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Birth of the Cool

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Birth of the Cool
Compilation album by
Miles Davis
ReleasedFebruary or March 1957
RecordedJanuary 21 and April 22, 1949
March 9, 1950; in New York City
StudioWOR Studio
GenreCool jazz
Length35:29
LabelCapitol T-762
ProducerWalter Rivers, Pete Rugolo
Miles Davis chronology
Collectors' Items
(1956) 		Birth of the Cool
(1957) 		'Round About Midnight
(1957)
Miles Davis compilation chronology
Miles Davis Volume 2
(1955) 		Birth of the Cool
(1957) 		Miles Davis' Greatest Hits
(1969)

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.[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.

Background

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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' 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]

Prior to recording in the studio, the band played a two-week September 1948 engagement at the Royal Roost club in New York City.[10] In the audience was Pete Rugolo, who would sign the group to record for Capitol.[11] Recordings from two nights made for a WMCA broadcast would eventually be released decades later.

Recording

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Pete Rugolo produced the sessions for Birth of the Cool.[12]

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 and the addition of Kenny Hagood on March 9. The first session occurred on January 21, 1949, recording four tracks: Mulligan's "Jeru" and "Godchild"; as well as Denzil Best's "Move" and "Budo" by Bud Powell and Miles Davis,[nb 2] both with arrangements by John Lewis. 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.[14] 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, while 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 returning 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".[15]

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' 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. Kenny Hagood returned for vocals on "Darn That Dream."

Composition

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Music and style

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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.[16] Mulligan's "Jeru" demonstrates another Nonet hallmark: the use of a unison sound and rich harmony throughout the horns.[16] Davis said, "I wanted the instruments to sound like human voices singing ... and they did."[17] Though the album is seen as a departure from traditional bop,[18] 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.[19]

Thornhill's influence

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One of the largest stated influences on the sound of Birth of the Cool was band leader Claude Thornhill and his orchestra.[20][21][22] 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."[21] 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.[20][23] 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.[24]

Davis saw the full 18-piece Thornhill orchestra as cumbersome and thus decided to split the group in half for his desired sound.[25] As arrangers, both Evans and Mulligan gave Thornhill credit for crafting their sound.[20][18] 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."[18] Thornhill has also been credited with launching the move away from call and response between sections and the move towards unison harmonies.[26]

Release history

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Classics in Jazz: Miles Davis
Compilation album by
Miles Davis
Released1954
LabelCapitol
Miles Davis 10" LP chronology
Miles Davis All Star Sextet
(1954) 		Classics in Jazz: Miles Davis
(1954) 		Miles Davis Quintet
(1954)

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.[27] The live recordings of the nonet from its time at the Royal Roost in September of 1948 were released as Cool Boppin in 1991.[28] 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:

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.[29]

Reception and legacy

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Retrospective professional reviews
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[30]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[31]
The Great Rock Discography9/10[32]
MusicHound Jazz[33]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz[34]
Pitchfork10/10[35]
Q[36]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[37]

The band's debut performance at the Royal Roost received positive, but reserved reactions.[38] 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."[39] 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."[40] Though he did not recognize the record as jazz, Sargeant acknowledged that he found the record "charming and exciting."[40] In the short term the reaction to the band was little to none,[40] 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.[41]

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."[42] Several tunes from the album, such as Carisi's "Israel", have gone on to become jazz standards.[43] The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[44] Birth of the Cool was voted number 349 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (third edition, 2000). [45]

Many members of the Miles Davis Nonet went on to have 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.[46] Lewis would become music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, which would become one of the most influential cool jazz groups.[47] Konitz would go on to a long career, including work with Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh in the 1950s. Evans would collaborate with Davis again on a celebrated series of albums Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Quiet Nights.[48] 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.[49]

Track listing

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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.[50]

