Birth of the Cool

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates {{safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst-infobox||$params=italic_title,name,type,longtype,artist,cover,border,alt,caption,released,recorded,venue,studio,genre,length,language,label,director,producer,compiler,chronology,prev_title,prev_year,year,next_title,next_year,misc|$extra=italic_title,longtype,border,caption,language,director,compiler,chronology,year,misc|$aliases=italic title>italic_title,Italic title>italic_title,Name>name,Type>type,image>cover,Cover>cover,Border>border,Alt>alt,Caption>caption,Longtype>longtype,Artist>artist,Released>released,Recorded>recorded,Venue>venue,Studio>studio,Genre>genre,Length>length,Language>language,Label>label,Director>director,Producer>producer,Compiler>compiler,Chronology>chronology,Misc>misc|$flags=override|$B={{#ifeq:{{#invoke:Is infobox in lead|main|[Ii]nfobox [Aa]lbum}}|true|{{#if:Template:Has short description | |Template:Short description|noreplace}}}}{{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template other Template:Category handler Template:Main other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox album with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y|italic_title |type |name |image |cover |border |alt |caption |longtype |artist |released |recorded |venue |studio |genre |length |language |label |director |producer |compiler |prev_title|prev_year|next_title|next_year|chronology|year|misc}}{{#if:{{#invoke:String|match|error_category=Music infoboxes with Module:String errors|A|1=Collectors' Items1956'Round About Midnight1957compilationBirth of the CoolBirth of the Cool.jpgMiles DavisFebruary or March 1957January 21 and April 22, 1949
March 9, 1950; in New York CityWOR StudioCool jazz35:29Capitol T-762Walter Rivers, Pete Rugolo1957x|2=</?t[drh][ >]|nomatch=}}|Template:Main other}}Template:Main other}} Birth of the Cool is a compilation album by the American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis. It was released in February or March 1957 through Capitol Records.Template:Refn It compiles eleven tracks recorded by Davis's nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950.<ref name="Smith"/>

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.

BackgroundEdit

File:Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Max Roach (Gottlieb 06851).jpg

Davis (right center) playing in Charlie Parker's quintet, 1947

From 1944 to 1948, Miles Davis played in Charlie Parker's quintet. Davis recorded several sides with Parker during this period, most released for the Savoy and Dial labels. Davis's 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.<ref>"Miles: the Autobiography", Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, 1989, pg.105</ref> 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.<ref>Cook, Richard. It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. pg 10</ref> In 1948, becoming increasingly concerned about growing tensions within the Parker quintet, Davis left the group and began looking for a new band to work with.<ref>Chambers, Jack. Milestones 1: The Music and Times of Miles Davis to 1960. New York: Beech Tree Books (William Morrow and Company), 1983. p. 98.</ref>

At the same time, arranger Gil Evans began hosting gatherings of like-minded, forward-looking musicians at his small basement apartment on 55th Street in Manhattan, three blocks 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's apartment came to host many of the young jazz artists of late-1940s New York. The participants discussed 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 ...<ref>Gioia, Ted. The Birth (And Death) of the Cool. Golden, Colo.: Speck Press, 2009. 83.</ref>

Before recording in the studio, the band played a two-week engagement at New York City's Royal Roost club in September 1948.<ref>John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Template:ISBN, p. 71.</ref> In the audience was Pete Rugolo, who signed the group to record for Capitol.<ref>Szwed, p. 72.</ref> Recordings from two nights made for a WMCA broadcast were eventually released decades later.

RecordingEdit

File:Pete Rugolo, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948 (William P. Gottlieb 07531).jpg

Pete Rugolo produced the sessions for Birth of the Cool.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The nonet recorded 12 tracks for Capitol during three sessions over 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 and the addition of Kenny Hagood on March 9. The first session was on January 21, 1949, recording four tracks: Mulligan's "Jeru" and "Godchild"; Denzil Best's "Move"; and "Budo" by Davis and Bud Powell,Template:Refn the last two arranged by John Lewis. Jazz critic Richard Cook hypothesizes that Capitol, wanting to get a good start, recorded these numbers first because they were the catchiest tunes in the nonet's small repertoire.<ref>Cook, Richard. It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 17</ref> 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 was April 22, 1949, when Davis substituted for Fats Navarro in Tadd Dameron's band with Charlie Parker during the interim. The band returned to the studio with five changes in personnel: J. J. Johnson on trombone, Sandy Siegelstein on French horn, Nelson Boyd on bass, Kenny Clarke on drums, and Lewis on 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".<ref>Cook, p. 20</ref>

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. This piano-less date featured Mulligan's arrangement of Eddie DeLange and Jimmy Van Heusen'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."

