Birth of the Cool | ||||
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Compilation album by | ||||
Released | February 1957 | |||
Recorded | January 21 and April 22, 1949; March 9, 1950; in New York City | |||
Genre | Cool jazz | |||
Length | 35:29 | |||
Label | Capitol | |||
Producer | Walter Rivers, Pete Rugolo | |||
Miles Davis chronology | ||||
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Miles Davis compilation chronology | ||||
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Birth of the Cool is a compilation album by the American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis, released in February 1957 by Capitol Records. [nb 1] It compiles eleven tracks recorded by Davis's nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950. [5]
Featuring unusual instrumentation and several notable musicians, the music consisted of innovative arrangements influenced by Afro-American music and classical music techniques, and marked a major development in post-bebop jazz. As the title suggests, these recordings are considered seminal in the history of cool jazz. Most of them were originally released in the 10-inch 78-rpm format and are all approximately three minutes long.
From 1944 to 1948, Miles Davis played in Charlie Parker's quintet. Davis recorded several albums worth of material with Parker during this period, including Parker's Sessions for the Savoy and Dial labels. Davis' first records released under his own name were recorded with Parker's band, in 1947, and were more arranged and rehearsed than Parker's usual approach to recording. [6] By 1948, Davis had three years of bebop playing under his belt, but he struggled to match the speed and ranges of the likes of Gillespie and Parker, choosing instead to play in the mid range of his instrument. [7] In 1948, Davis, becoming increasingly concerned about growing tensions within the Parker quintet, left the group and began looking for a new band to work with. [8]
At the same time, arranger Gil Evans began hosting gatherings of like-minded, forward-looking musicians at his small basement apartment, located on 55th Street in Manhattan, three blocks away from the jazz nightclubs of 52nd Street. Evans had gained a reputation in the jazz world for his orchestration of bebop tunes for the Claude Thornhill orchestra in the mid-1940s. Keeping an open door policy, Evans' apartment came to host many of the young jazz artists of late-1940s New York. The participants engaged in discussions about the future of jazz, including a proposed group with a new sound. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia:
[The participants] were developing a range of tools that would change the sound of contemporary music. In their work together, they relied on a rich palette of harmonies, many of them drawn from European impressionist composers. They explored new instrumental textures, preferring to blend the voices of the horns like a choir rather than pit them against each other as the big bands had traditionally done with their thrusting and parrying sections. They brought down the tempos of their music ... they adopted a more lyrical approach to improvisation ... [9]
The nonet recorded twelve tracks for Capitol during three sessions over the course of nearly a year and a half. Davis, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan and Bill Barber were the only musicians who played on all three sessions, though the instrumental lineup was constant (excepting the omission of piano on a few songs and the addition of Kenny Hagood on "Darn That Dream"). The first session occurred on January 21, 1949, recording four tracks: Mulligan's "Jeru" and "Godchild" as well as Lewis's "Move" and "Budo". Jazz critic Richard Cook hypothesizes that Capitol, wanting to get a good start, recorded these numbers first because they were the most catchy tunes in the nonet's small repertoire. [11] That date Kai Winding replaced Zwerin on trombone, Al Haig replaced Lewis on piano, and Joe Shulman replaced McKibbon on bass.
The second recording date came three months later on April 22, 1949 with Davis filling in for Fats Navarro in Tadd Dameron's band with Charlie Parker during the interim. The band returned to the studio with five substitutions in personnel: J. J. Johnson on trombone, Sandy Siegelstein on French horn, Nelson Boyd on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums, and John Lewis returning to piano. At this session, the nonet recorded Mulligan's "Venus de Milo", Lewis's "Rouge", Carisi's "Israel", and "Boplicity", a collaboration between Davis and Evans, credited to the pseudonym "Cleo Henry". [12]
The band did not return to the studio again until March 9, 1950. Davis did not call the band for any rehearsals or live performances between the second and third recording dates. The March 1950 date featured Mulligan's "Darn That Dream", "Rocker", and "Deception", and Evans's arrangement of Chummy MacGregor's "Moon Dreams", which had been released in a jazz arrangement by Glenn Miller and the AAF Band in 1944 on V-Disc. The band saw more substitutions, with Gunther Schuller on French horn and Al McKibbon on bass. Hagood returned for vocals on "Darn That Dream".
