Birth Of The Cool

• Kind Of Blue (Remst)
• A Love Supreme
• My Favorite Things
• Essential
• Giant Steps

An enhanced set, The Complete Birth of the Cool features previously bootlegged live recordings of the nonet at the Royal Roost in New York in 1948. Although the sound quality is far from perfect, the performances are remarkable, and worth the additional expense for the serious fan. --Fred Goodman

The historical interest centres primarily on these pieces as examples of jazz composition and arrangement. Along with the work of composer-arranger Tadd Dameron and some of Gil Evans's arranging for the Claude Thornhill Band, these scores were innovative in adapting the procedures of 'Be-Bop' to orchestrated jazz and in the ways in which they deployed the instruments of the nine-piece band, which included, unusually, French horn and tuba alongside trumpet, trombone and alto and baritone saxes. They skilfully exploit the variety of timbres and tone colours to create a sound suggestive of a larger band. This is especially true of Evans's pieces, which show his interest in rich, unusual and shifting chord voicings, although Mulligan's more ingenious arrangements also create some full-sounding, inventive passages. There's a brilliant moment in Evans's arrangement of 'Boplicity' when, within the space of just a few bars, a thematic figure spreads through the instrumentation with a kind of 'rippling' effect as a bridging section between Mulligan's and Miles's solos. It is inspired scoring in its own right, but it also seems to anticipate in miniature some of what Evans was later to do with larger jazz orchestras. His slow ballad arrangement, 'Moondreams', makes use of a favourite Evans technique of varying the chord voicings for different sections of a composition, to give the piece a sense of variety and continuous development. In the final bars he also employs a kind of 'impressionist' technique when the music seems to dissolve into little asymmetrical fragments of melody and rhythm before resolving itself in a brief, quiet coda.

Some of the other tracks - like John Lewis's arrangement of the up-tempo, 'Move' - are entertaining as scaled-down 'big-band' performances without being as strikingly original as Evans's scores. John Carisi's contribution, 'Israel', is one of the most adventurous themes on the album, seeming to point a way forward from 'Be-Bop' to a more advanced harmonic style, but doing so by means of a skilful variation on one of jazz's most 'traditional' forms, the 12-bar blues. It may be that Gerry Mulligan's arrangements tend to be underrated by comparison with Evans's - perhaps because they sound more influenced by the styles and procedures of mainstream jazz. But his scores have their innovative touches, like the rhythmic and harmonic 'dislocation' he gives to the middle-eight section of 'Jeru'. In their own right they are characterful, enjoyable pieces, and since he contributed most of the arrangements he was a major factor in the success of the album and its subsequent influence. He contributes an interesting reminiscence of the sessions as an addition to the liner notes.

Another interesting 'historical' dimension of Birth of the Cool is the collaboration of three composer-musicians who in the 1950s went on to make major contributions to modern jazz through their subsequent individual projects: Lewis with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Mulligan with his pianoless quartets and Concert Jazz Band, and Evans with his later collaborations with Miles and others.

This was, I believe, Miles's first album under his own name; but it's his early-fifties small-group sessions that best document his progress as a jazz improviser, particularly those which produced such classics as "Walkin", "Bemsha Swing" and "Bags' Groove" - as well as a series of fine ballad performances (there is little ballad playing on this album). Arguably, Miles had been a 'cool' musician from the start of his career with Charlie Parker. If so, these sessions can be seen as part of a process (begun during his time with Parker) of his adapting the 'hot' medium of Be-Bop to his own stylistic purposes. However, the liner note argues a contrary view: that Miles could not really be categorised as a 'cool' player. For me, Miles's improvised solos here are less interesting than his later work was to become, when the overt expression of feeling had became more prominent in his music. He was some way from developing that individual sound, with its brooding 'flat' tonality and emotive colouring, which from the late 1950s was to make him one of the most immediately identifiable soloists in jazz. An additional limitation is that the soloists were restricted to very short solos, so that one of the strengths in Miles's later music - his ability to 'build' an improvisation over two or more choruses - was not possible in these sessions. Nevertheless, there are some well-constructed solos from Miles, especially on "Jeru", "Godchild" and "Rocker", suggesting that the need for brevity encouraged him to make short solos as structured and 'eventful' as he could.

So, historically significant though it is, Birth of the Cool won't necessarily appeal to those who have discovered Miles's music via Kind of Blue, Milestones, Sketches of Spain, etc. Less immediate in its appeal than that later work, it is perhaps music that you have to 'learn to like' - though maybe that's generally true of modern jazz.

The year was 1948. Miles Davis had moved away from Charlie Parker's band and struck out on his own. Neither a virtuoso like Parker, nor a genius theoretician like Dizzy Gillespie, nor a showman like Louis Armstrong, Davis sought a way to define his own "voice," to make it substantially different from those who had come before him. He became intrigued by the arranging work of Gil Evans, who had developed a laid-back, low-vibrato "cool" style, using unique instruments like the tuba and the French horn. To Davis, the Evans style seemed an interesting alternative to the standard modes of large- and small-band jazz, and a sensible step away from the manic, frenzied music of bebop, while at the same time incorporating the best elements of that sound.

Davis gathered a revolving collection of nine musicians around him to explore the possibilities of the Evans sound, including drummers Max Roach and Al Haig, pianist John Lewis, trombonist J.J. Johnson, and Evans protege Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax. The series of sides they produced between January of 1949 and March of 1950 touched off the West Coast "cool jazz" movement, inspired dozens if not hundreds of musicians, and are still acclaimed today, over fifty years after their release, as some of the greatest jazz recordings ever made, in a field that has no shortage of great moments. The singles were not collected and released as an album until the late '50's, by which time Davis had moved on to other things-several times, in fact-but the music sounded just as good, and Birth of the Cool is just as acclaimed today as it was then.

It's not hard to see why. The music swings gorgeously, effortlessly. The musicians are a true ensemble; they form a fluidly functioning unit, using elements of big band and bebop but fully embracing neither. Davis, Mulligan, and alto sax player Lee Konitz in particular found excellent ways to use this, especially on "Move," "Rouge," "Jeru," "Israel," "Rocker" and "Boplicity." This new style was especially beneficial for Davis, who had to learn how to work within his technical limitations as a trumpeter. He starts to develop his style here, a slower mode of playing, exploiting the lower registers of the instrument, using just a few notes to suggest the flurry of bebop virtuosity without actually having to play it. This was an important step for Davis, and for jazz in general, for it reminded people that one did not necessarily have to play like Paganini (or, more to the point, Parker) to play well.

Birth of the Cool is a lot of things-a transition between what came before and what came after, a strong musical statement by a group of musicians that had a lot to say, a strong beginning to the solo career of one of the most influential jazz musicians-but above all it is a timeless collection of great tunes, played ably by a collection of great musicians. Davis would go on to explore jazz from a variety of angles-modal, hard bop, orchestral, and fusion (unfairly maligned by purists, who resisted it much as big band aficionados resisted bebop)-but it was this album that started his journey, and it's this album that shows the rough promise of all that is to come. If it was important for no other reason, it's important for that. The fact that it's important for so many other reasons makes it a must have for anyone who loves jazz music. Simply put: if you don't have it, you should. And if you don't like jazz, this may be the one recording to change your mind. How do I know? Because that's what it did for me. It turned me around and made me receptive to a music I didn't understand or even particularly care for, and not only made me like it, but made me want to hear more things like it. I think it's safe to say that if it wasn't for Miles Davis and his nonet, I wouldn't love jazz the way I do today.

Pretty impressive, for just nine musicians, for just twelve songs, for just one record.

I recently got this collection of sides originally released in 1949 and 1950 by the Miles Davis Nonet, not released on LP until 1957. The unusual instrumentation (with French horn and tuba) is carefully used by the arrangers (including Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis) to create an incredibly full sound, with a remarkable range of tonal colors. The tunes are also incredibly beautiful. The famous "cool" sound is a bit too reserved for my taste, and the arrangements have a certain Hollywood aroma, but there's no denying the power and originality of the work here. Fans may find this jarring because of its transitional nature, with obvious big band elements such as Kenny Hagood's dated-sounding vocal on "Darn That Dream." Some of the arrangements display the breathtaking complexity of later records, though.

This is a classic album, as everyone else has previously stated. Not much left to say.

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