CompositionEdit

Music and styleEdit

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.<ref name="Cook, p.18">Cook, p.18</ref> Mulligan's "Jeru" demonstrates another Nonet hallmark: the use of a unison sound and rich harmony throughout the horns.<ref name="Cook, p.18"/> Davis said, "I wanted the instruments to sound like human voices singing ... and they did."<ref>Gioia, "The History of Jazz". p. 282.</ref> Though the album is seen as a departure from traditional bop,<ref name="Gioia, The History of Jazz. 281">Gioia, "The History of Jazz". 281</ref> 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, like a bebop head arrangement.<ref>Cook, p. 19</ref>

Thornhill's influenceEdit

One of the largest stated influences on the sound of Birth of the Cool was band leader Claude Thornhill and his orchestra.<ref name="ReferenceA">Hentoff, Nat. "The Birth of the Cool." Down Beat, May 2, 1957: 15–16</ref><ref name="Chambers, 94">Chambers, 94</ref><ref>Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. 281–282.</ref> Out of Thornhill's band came Konitz, Barber, Junior Collins, Joe Shulman, Sandy Siegelstein, Mulligan, and Evans. Davis called the Konitz-Barber-Collins-Shulman-Siegelstein-Mulligan-Evans incarnation with Thornhill "the greatest band", second only to "the Billy Eckstine band with Bird".<ref name="Chambers, 94"/> 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.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref>Crease, Stephanie. "Gil Evans: Forever Cool." Down Beat, May 2012. p. 33</ref> 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.<ref>Hentoff, p. 16</ref>

Davis saw the full 18-piece Thornhill orchestra as cumbersome and thus decided to split the group in half for his desired sound.<ref>Chambers, p. 98-99</ref> As arrangers, both Evans and Mulligan gave Thornhill credit for crafting their sound.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref name="Gioia, The History of Jazz. 281"/> Thornhill's band gave Evans the opportunity to try arranging small-group bebop tunes for big band, a practice few others were engaging in. Mulligan recalls Thornhill teaching him "the greatest lesson in dynamics, the art of underblowing".<ref name="Gioia, The History of Jazz. 281"/> Thornhill has also been credited with launching the move away from call and response between sections and toward unison harmonies.<ref>Klinkowitz, p. 27</ref>

Release historyEdit

{{safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst-infobox||$params=italic_title,name,type,longtype,artist,cover,border,alt,caption,released,recorded,venue,studio,genre,length,language,label,director,producer,compiler,chronology,prev_title,prev_year,year,next_title,next_year,misc|$extra=italic_title,longtype,border,caption,language,director,compiler,chronology,year,misc|$aliases=italic title>italic_title,Italic title>italic_title,Name>name,Type>type,image>cover,Cover>cover,Border>border,Alt>alt,Caption>caption,Longtype>longtype,Artist>artist,Released>released,Recorded>recorded,Venue>venue,Studio>studio,Genre>genre,Length>length,Language>language,Label>label,Director>director,Producer>producer,Compiler>compiler,Chronology>chronology,Misc>misc|$flags=override|$B={{#ifeq:{{#invoke:Is infobox in lead|main|[Ii]nfobox [Aa]lbum}}|true|{{#if:Template:Has short description | |Template:Short description|noreplace}}}}{{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template other Template:Category handler Template:Main other{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox album with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y|italic_title |type |name |image |cover |border |alt |caption |longtype |artist |released |recorded |venue |studio |genre |length |language |label |director |producer |compiler |prev_title|prev_year|next_title|next_year|chronology|year|misc}}{{#if:{{#invoke:String|match|error_category=Music infoboxes with Module:String errors|A|1=compilationClassics in Jazz: Miles DavisMilesClassicsInJazz.jpgMiles Davis1954Capitolx|2=</?t[drh][ >]|nomatch=}}|Template:Main other}}Template:Main other}} 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, Capitol 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 and only track with a vocal, "Darn That Dream," was included with the other eleven on the 1972 LP Capitol Jazz Classics, Vol. 1: The Complete Birth Of The Cool, catalogue M-11026. Subsequent releases have used this 1972 compilation as the template. The album has since been reissued many times in various formats, on compact disc in 1989, a further expanded edition in 1998, and again as a Rudy Van Gelder remaster in 2001.<ref>Davis, Miles. Miles Davis-Birth of the Cool: Scores from the Original Parts. Ed. Jeff B. Sultanof. Milwaukee, WI.: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002. p. 2</ref> The live recordings of the nonet from its time at the Royal Roost in September of 1948 were released as Cool Boppin in 1991.<ref>Cook, 16–17</ref> In 1998, Capitol Records released The Complete Birth of the Cool, which was remastered by Mark Levinson and collected the nonet's live Royal Roost and studio tracks onto a single disc.

