Book Review

Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. By Ashley Kahn. New York: Da Capo Press, 2001. ISBN 0-306-80986-9 (cloth); 0-306-81067-0 (pbk). Pp, ix, 224. $23.00 (cloth), $15.00 (pbk).

The legend surrounding Miles Davis was built around more than his music. One need only to thumb through Ian Carr's Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography to discover that Miles, a brilliant trumpeter and composer, was also a dazzling hustler--here a thief, there a pimp dressed in fine, tailored European clothing. Yet none of his transgressions would be remembered were it not for the art of his records, which mark rather than decorate history, and none more so than Kind of Blue. Now this 1959 tour de force, led off by "So What," is the subject of a new study by veteran music writer Ashley Kahn, titled Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece.