Ashley Kahn

 ( American Music Critics ) 

Ashley Kahn (b. 1960) is an American music historian, journalist, and producer. He was born in the The Bronx, 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-FM, and was known on the air as "The Cincinnati Kid."

In 2014, Kahn co-authored the autobiography of Carlos Santana, titled The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light.

In 2015, Kahn was awarded a Grammy for his album notes to the John Coltrane release Offering: Live at Temple University.

In 2026, Kahn won a Grammy for his album notes for Miles ’55: The Prestige Recordings by Miles Davis.

To date, his most critically acclaimed books have been on two major jazz albums, Kind of Blue 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, for which he has earned three ASCAP/Deems Taylor awards, Ascap Deems Taylor 2003 Ascap/Deems Taylor 2004 Ascap Deems Taylor 2010 and three Grammy nominations.

He currently teaches at New York University Tisch School of the Arts's Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.

• Rolling Stone: The Seventies, with Rolling Stone, Holly George-Warren, Shawn Dahl, 1998 for the first edition, Little Brown & Co, USA,
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide with John Swenson, 1999 for the first edition, Random House,
• Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, foreword by Jimmy Cobb, 2001, Da Capo Press, USA,
• A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album, foreword by Elvin Jones, 2002 for the first edition, Viking Penguin, USA,
• The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. (2006) W. W. Norton,
• The Color of Jazz: Album Cover Photographs by Pete Turner. (2006) Rizzoli International,
• The Blue Note Years: The Photographs of Francis Wolff & Jimmy Katz. (2009) Jazzprezzo,
• The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light — Carlos Santana's autobiography (2014) Little, Brown,

• New York Times, 2006
• The Guardian, 2006
• Entertainment Weekly, 2006
• Stereophile, 2002
• Village Voice, 2002
• Time, 2000
• Detroit MetroTimes, 2000
• JazzTimes, 2000
• Interview on the Kind of Blue book
• Official website of the A Love Supreme book
• Interview on A Love Supreme book
• Biography at National Public Radio
• Writing about music. A talk with Ashley Kahn