One of the features of the Davis Nonet was the use of paired instrumentation. An example of this can be heard on the John Lewis arrangement "Move". In "Move", Lewis gives the melody to the pairing of trumpet and alto saxophone, baritone saxophone and tuba supply counterpoint, and trombone and French horn provide harmonies. [13] Gerry Mulligan's "Jeru" demonstrates another Nonet hallmark: the use of a unison sound and rich harmony throughout the horns. [13] Davis said, "I wanted the instruments to sound like human voices singing ... and they did." [14] Though the album is seen as a departure from traditional bop, [15] the recordings do feature tunes that are considered close to the bop style, such as "Budo" which has the band bookending solos by Davis, Mulligan, Konitz, and Winding, similar to a bebop head arrangement. [16]
One of the largest stated influences on the sound of Birth of the Cool was band leader Claude Thornhill and his orchestra. [17] [18] [19] Out of Thornhill's band came Lee Konitz, Bill Barber, Gerry Mulligan, and Gil Evans, Miles Davis calling the Konitz-Barber-Mulligan-Evans incarnation "the greatest band", second only to "the Billy Eckstine band with Bird." [18] The Thornhill band was known for its impressionistic style, innovative use of instrumentation, such as the use of tuba and French horn, and a non-vibrato playing style, hallmarks that the Miles Davis Nonet adopted for Birth of the Cool. [17] [20] According to Evans:
Miles had liked some of what Gerry and I had written for Claude. The instrumentation for the Miles session was caused by the fact that this was the smallest number of instruments that could get the sound and still express all the harmonies the Thornhill band used. Miles wanted to play his idiom with that kind of sound. [21]
Davis saw the full 18-piece Thornhill orchestra as cumbersome and thus decided to split the group in half for his desired sound. [22] As arrangers, both Evans and Mulligan gave Thornhill credit for crafting their sound. [17] [15] Thornhill's band gave Evans the opportunity to try his hand at arranging small-group bebop tunes for big band, a practice few others were participating in. Mulligan recalls Thornhill teaching him "the greatest lesson in dynamics, the art of underblowing." [15] Thornhill has also been credited with launching the move away from call and response between sections and the move towards unison harmonies. [23]
Classics in Jazz: Miles Davis | ||||
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Compilation album by | ||||
Released | 1954 | |||
Label | Capitol | |||
Miles Davis 10" LP chronology | ||||
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The four tracks from the January 1949 session were released soon after recording as two singles. From the April 1949 date, "Israel" and "Boplicity" were doubled together on a 78 and released as well. Of the twelve tracks recorded, Capitol released relatively few. In 1954, after persuasion from Rugolo, Capitol released eight of the tracks on a 10" LP record titled Classics in Jazz—Miles Davis (H-459). In 1957 eleven of the tracks (all except for "Darn That Dream") were released by Capitol as Birth of the Cool. The final track, "Darn That Dream" (the only song with vocals, by Hagood), was included with the other eleven on a 1972 LP Capitol Jazz Classics, Vol. 1: The Complete Birth Of The Cool (M-11026). Subsequent releases have been based on this last compilation. The album has since been reissued many times in various formats. [24] The live recordings of the nonet from its time at the Royal Roost were released as Cool Boppin in 1991. [25] In 1998, Capitol Records released The Complete Birth of the Cool, which was remastered by Mark Levinson and collected the nonet's live and studio tracks onto a single CD.
Note from the 2000 Capitol CD reissue producer Michael Cuscuna:
All previous reissues of this material have been derived from the 1957 12-inch LP master, which turns out to be second or third generation. The original tapes of each tune were filed individually and sound considerably better. Rudy Van Gelder returned to these masters, transferred them in 24-bit to digital and worked his sonic magic. The result is a clearer and more present sound than ever before on these classic recordings. [26]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Great Rock Discography | 9/10 [29] |
MusicHound Jazz | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Pitchfork | 10/10 [32] |
Q | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Tom Hull – on the Web | B [35] |
The band's debut performance at the Royal Roost received positive, but reserved reactions. [36] Count Basie, the Roost's headliner during the Nonet's brief tenure, however, was more open to the group's sound, saying, "Those slow things sounded strange and good. I didn't always know what they were doing, but I listened, and I liked it." [37] Winthrop Sargeant, classical music critic at The New Yorker , compared the band's sound to the work of an "impressionist composer with a great sense of aural poetry and a very fastidious feeling for tone color... The music sounds more like that of a new Maurice Ravel than it does like jazz ... it is not really jazz." [38] Though he did not recognize the record as jazz, Sargeant acknowledged that he found the record "charming and exciting". [38] In the short term the reaction to the band was little to none, [38] but in the long term the recordings' effects have been great and lasting. They have been credited with starting the cool jazz movement [39] as well as creating a new and viable alternative to bebop. [40]
In 1957, after the release of Birth of the Cool, Down Beat magazine wrote that the album "[influenced] deeply one important direction of modern chamber jazz." [41] Several tunes from the album, such as Carisi's "Israel", have gone on to become jazz standards. [42] The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . [43] Birth of the Cool was voted number 349 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd Edition (2000). [44]
Many members of the Miles Davis Nonet went on to have successful careers in cool jazz, notably Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, and Lee Konitz. Mulligan moved to California and joined forces with trumpeter Chet Baker in a piano-less quartet, before creating his Concert Jazz Band. [45] Lewis would become music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, which would become one of the most influential cool jazz groups. [46] Evans would go on to collaborate with Davis again on the Davis albums Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain . [47] Capitol Records were at the time disappointed with the sales of the nonet recordings, and did not offer Davis a contract extension. Instead, Davis signed with the new jazz specialty record label, Prestige, for whom he would record his first album in 1951. [48]
Arrangements by the composer unless otherwise noted.
Side A
Side B
Recorded at WOR Studios, New York, New York.
Recorded at WOR Studios, New York, New York.
