The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece [Hardcover]

Eric Nisenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2000

From the moment it was recorded more than 40 years ago, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue was hailed as a jazz classic. To this day it remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, embraced by fans of all musical genres. The Making of Kind of Blue is an exhaustively researched examination of how this masterpiece was born. Recorded with pianist Bill Evans, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, composer/theorist George Russell, Cannonball Adderly and Miles himself, the album represented a fortuitous conflation of some of the real giants of the jazz world at a time when they were at the top of their musical game. The end result was a recording that would forever change the face of American music. Nisenson is an accomplished biographer, and his scholarship has yielded an immensely readable story of the making of the greatest jazz album of all time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A masterpiece in its own right, this work comprehensively covers Miles Davis's 1959 landmark album, Kind of Blue. Nisenson (Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest, etc.) leaves no note unexamined and no background detail undiscussed in his tribute to the bestselling jazz album of all time. His strength lies in his dedication to set the recording in its social, cultural and historical context. Davis was nearing the end of his bop period when he began the Kind of Blue project, and the work was eventually hailed as a turning point in jazz history, signaling the rise of space-giving modal jazz and a new approach to the genre. The bulk of Nisenson's text discusses Blue's musicians, and his minibiographies of each may be regarded as necessary or unfocused, depending on one's degree of interest. He deconstructs the legend of pianist Bill Evans and delves into his controversial playing style, spends an entire chapter on the often-overlooked alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderly and provides great detail on musical theorist George Russell's contribution to the album's Lydian focus. Only in the book's final third does Nisenson finally review the Blue recording sessions, and his coverage of them is somewhat minimal compared with all that precedes it. Nonetheless, his analysis of the music and its importance is valuable and discerning. This book has a different take than Kahn's Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Forecasts, Aug. 21) in that it does not spend nearly as much time on the album itself, focusing instead on everything that led up to it and its tremendous repercussions. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Miles Davis' 1959 Kind of Blue recording was a milestone in the development of contemporary jazz. (See also Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece [BKL Ag 00]. Small world.) It was the bridge over which jazz's young stars left the structured world of bebop jazz and popularized a freer, more spontaneous and emotive style of modal jazz. In the 41 years since its release, the record has gone on to become the largest-selling jazz album in history. It led Davis to even greater fame in his rapidly developing career, paved the way for his sidemen (John Coltrane, Julian Adderly, and Bill Evans) to launch their own brilliant careers, and made lifelong jazz fans out of millions of listeners. Nisenson's book is an unusual work, combining memoir, biography, history, and musicology in one relatively short volume. Drawing on anecdotes from his friendship with Davis and interviews with the surviving collaborators, including composer George Russell and producer Teo Macero, Nisenson's work is astute and entertaining. It reveals the artistic process that produced the remarkable, iconic work of art that is its subject, further enriching our appreciation of this wonderful recording. Ted Leventhal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312266170
• ISBN-13: 978-0312266172
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,273,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars an horrendous book with a misleading title., January 3, 2001

By 

R. Coen "zinoff" (Roma, RM Italy) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece (Hardcover)

There are very few facts in this book. Most of the book is about the bio of the musicians and how miles discovered modal. Every chapter is filled with annoying opinions about this or that musician or this or that solo. We can listen for ourselves, don't tell me who's good and who's bad. I'll buy Downbeat for that. There is one small chapter about the actual session and it is very very very disappointing. My recommendation? do not buy this book, I could not finish it, I left in on the plane.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rehash, March 20, 2001

By 

Michael W. Huddleston "huddle1" (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece (Hardcover)

This books reads like it is a collection of excerpts from the author's previous works on Miles and Trane, both of which are infinitely better than this book. The other recent work by Kahn on the making of Kind of Blue is infinitely more informative and original. Niesenson's book provides no real new information on the making of the album. The sole redeeming virtue of the book is the chapter on George Russell. Anyone who has struggled with Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept will appreciate Niesenson's attempt to explain how the "concept" helped shape the direction of Miles, Trane and Bill Evans.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Missed Opportunity, March 11, 2001

By 

Andrew J. Troyanos (Forestdale, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece (Hardcover)

I looked forward to Eric Nisenson's version of the events that made one of the greatest pieces of art, an album that is not just music to me, but life itself. Unfortunately he misses his mark by a long way. I've enjoyed other Nisenson books quite a bit, he does repeat himself quite a bit, but he seems to get under the performers skin and captures their persona for the reader. He's even written a book (Blue, the murder of jazz) about the new establishment of jazz ignoring not only post 1960's jazz music with revisionist thinking but a discrimination against white contributors to jazz. But Nisenson himself seems to be a discriminator.

The opening chapter of the book is great, detailing the mood of the album and the emotions it brings out (I thought I was the ony one who can hear a the air of death, particularly in Flamenco Sketches, on the album). From there Nisenson lists the four major contributors that brought the album from concept to completion. Obviously Miles and Bill Evans are part of this list, writing the songs and controlling the studio environment, they are the keys to what happens on these five songs. The third, George Russell, is important for putting the modal ideas into play before 1959, thus influencing what Davis and Evans heard, and the influence is obvious. The problem I have is with the fourth contributor Nisenson lists; John Coltrane. I have no knock on Coltrane at all, he is one of the most intense musician I have ever heard. But what does he have to do with the influence of Kind of Blue. He showed up at the session and played great, previously he had been playing with reharmonizations of standard chord progressions, but modally did he play anything like these songs before? Not from what I can see. In addition, Nisenson knocks around Cannonball Adderley, for playing too many notes and often being tasteless. But how can he theorize that his contribution is less than Coltrane's? Can anyone imagine the album without Cannonball, no more than any of the musicians who played these sessions. What did Coltrane add that Cannonball didn't? Nisenson's main theory seems flawed due to this thinking, which shows Nisenson's prejudice. Davis, Coltrane and Evans were all innovators in jazz music, as musicians, composers and performers , Adderley was not, he was just a great player. This seems to be a flaw to Nisenson, who finds only innovators important to jazz history. But to any jazz fan, it's the music being played, that brings out the feelings and soul. Something Cannonball had a lot of, but why knock him because he played the same kind of music throughout his career, without blazing a new path. This flaw really ruined the book for me, and the final nail in the coffin, was a poor chapter on the actual recording, which didn't tell me anything new.

With all this complaining, I must say I'm reading Nisenson's book on Sonny Rollins and am enjoying that quite a bit, if you want to read a book about another innovator, Open Sky is for you, but this is not the book for fans of Miles Davis and Kind of Blue, and especially not for Cannonball Adderley fans.