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Canongate has acquired a group biography of jazz icons Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans by author James Kaplan.
Canongate c.e.o. Jamie Byng acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans & the Empire of Cool, a blended biography detailing the lives of three jazz pioneers including their seminal "Kind of Blue" album. Byng bought rights from Hal Fessenden at Penguin Random House US.
Scott Moyers is the primary editor, and Canongate and Penguin Press will publish simultaneously in March 2024.
The year 1959 saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans and the other members of Miles’s sextet come together to record "Kind of Blue". Kaplan’s book is an account of the paths of the three Jazz pioneers. It is also about music, business, race, heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City.
Kaplan said: "Few things please me more than the prospect of being published by Canongate. To work with a publishing team as discerning, engaged, and passionate as Jamie and his colleagues is a singular privilege."
Byng commented: "James Kaplan’s magisterial group biography of three of the greatest musicians of the 20th century is one of the most impressive works of non-fiction I have read. Kaplan’s brilliance is to weave effortlessly the stories of John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Bill Evans into the much larger canvas of the American 20th century with all its violence, prejudice, abundance, deprivation, energy, appetite, tragedy and beauty, and this crucial context allows the reader to better understand these musical geniuses, flaws and all.
"And at the heart of the story lies the creation of ’Kind of Blue’, this cool, quiet masterpiece that continues to haunt and console listeners 64 years on."