Recorded at WOR Studios, New York, New York.
Recorded live at Royal Roost in New York for WMCA radio broadcast.
January 21, 1949 – "Jeru", "Move", "Godchild", "Budo" (matrix numbers: 3395, 3396, 3397, 3398)
April 22, 1949 – "Venus De Milo", "Rouge", "Boplicity", "Israel" (matrix numbers: 3764, 3765, 3766, 3767)
March 9, 1950 – "Deception", "Rocker", "Moon Dreams", "Darn That Dream" (matrix numbers: 4346, 4347, 4348, 4349)
All tracks recorded at WOR Studios, New York, New York
The Complete Birth of the Cool: The Live Sessions
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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United Kingdom (BPI) [51] sales since 2001 | Silver | 60,000^ |
United States | — | 280,000 [52] |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz music inspired by bebop and big band that arose in the United States after World War II. It is characterized by relaxed tempos and a lighter tone than that used in the fast and complex bebop style. Cool jazz often employs formal arrangements and incorporates elements of classical music. Broadly, the genre refers to a number of post-war jazz styles employing a more subdued approach than that of contemporaneous jazz idioms. As Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill suggest, "the tonal sonorities of these conservative players could be compared to pastel colors, while the solos of [Dizzy] Gillespie and his followers could be compared to fiery red colors."
Gerald Joseph Mulligan, also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His piano-less quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz ensembles. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions including "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards.
John Aaron Lewis was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger, best known as the founder and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Claude Thornhill was an American pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. He composed the jazz and pop standards "Snowfall" and "I Wish I Had You".
Ian Ernest Gilmore Evans was a Canadian–American jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest orchestrators in jazz, playing an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, and jazz fusion. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with Miles Davis.
Miles Ahead is an album by Miles Davis that was released in October 1957 by Columbia Records. It was Davis' first collaboration with arranger Gil Evans following the Birth of the Cool sessions. Along with their subsequent collaborations Porgy and Bess (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960), Miles Ahead is one of the most famous recordings of Third Stream, a fusion of jazz, European classical, and world musics. Davis played flugelhorn throughout.
Leon "Lee" Konitz was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer.
"Donna Lee" is a jazz standard tune attributed to Charlie Parker, although Miles Davis has also claimed authorship. Written in A-flat, it is based on the chord changes of the jazz standard "(Back Home Again in) Indiana". Beginning with an unusual half-bar rest, "Donna Lee" is a very complex, fast-moving chart with a compositional style based on four-note groups over each change.
West Coast jazz refers to styles of jazz that developed in Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a subgenre of cool jazz, which consisted of a calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music relied relatively more on composition and arrangement than on the individually improvised playing of other jazz styles. Although this style dominated, it was not the only form of jazz heard on the American West Coast.
Mike Zwerin was an American cool jazz musician and author. Zwerin as a musician played the trombone and bass trumpet within various jazz ensembles. He was active within the jazz and progressive jazz musical community as a session musician. Zwerin found a way to pursue both his interests as an author living in New York, where he was born, and his passion for music by taking positions as a broadcaster, and other journalistic and media positions while maintaining his musical career as well. Although he gained notoriety for his writing, he may be best known to the public for his work with Miles Davis in 1948 as part of his Birth of the Cool band. Additionally, Zwerin also worked with Maynard Ferguson, Claude Thornhill, Archie Shepp and Bill Russo, among many others.
John William Barber was an American jazz tubist. He is considered by many to be the first person to play tuba in modern jazz. He recorded with Miles Davis on the albums Birth of the Cool, Sketches of Spain, and Miles Ahead.
"Yardbird Suite" is a bebop standard composed by jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker in 1946. The title combines Parker's nickname "Yardbird" and a colloquial use of the classical music term "suite". The composition uses an 32-bar AABA form. The "graceful, hip melody, became something of an anthem for beboppers."
Boplicity is a jazz composition which has become a standard. It was written by Miles Davis and Gil Evans for the 1957 album Birth of the Cool, but credited to "Cleo Henry", which was the maiden name of Davis' mother. It was composed in the key of F major.
John E. Carisi was an American trumpeter and composer.
Conception is a compilation album issued by Prestige Records in 1956 as PRLP 7013, featuring Miles Davis on a number of tracks. The album, compiled from earlier 10 inch LPs, or as 78rpm singles, also features musicians such as Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, and Zoot Sims. The cover was designed by Bob Parent. In particular, the entirety of the 10"LP Lee Konitz: The New Sounds makes up all of side 1.
Harold Danko is an American jazz pianist.
Addison Collins Jr. was an American French horn player.
While the French horn is primarily used in classical music pieces, in the mid-20th century it broke into the jazz world. While the instrument remains relatively rare, the role of the French horn in jazz has developed from its beginnings in the 1940s through to the 2010s. Note that the expression "horns" in jazz is often used colloquially to refer to all wind instruments used in jazz
"Moon Dreams" is a 1942 jazz and pop song composed by Chummy MacGregor and Johnny Mercer. The song was first recorded by Martha Tilton on Capitol Records.
This is the discography for American jazz musician Lee Konitz.
Sources