Ashley Kahn is an American music historian, journalist, and producer. He was born in the
Bronx, New York, and was raised in
Cincinnati. Kahn graduated from
Columbia University in 1983. While attending Columbia, he hosted a jazz and blues radio show on
WKCR, and was known on the air as "The Cincinnati Kid."[1]
In 2014, Kahn co-authored the autobiography of Carlos Santana, titled The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light. To date, his most critically acclaimed books have been on two major jazz albums, Kind of Blue[2] by
Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by
John Coltrane. He pens articles, interviews and other features on music, and is a prolific liner note writer for a variety of music labels, and for which he has earned three ASCAP/Deems Taylor awards,[3][4][5] and three Grammy nominations.[6][7] In 2015, he was awarded a Grammy for his album notes to the John Coltrane release Offering: Live at Temple University.[8][9]
The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide with
John Swenson, 1999 for the first edition, Random House,
ISBN0-679-76873-4
Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, foreword by
Jimmy Cobb, 2001, Da Capo Press, USA,
ISBN0-306-81067-0
A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album, foreword by
Elvin Jones, 2002 for the first edition, Viking Penguin, USA,
ISBN0-670-03136-4
The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. (2006) W. W. Norton,
ISBN0-393-05879-4
The Color of Jazz: Album Cover Photographs by Pete Turner. (2006) Rizzoli International,
ISBN0-8478-5798-0
The Blue Note Years: The Photographs of Francis Wolff & Jimmy Katz. (2009) Jazzprezzo,
ISBN3-9810250-8-3
The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light — Carlos Santana's autobiography (2014) Little, Brown,
ISBN0316244929