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Matrix number and recording dateLength
1."Move" (Lewis)Denzil Best3396 January 21, 19492:29
2."Jeru" (Mulligan)Gerry Mulligan3395 January 21, 19493:10
3."Moon Dreams" (Evans)Chummy MacGregor, Johnny Mercer4348 March 9, 19503:13
4."Venus De Milo" (Mulligan)Gerry Mulligan3764 April 22, 19493:10
5."Budo" (Lewis)Miles Davis, Bud Powell3398 January 21, 19492:31
6."Deception" (Mulligan)George Shearing, Miles Davis4346 March 9, 19502:46
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Matrix number and recording dateLength
1."Godchild" (Mulligan)George Wallington3397 January 21, 19493:08
2."Boplicity" (Evans)Cleo Henry†3766 April 22, 19492:58
3."Rocker" (Mulligan)Gerry Mulligan4347 March 9, 19503:04
4."Israel" (Carisi)John Carisi3767 April 22, 19492:15
5."Rouge" (Lewis)John Lewis3765 April 22, 19493:13
6."Darn That Dream" (Mulligan)Eddie DeLange, Jimmy Van Heusen4349 March 9, 19503:26

† Pseudonym for Miles Davis and Gil Evans.

1998 Complete reissue bonus tracks
No.TitleWriter(s)Recording dateLength
13."Birth of the Cool Theme"Gil EvansSeptember 4, 19480:19
14."Symphony Sid announces the band" September 4, 19481:02
15."Move" (Lewis)Denzil BestSeptember 4, 19483:40
16."Why Do I Love You?" (Lewis)Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome KernSeptember 4, 19483:41
17."Godchild" (Mulligan)George WallingtonSeptember 4, 19485:51
18."Symphony Sid introduction" September 4, 19480:27
19."S'il vous plaît"John LewisSeptember 4, 19484:22
20."Moon Dreams" (Evans)Chummy MacGregor, Johnny MercerSeptember 4, 19483:05
21."Budo" (Lewis)Miles Davis, Bud PowellSeptember 4, 19483:23
22."Darn That Dream" (Mulligan)Eddie DeLange, Jimmy Van HeusenSeptember 18, 19484:25
23."Move" (Lewis)Denzil BestSeptember 18, 19484:48
24."Moon Dreams" (Evans)Chummy MacGregor, Johnny MercerSeptember 18, 19483:46
25."Budo" (Lewis)Miles Davis, Bud PowellSeptember 18, 19484:23

Personnel

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Certifications and sales

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Region Certification Certified units/sales
United Kingdom (BPI)[51]
sales since 2001 		Silver 60,000^
United States — 280,000[52]

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

Notes

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  1. ^ [1][2][3][4][5]
  2. ^ The refrain is from Powell's composition Hallucinations; the bridge is by Davis.[13]

