Customer Reviews

Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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, the book has deficiencies that can't be overlooked.

First of all, the book is too adulatory. Although it's much better than the completely worshipful Eric Nisenson book on the same subject, there's too much PR in proportion to journalism. When I buy a book I don't want to read an extended press release.

In addition, Kahn's excuses for the ineptitude of Columbia Records are too forgiving. 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 several 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 essentially "C Major." Non-musical readers have heard of C Major but many may have no clue about what an "Ionian" is.

The "A-flat Mixolydian" scale shown here begins on Eb, so it would be more properly labeled "Eb Dorian."

"B-flat Major 7th" is a chord, not a scale. The scale is "Bb Major," period.

It may well be that musicians occasionally refer to the scale described as "D Phrygian" by that name. But they would be wrong. The name jazz musicians give to the scale is "D Phrygian DOMINANT," and the correct name of the scale is "fifth mode of the G harmonic minor scale," which begins on D. It's a mouthful, to be sure. But it just ain't a plain vanilla D Phrygian, which contains one note that is crucially different. A chord built on the root of the scale shown is a dominant, not a Phrygian, chord.

"G Aeolian" is possibly accurate. That would be the same as "G natural minor." But since some of the notes in the middle are obscured, it might just as easily be "G Dorian."

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 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 among the worst sounding groundbreaking record I've ever heard.

Columbia has a reputation among music listeners with real ears as producer of some of 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 Columbia's gauntlet of over-zealous engineers, but "Kind of Blue" isn't one of them. The company has always been into multi-miking the recording and "cleaning up" 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 less than state-of-the-art sound.

The acoustic of "Kind of Blue" is compromised by multi-miking, added echo, limiting of the dynamic range, "smoothing" of the true timbre of the instruments, and the 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 he didn't use them to really hear the SOUND of the recording.

Nevertheless, the story is a great one, and Kahn deserves credit for researching and bringing it to us.

This was the second book I have read by Ashley Kahn. The first being "A Love Supreme." Kahn does a great job in providing new information that you don't read in the many other biographies about Miles. Truly one of the best music ventures of all time, I didn't know what to expect from Kahn when reading this book. How does an author tackle such a daunting task as writing a book about a masterpiece. I was quite impressed with Kahn's words and detail about the music and musicians behind this album. I will read this book over and over again.

This extensively researched book opens a big window into a decade or more of American popular music, when Top 40 charts embraced everything from novelty songs to Elvis and Doris Day, and jazz performers commanded their own share of a vast audience. Sound recording technology had recently introduced LPs and stereo to consumers, and the music industry was booming. It was at this point, the late 1950s, that the young trumpet player Miles Davis stepped onto the stage and emerged as an influential innovator and eventual jazz giant.

Author Kahn traces the steps of Davis' early career, focusing on the man, the musician, and the jazz artists who were his contemporaries, including the six men who joined him in creation of the album "Kind of Blue." Then listening to the original session tapes he recreates the recording of this album in 1959 in CBS's 30th Street Studio in New York. He wraps up his book with an interesting account of the marketing and release of the album and an analysis of its impact on music and musicians who followed, as well as its continuing popularity among listeners.

Most interesting for nonmusicians among readers is his explanation of modal jazz and its implications for the jazz performer. Also fascinating is the account of how these gifted, strongly independent jazz musicians came together for a brief period of less than two years to perform as a group, culminating in this classic album. The book is illustrated with numerous photographs, many taken at the recording session, and it ends with a bibliography, discography, copious notes and ample index. Altogether it's a generous and informative appreciation of one of the great jazz recordings of the last century.

I love Kind of Blue but I'm less impressed with Kahn's book on its creation. Kahn uses the session master tape to recreate the sessions effectively and successfully. The transcribed commentary between the musicians on the session and the descriptions of the evolution of the music through various takes is fascinating. Kahn also does a reasonable if superficial job of fitting Kind of Blue into the jazz continuum of the late fifties and early sixties and provides some interesting insights into the music itself. For example, Kahn points out that while Kind of Blue was meant to be entirely modal, Adderly in particular uses a lot of bop chromaticism as does Evans. Miles was really the only musician to adhere strictly to the modal guidelines.
On the down side, Kahn bungles the explanation of modes and modal improvisation. The modal system can be explained clearly and succinctly; it isn't rocket science. But Kahn devotes quite a bit of ink to the subject and still never manages to even define precisely what a mode is. The author also makes some technical errors in his musical explanations and ignores some important areas of the music that he should have pointed out and explicated. For example, he says nothing about Evans's use of quartal harmony on the album, which was groundbreaking on this album.
The biographical sketch on Miles is far too long and offers no information not already covered in his various biographies. Yes, some background info on Miles was needed but this was much too much.
Also, Kahn needn't have included the endless, breathless superlatives about the album by an endless list of musicians. We know how good the album is; we don't need this parade of people going on and on about it. It's redundant and serves no real purpose. Far less of this material and more in depth coverage of the session and the music itself would have made this a better book.

A far better book of this type is Geoffrey Haydon's Quintet of the Year, which describes how five of bebop's greatest practicioners met for the historical concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, which resulted in one of the most important bebop albums ever made. That book is everything that the Making of Kind of Blue might have been.

The book itself is fantastic, even for my poor english skills.
The seller is great ! fast, in time, and very affordable !

Kahn takes the reader right inside Columbia Studios at 207 E. 30th Street for the two sessions that brought us Kind of Blue. YOU ARE THERE, 'nuf said (as Stan Lee likes to write in his Spidey comics).

Listen: What's so great about this book is it fulfills and hits the mark where so many other books fall short. This book is about HOW THE MUSIC WAS MADE. I've only read a couple other books about musicians that actually manage to pull this off. For example, Lewis Porter's John Coltrane, His Life and His Music and A Love Supreme, The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album. This book hits the mark where writers like Chambers (Milestones) Thomas (Chasin' the Trane) Zappa (The Real Frank Zappa Book) fall short. When I read a book about Miles, Trane, Zappa, The Rolling Stones, Hendrix. I want to read about the music, the process of discovery. Kahn's books (along with Lewis Porter's) are the only books I've discovered that actually "get" the point of even writing the book. I don't care about the musician's personal habits and debauchery, I want to learn about THE MUSIC.

I'm not going into a bunch of details about this book. I'm going to tell you that this book is very well researched, contains lots of pictures I have never seen - though I've read 1/2 dozen or so books on Miles and own darn near all of those Legacy & Prestige remasters and boxsets with the new liner notes and photos. It's just a beautiful presentation. A book I will keep for the rest of my life though I wish I had the hardback edition.

This is an impressive work, it sets the high-water mark for music journalism and literature, period. It does not flirt with hero worship and it keeps Kahn's personal views in check. You get the the back-story, story, and the epilogue (not literally... well yes, literally but that isn't what I mean) of the story of Kind of Blue.

Hands down, this is the best book about music I have ever read. It was a quick, entertaining read. I was sorry when I arrived at the last page I enjoyed reading is so much and I'm sure I'll re-read it many times during the remainder of my life.

I also highly recommend Khan's book on A Love Supreme (that one flirts with hero-worship but it's still a great book).

Next: Impulse, The House That Trane Built.

A Kahn Wish: I would love to read a book by Khan on the Miles Davis/Gil Evans partnership. There is plenty to write about, including the way Miles (whom I dearly love despite his human flaws) used and abused Gil Evans talent and failed to compensate him fairly and without Evans' begging for what he did get in some cases (Filles de Kilamanjaro for example). I'm such a fan of this guy's work that I tried to find a way to contact him to suggest such a work but couldn't find any contact information. Kind of Blue is an awesome book but Kahn has only scratched the surface of the life and career of Miles Davis. Here's hoping there is more to come.

On the one hand, I do believe that everyone who is interested in jazz as a musical performer should read this book. I've been doing recording sessions for over twenty years now and even I learned a lot from this book, in the descriptions of the sessions.

However, I can't post a review of this book without adding a little rant about the writing style. I REALLY can't stand modern day music journalism with it's over the top hero worship. It's precisely this kind of writing which turned me away from Down Beat and other jazz publications.

So, get the book, read the sections about the actual recording sessions, but you may want to skip all that other stuff.

In American recorded music, one of the true masterpieces is Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and his legendary sextet of John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Paul Chambers, Bill Evans, Jimmy Cobb and Wynton Kelly (on one number).

From a unique perspective of research, author Ashley Kahn brings the important moment in music to life through a brief biography of Davis, the transcription & discussion of the two recording sessions which produced the album, unedited studio dialogue and rare photographs, with other gems located in the vast vaults of Sony Music.

The concise exploration by Kahn is rich in texture and beauty, as the album is brought to life through that layer of dust being brushed off the archives. And as if waiting patiently for its story to be told, the material has not lost any of its lustre after the years since 1959, and actually shines brighter by being bolstered through its timelessness.