Eric Nisenson, The Making of "Kind of Blue": Miles Davis and His Masterpiece - Eric Nisenson has won me over with his book The Making Of Kind Of Blue. I was put off his work after reading 'Round About Midnight: A Portrait of Miles Davis, which I found more a vehicle to promote Nisenson by association with Davis than a serious attempt at biography. But with The Making Of Kind Of Blue, Nisenson proves he is knowledgeable about jazz, that he understands jazzmen, and that he can convey the story that he has to tell articulately and with panache.

Inevitably Nisenson's book covers a lot of the same ground as Ashley Kahn's Kind Of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, the the books emerge quite different. The main determinant of this is that Kahn centres his account around his exclusive, single playback of the Kind Of Blue mastertapes. Nisenson also features detail from the first session tape but does not identify his source (although this audio is now freely available between traders and file sharers). Nisenson also does not devote as much of the book to the sessions as Kahn does in his. Instead, we are led through the main events in each protagonist's lifetime that influenced their contribution to the recording. This includes each player, plus theorist George Russell and producer Teo Macero. The book ends the same as Kahn's with commentary on the legacy of Kind Of Blue.

The result is a nicely balanced analysis of the causal factors that Nisenson feels are pertinent to the recording, how it came about, and what it has meant in music history. The downside is that the distinct dealing of each musician leads to unnecessary repetition of events as their paths cross repeatedly in the close-knit world of jazz that revolved around 52nd. Street.

Ashley Kahn's Kind Of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece is a wonderfully detailed historical document and a vital accompaniment to the album. Add your own copy of the session tapes and you have part share in preserving one of the most important musical events in history. Add Eric Nisenson's The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece and now you can fully appreciate history in the making.