Miles Davis • John Coltrane • Bill Evans

And the lost empire of cool

3 Shades of Blue is James Kaplan's magnificent account of the paths of the three giants Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and their path on from there. It's a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City.
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James Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. He is the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, and Irving Berlin

3 Shades of Blue is Kaplan's latest story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—who came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue.