3 Shades of Blue/Kind of Blue (Book/CD Review)

by Karl Nehring 

Kaplan, Janes. 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool. New York: Penguin Press, 2024. 

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue. So What; Freddie Freeloader; Blue in Green; All Blues; Flamenco Sketches. Miles Davis, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, alto saxophone; Wynton Kelly, piano (Blue in Green only); Bill Evans, piano (all other tracks); Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums. Columbia/Legacy CK64935

 

In a couple of recent posts I have shared some thoughts by jazz musicians concerning the influence of classical music on jazz (you can find those posts here and here). In his new book, 3 Shades of Blue, James Kaplan tells the interlocking life stories of three key figures in jazz: trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist John Coltrane, and pianist Bill Evans. Those with even a passing knowledge of jazz history are no doubt familiar with at least one of those three names, while those with a bit more knowledge will likely recall all three from their appearance on what today is probably the most widely known jazz album in history, Miles Davis’s landmark 1959 recording, Kind of Blue. Of course, all three musicians released other notable albums, such as Davis’s Sketches of Spain, Birth of the Cool, In a Silent Way, and Bitches Brew; Coltrane’s Crescent, Giant Steps, and A Love Supreme; and Evans’s Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and Conversations with Myself.

 

Those with an interest in jazz will gain an insight into the musical and biographical influences that contributed to the sound of those and other recordings by not only these three but other jazz luminaries as Kaplan weaves the three biographies into an overview of the development of different forms of jazz such as swing bebop, post-bop, cool jazz, modal jazz, harmolodics, and free jazz. But of special interest to fans of classical music might be to learn that all three of these jazz giants were influenced by classical music. For example, Kaplan writes that one piece that Miles almost became obsessed with was Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s 1957 recording of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G… Miles wanted to put wide-open space into his music the way Ravel did. He wanted to use different scales the way Khachaturian, with his love for Asian music, did… Davis told Evans that the new album he had in mind would make use of some of the Western classical themes they’d analyzed together…”

 

Evans had been classically trained, but ultimately decided that he wanted to become a jazz pianist. He moved to New York, the hub of jazz, determined to try to make the transition. As Kaplan describes his tiny apartment, “on the music stand were pieces by Chopin, Ravel, and Scriabin, as well as Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. When he practiced he loved to play classical and then modulate into improvised jazz. The tempo turning to idiosyncratic rhythm, the harmonies close cousins to those in the European music.”  (An interesting fact not mentioned in Kaplan’s book is that at some point later in his career, Evans struck up a friendship with the legendary Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould; in fact, Evans recorded his famous overdubbed solo album Conversations with Myself using Gould’s piano.)

 

As for Coltrane, Kaplan observes that “almost everyone associated with John Coltrane took note of his voracious appetite for learning about music in general and his instrument in particular… Like Charlie Parker, he made a point of learning to play in every key; also like Parker, and like Miles, he listened broadly and deeply, not just to jazz but to the modern Europeans. ‘Trane and I,’ Jimmie Heath recalled, ‘used to go to the Philadelphia Library together and listen to Western classical music – they had the headphones, you know. We would play Stravinsky and people like that and listen to all this music we could.’”

 

There.is of course much, much more to be found in this deeply researched, engagingly written book that lays out the life stories of these three giants of jazz who combined to give us one of the great recordings of the twentieth century. If you are a fan of Kind of Blue, Kaplan’s book will give you an inside look into its creation and creators. But if you are one of the few people who have not by now given a listen to Kind of Blue, you really ought to give it a listen. It is one of those rara albums that most people – even those who profess not to like jazz – seem to be able to enjoy once they give it a listen. It has a gently swinging quality to it that soon will have you bobbing your head or tapping your tors. In fact, chances are good that you have heard some of this music before – So What and All Blues are floating out there in various arrangements all over the place. Like a great recording of a great symphony, Kind of Blue is an album that can be enjoyed over and over again – it always proves to be just as satisfying a musical an emotional experience each time. It truly is a landmark recording well worth seeking out.