Filles de Kilimanjaro: three titanic forces

 

JFFFREY ST. CLAIR>>

+ To try washing Gaza out of my head for 20 minutes a day, I’ve been slowly making my way through James Kaplan’s new book on the three titanic forces, so often at odds with each other, who merged harmoniously for a few days to create Kind of Blue: Miles, Coltrane and Bill Evans. There’s not a lot new here, but Kaplan’s a very fluid writer and a vivid storyteller. The scenes of heroin use and withdrawal, which all three struggled with, are especially gripping. Still, there are a few nuggets that were new to me. First was Evans’ devotion to the poet William Blake, whose spare, suggestive verses he tried to imitate in his own playing, even to the point of setting many of Blake’s works to music. The other is that Miles’ song “Mademoiselle Mabry“, from the great 1968 LP Filles de Kilimanjaro, is a reworking of Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary, largely arranged by Gil Evans, with the idea of the three of them one-day joining forces with Hendrix. That never came to pass, obviously, though Gil Evans did record a magnificent record of Hendrix’s music with a large ensemble. The LP includes an incredible version of “1983…A Merman I Should Be.”