Note from the 2001 Capitol reissue producer Michael Cuscuna:

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Reception and legacyEdit

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The band's debut performance at the Royal Roost received positive but reserved reactions.<ref>Cook, p. 17</ref> Count Basie, the Roost's headliner during the Nonet's brief tenure, 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."<ref>Chambers, p. 106</ref> 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."<ref name="Gioia, p. 283">Gioia, The History of Jazz. p. 283</ref> Though he did not recognize the record as jazz, Sargeant said he found the record "charming and exciting".<ref name="Gioia, p. 283"/>

In the short term the reaction to the band was little to none,<ref name="Gioia, p. 283"/> but in the long term the recordings' effects have been great and lasting. They have been credited with starting the cool jazz movement as well as creating a new and viable alternative to bebop.<ref>Chambers, p. 105</ref>

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".<ref>Henthoff, p.15</ref> Several tunes from the album, such as Carisi's "Israel", have become jazz standards.<ref>Davis, p.4</ref> The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Birth of the Cool was voted number 349 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (third edition, 2000). <ref name="Larkin">Template:Cite book</ref>

Many members of the Miles Davis Nonet had successful careers in cool jazz, notably Mulligan, Lewis, and Konitz. Mulligan moved to California and joined forces with trumpeter Chet Baker in a piano-less quartet before creating his Concert Jazz Band.<ref>Klinkowitz, p. 6-12</ref> Lewis became music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, which became one of the most influential cool jazz groups.<ref>Gioia, "The Birth and Death of the Cool". p. 86</ref> Konitz had a long career, including work with Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh in the 1950s. Evans collaborated with Davis again on a celebrated series of albums: Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Quiet Nights.<ref>Crease, p. 35</ref> At the time, Capitol Records was 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 which he recorded his first album in 1951.<ref>"Miles: The Autobiography", Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, 1989, pg.140</ref>

Track listingEdit

Arrangers listed in parenthesis after the title: John Carisi; Gil Evans; John Lewis; or Gerry Mulligan. Original 1957 issue included eleven tracks as below; "Darn That Dream" included as twelfth track on 1972 and subsequent reissues. According to one academic source, the track "Budo" was arranged by Mulligan.<ref name=Sultanof>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Template:Tracklist Template:Tracklist † Pseudonym for Miles Davis and Gil Evans. Template:Tracklist

PersonnelEdit

Miles Davis — trumpet
J. J. Johnson — trombone all tracks except as below
Kai Winding — trombone on "Move," "Jeru," "Budo," and "Godchild"
Mike Zwerin — trombone on Royal Roost recordings
Junior Collins – French horn on "Move," "Jeru," "Budo," "Godchild," and Royal Roost recordings
Sandy Siegelstein — French horn on "Venus de Milo," "Boplicity," "Israel," and "Rouge"
Gunther Schuller — French horn on "Moon Dreams," "Deception," "Rocker," and "Darn That Dream"
Bill Barber — tuba
Lee Konitz — alto saxophone
Gerry Mulligan — baritone saxophone
Al Haig — piano on "Move," "Jeru," "Budo," and "Godchild"
John Lewis — piano on "Venus de Milo," "Boplicity," "Israel," "Rouge," and Royal Roost recordings
Joe Shulman — bass on "Move," "Jeru," "Budo," and "Godchild"
Nelson Boyd — bass on "Venus de Milo," "Boplicity," "Israel," and "Rouge"
Al McKibbon — bass on "Moon Dreams," "Deception," "Rocker," "Darn That Dream," and Royal Roost recordings
Max Roach — drums all tracks except as below
Kenny Clarke — drums on "Venus de Milo," "Boplicity," "Israel," and "Rouge"
Kenny Hagood — vocal on "Darn That Dream" and "Why Do I Love You?"

Certifications and salesEdit

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NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit