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Title: Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn, Jimmy Cobb ISBN: 0-306-81067-0 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.58 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Companion, a guide, and much more.
Comment: A surprisingly brisk read for a book of such ambitious scope, the author begins a full decade before the recording it chronicles. A wide range of subject matter - the evolution of jazz, Miles as an artist and creative voice, recording techniques, even the business of jazz marketing - are covered engagingly, intelligently and leave the reader with a better context in which to place this seminal recording.
Long-time fans, who know the music and the myths inside out, will marvel anew at the dedication Miles showed not only to his music, but in what can only be called his sentimentality in working with the other artists on the dates. His relationship with pianist Bill Evans is especially poignant.
The rise of modal jazz and its off-shoot from bop, along with the impact on the post-war generation of players is juxtaposed against a record label system willing to actually bid for jazz artists(!) and put real thought and resources into promoting their works. There is a tinge of nostalgia to the writing, though the author is not a contemporary of the original recording's release. This tone is far out-weighed by the realization that Kind of Blue really did mark a second (or third) Golden Age in jazz and that men the likes of Miles Davis - or Babe Ruth or Marlon Brando - seem not to walk among us much anymore.
In an age of celebrity profiles and Behind the Music "documentaries", Kahn's book shows us that every story has many stories, and he tells each with a respectful touch.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating book about a terrific album
Comment: As a jazz fan I was eager to read Ashley Kahn's book on the album "Kind of Blue", and I wasn't disappointed. The author got a rare opportunity to listen to the master tapes of the two studio sessions that created the five songs on the album. The heart of the book is the dissection of each song -- its origins, the mistakes made along the way, and an analysis of the final complete version. Also interesting was the story of Miles Davis' career up to that point. The description of the jazz scene in 1959 put the album into context. It's fascinating to be reminded that "Kind of Blue" was overshadowed at the time by Ornette Coleman's debut album, which was considerably more avant-garde (but much less accessible).
Not being musically trained myself, I didn't completely follow Kahn's explanation of "Kind of Blue"'s ground-breaking use of modal (versus chordal) scales. I was more interested in the human stories -- how Miles hooked up with Bill Evans; John Coltrane's expansion of his musical horizons while working with Davis; the impact of heroin addiction on Davis' attempts to keep his bands intact. There are a lot of personal histories embedded in the story, and the author does a good job of teasing them out and explaining how this seminal release came to be made.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Great Subject, a Deficient Book
Comment: I hate to be a nay-sayer when so many other critics have nothing but unqualified praise for this book. And, by and large, it's an interesting read with much fascinating information. As a compilation of facts, it offers an exciting look behind the scenes at the creation of a milestone (no pun intended) of jazz.
However, to a serious musician and record collector, the book has deficiencies that cannot be overlooked.
First of all, the book is far too adulatory. It is far better than the completely worshipful and therefore useless Eric Nisenson book on the same subject, but that's not saying much. When I buy a book I want a book, not an extended press release. There's just too much that reads like it came from the pen of a PR man rather than a journalist.
In fact, Kahn's excuses for the ineptitude of Columbia Records leave the impression, incorrect I'm sure, that he's on their payroll. More of this below.
First, I suspect that Kahn is not himself an experienced musician. When he tries to write about the music itself he makes numerous mistakes. I'll cite just one.
On page 70 is a picture of the chart Cannonball Adderley used for "Flamenco Sketches," with a caption by the author that refers to the scales used in the tune as "C Ionian, A-Flat Mixolydian, B-flat Major 7th, D Phrygian, and G Aeolian." The chart, however, is transposed for Eb alto saxophone, so the picture doesn't match the description. It would have been helpful if the caption had mentioned this.
Worse, however, is the apparent lack of understanding of music in the caption itself. "C Ionian" is the same as C Major. If the author knew this, he might have clarified what surely must sound like pure technical jargon to non-musical readers, most of whom have heard of C Major but may have no clue to what an "Ionian" is.
"B-flat Major 7th" is a chord, not a scale. The scale is B-flat Major, period. Or, if we're going to be technical again, B-flat Ionian.
It may well be that musicians occasionally refer to the scale described as "D Phrygian" by that name. But they would be wrong. The correct name of the scale in question is the "fifth mode of the G harmonic minor scale," which begins on D. It's a mouthful, to be sure. But it just ain't D Phrygian, which contains one note that is crucially different.
"A-flat Mixolydian" and "G Aeolian" are accurate, although the latter can also be more simply described as a G natural minor scale. But why quibble with people who like to toss around two-dollar terms for one-dollar goods?
It's Kahn's excuses for Columbia records that really annoy me.
On "Kind of Blue" Columbia mixed up the tracks, which resulted in 50,000 copies of the record being produced with incorrect labeling. I had one of those original discs, and the best I can say is that it was fun figuring out the mistake and then relabeling my own record.
Astonishingly, the master tape machine for "Kind of Blue" ran slow, so pressings ran faster than the original recording and sounded sharp. This caused no end of puzzlement and annoyance to musicians who tried to play along with and learn from the album. Luckily, Columbia had a safety tape that ran at the correct speed, which has been used for subsequent reissues.
Kahn mentions the above gaffs with the very slightest of "tsk"s, nowhere near the condemnation they deserve. But even more incredibly, he has nothing but praise for the sound of "Kind of Blue," which is probably the worst sounding groundbreaking record I've ever heard.
Columbia has a reputation among music listeners with real ears as producer of (and I repeat) the worst sounding recordings of all the big record companies. They don't begin to reach the hem of the outstanding recordings of Decca (London), EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, and the absolute stars of early stereo recording, RCA Victor and Mercury, and numerous small companies such as Chesky. There isn't room to go into the details here, but if you have a good sound system and appreciate the value of realistic acoustics and accurate soundstaging across the width of the speaker field, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Sometimes a good record slips through, but "Kind of Blue" isn't one of them. Columbia has always been into multi-miking and "cleaning up" (i.e., "doctoring") in the editing. Their recordings typically sound canned, and it's regrettable that so many fine artists, including Leonard Bernstein and Miles Davis, allowed their immortal performances to be preserved in, shall we say, less than state-of-the-art sound.
"Kind of Blue" is all but ruined by multi-miking, added echo, no concern for the dynamic range and true timbre of real musical instruments, and the complete lack of a believable three-dimensional space holding live musicians. There are any number of superb recordings out there that blow "Kind of Blue" away.
The greatness of "Kind of Blue" lies not in its sound but in its harmonic experimentation and the inspired performances of its musicians, and in the almost spontaneous way in which the tunes were created and realized. Miles Davis himself said in an interview that he wished for a time when recordings preserved everything, including the mistakes. Listening to "Kind of Blue" makes one wish that Miles had meant it, and that we had the sounds of breathing, the sweat, the uncertainty, the little glitches, the beauty marks, and the natural acoustics of the room -- the human presence that sets the sublime so far above the merely great.
Kahn says nary a word about all this. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he has no ears, but his book reads as if he didn't use them.
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Title: A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album by Ashley Kahn, Elvin Jones ISBN: 0670031364 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 24 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Making of Kind of Blue : Miles Davis and His Masterpiece by Eric Nisenson ISBN: 031228408X Publisher: Griffin Trade Paperback Pub. Date: 05 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title:Kind of Blue ASIN: B000002ADT Publisher: Sony Pub. Date: 25 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $10.99 |
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Title: John Coltrane: His Life and Music (The Michigan American Music Series) by Lewis Porter ISBN: 047208643X Publisher: University of Michigan Press Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography by Ian Carr ISBN: 1560252413 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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