My jazz reading keeps getting more specific. I've got from general treatments, to biographies, to a single album. If any jazz album deserves an entire book written about it, it would be Kind of Blue (and a close second would be A Love Supreme, and Kahn would go on to fulfill this as well).
The structure of the book is sensible and clear. The first couple chapters are devoted to how Miles Davis got to the point of recording Kind of Blue, discussing his early bebop work, explorations in cool jazz, and formation of the first great quintet during the 1950's. The next chapters are all about the recording process. While Kahn doesn't get super-technical, he gets under the surface and gives readers and fly-on-the-wall look at how each song was born in the studio. The final two chapters deal with the marketing of the album and the legacy of the album, respectively. Along the way we get a crash course in the art of analog recording and the story of Columbia Records, which was very much appreciated by this neophyte.
It is sobering to think that many of the great jazz artists are dead. At first it was due to health problems related to rough living, which claimed Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, and Cannonball Adderley prematurely. Later just plain old age was to blame, for which I would barely qualify Miles himself, leaving only drummer Jimmy Cobb as the sole remaining member of the Kind of Blue band. Even all of the studio personnel save one or two had all passed on by the writing of the book. So, in the same way Ken Burns realized he was on borrowed time to produce a World War II documentary, if you expect to write a book about classic jazz with interviews of those who lived it, you had better get to work!
No comments:
Post a Comment