Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece

Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece - On paper, what undoubtedly makes Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue superior to any other written material that touches the subject (no, I had not read Eric Nisenson's Making Of Kind Of Blue at the time of writing; see Review) is his exclusive access to the original session recordings from 2nd March and 22nd April, 1959. Whilst there's not an extensive record of superfluous dialogue from the studio, what exists is priceless, treating us to an insight into the mood of the players, their interaction with the technical staff and the process of creating the masterpiece. Listening to those tapes must have been an ecstatic experience, for some paralleled only by the Love, Devotion, Surrender Sessions

Kind of Blue's slim 224 pages is packed with relevant details that constructs the story of the album without falling into the verbose traps that most other books mentioning Miles Davis or John Coltrane fall into, namely a regurgitation of their biographies ad nauseum. Just enough background is skilfully interwoven with anecdotal evidence about the central characters, narrative of the sessions and intelligent description of the music, refreshingly lacking fatuous, unchecked enthusiasm.

Other than the verbatim reporting of those historic sessions, the book's strength is in it's assessment of the recording's context, what was happening in music about that time (an excellent section on modal forms is the most understandable that I've ever read), and what happened in music following the album's release...

After the wild ride Bird and Diz had taken jazz on in the mid-forties, pushing the envelope of harmonic and rhythmic invention as far as it would go at that point, Miles and other cohorts had pulled jazz back to a cooler, blues-spirited extreme. That pendulum swing, from the apogee of bebop to the high-water mark of modal jazz, constitutes a period of unparalleled creativity in jazz. From that perspective, many see Kind Of Blue as more of a goodbye to an age that had passed than a vision of the future.

The content is stylishly framed in layout and design, with considerable use of session photographs and documentation. The book's integrity comes from its plain intention to offer every devotee of Kind Of Blue an opportunity to step into the East Thirtieth Street studio on those days back in 1959. Give a nod to Miles, a wink to John and Cannonball, watch the rhythm section get set up, and settle back to experience, firsthand, history in the making.