lives is just as profound. But dig it, 3 Shades of Blue is itself not a tragedy but a musical celebration. Absolutely perfect for any fan of jazz.
Kaplan does not solely deify the three but gets into the tragedy of their humanity, too. And as great as their music is, the sadness of the addictions that ruined their lives is just as profound. But dig it, 3 Shades of Blue is itself not a tragedy but a musical celebration. Absolutely perfect for any fan of jazz.
Displaying 1 of 1 review