References

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  1. ^ "Buyboard". The Billboard. February 9, 1957. p. 25.
  2. ^ Editorial Staff, Cash Box (March 9, 1957). "March Album Releases" (PDF). The Cash Box. New York: The Cash Box Publishing Co. Inc. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  3. ^ Kahn, Ashley (2012). Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History. Voyageur Press. p. 50. ISBN 9781610586825.
  4. ^ Myers, Marc (2019). Why Jazz Happened. University of California Press. p. 90. ISBN 9780520305519.
  5. ^ a b Smith, Chris (2009). 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 7–9. ISBN 978-0-19-537371-4. Retrieved February 22, 2011 – via gobal.oup.com.
  6. ^ "Miles: the Autobiography", Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, 1989, pg.105
  7. ^ Cook, Richard. It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. pg 10
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ Gioia, Ted. The Birth (And Death) of the Cool. Golden, Colo.: Speck Press, 2009. 83.
  10. ^ John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. ISBN 0-684-85982-3, p. 71.
  11. ^ Szwed, p. 72.
  12. ^ McLellan, Dennis (October 18, 2011). "Pete Rugolo obituary: Jazz composer, arranger wrote TV themes". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. Archived from the original on October 21, 2011. Retrieved April 26, 2012.
  13. ^ "Bud Powell". Blue Note. Blue Note Records. Retrieved February 28, 2025.
  14. ^ Cook, Richard. It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 17
  15. ^ Cook, p. 20
  16. ^ a b Cook, p.18
  17. ^ Gioia, "The History of Jazz". p. 282.
  18. ^ a b c Gioia, "The History of Jazz". 281
  19. ^ Cook, p. 19
  20. ^ a b c Hentoff, Nat. "The Birth of the Cool." Down Beat, May 2, 1957: 15–16
  21. ^ a b Chambers, 94
  22. ^ Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. 281–282.
  23. ^ Crease, Stephanie. "Gil Evans: Forever Cool." Down Beat, May 2012. p. 33
  24. ^ Hentoff, p. 16
  25. ^ Chambers, p. 98-99
  26. ^ Klinkowitz, p. 27
  27. ^ 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
  28. ^ Cook, 16–17
  29. ^ Birth of the Cool, 2001 reissue liner notes
  30. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (November 1, 2001). Review: Birth of the Cool. Allmusic. Retrieved on 2011-01-02.
  31. ^ Larkin, Colin, ed. (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Omnibus Press. p. 538.
  32. ^ Strong, Martin C. (2004). The Great Rock Discography (7th ed.). Canongate. p. 384.
  33. ^ Holtje, Steve; Lee, Nancy Ann (1998). MusicHound: The Essential Album Guide. Schirmer. p. 309.
  34. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2006). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings. Penguin Books. p. 318.
  35. ^ Chinen, Nate (June 19, 2019). "Miles Davis: The Complete Birth of the Cool Album Review". Pitchfork.
  36. ^ Product Notes – Birth of the Cool. Muze. Retrieved on 2011-01-02.
  37. ^ Swenson, John, ed. (1999). The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide. Random House. p. 194.
  38. ^ Cook, p. 17
  39. ^ Chambers, p. 106
  40. ^ a b c Gioia, The History of Jazz. p. 283
  41. ^ Chambers, p. 105
  42. ^ Henthoff, p.15
  43. ^ Davis, p.4
  44. ^ Robert Dimery; Michael Lydon (February 7, 2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN 0-7893-1371-5.
  45. ^ Colin Larkin, ed. (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rd ed.). Virgin Books. p. 138. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6.
  46. ^ Klinkowitz, p. 6-12
  47. ^ Gioia, "The Birth and Death of the Cool". p. 86
  48. ^ Crease, p. 35
  49. ^ "Miles: The Autobiography", Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, 1989, pg.140
  50. ^ Sultanof, Jeffrey (Fall 2011). "The Miles Davis Nonet Manuscripts Lost and Found: From Manuscript to Publication". Journal of Jazz Studies. 7 (2): 208. doi:10.14713/jjs.v7i2.14. Retrieved April 1, 2013.
  51. ^ "British album certifications – Miles Davis – Doo Bop". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  52. ^ Cwik, Greg (September 25, 2015). "Understanding Miles Davis, in 9 Parts". Vulture. Retrieved June 15, 2020.

Sources

  • Berrett, Joshua and Louis G. Bourgois. The Musical World of J.J. Johnson. Scarecrow Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8108-3648-8.
  • Chambers, Jack. Milestones 1: The Music and Times of Miles Davis to 1960. New York: Beach Tree Books, 1983. ISBN 978-0-688-02635-6.
  • Cook, Richard. It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-532266-8.
  • Crease, Stephanie. "Gil Evans: Forever Cool." Down Beat, May 2012. p. 33-35.
  • Davis, Miles. Miles Davis-Birth of the Cool: Scores from the Original Parts. Ed. Jeff B. Sultanof. Milwaukee, WI.: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002. ISBN 978-0-634-00682-1.
  • Fordham, John. "50 Great Moments in Jazz: Birth of the Cool", The Guardian. Posted November 2, 2009. Retrieved April 24, 2012.
  • Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-19-512653-2.
  • Gioia, Ted. "Miles Davis's Memorable Nonet." Jazz.com. Posted September 3, 2008.
  • Gioia, Ted. The Birth (and Death) of the Cool. Golden, Colo.: Speck Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-933108-31-5.
  • Gridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles. Tenth Edition. Prentice Hall, 2009.
  • Hamilton, Andy. Lee Konitz, Conversations on the Improviser's Art. Ann Arbor, Mich.: The University of Michigan Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-472-03217-4.
  • Hentoff, Nat. "The Birth of the Cool." Down Beat, May 2, 1957: 15–16. Print.
  • Kernfeld, Barry. "Miles Davis." Grove Music Online. Web. Apr 24, 2012.
  • Klinkowitz, Jerome. Listen: Gerry Mulligan. An Aural Narrative in Jazz. New York: Schirmer Books, 1991. ISBN 978-0-02-871265-9.
  • Sultanof, Jeff. "The Dozens: The Birth of the Cool." Jazz.com. (No date, prbl. 1998).

Further reading

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