Birth of the Cool
| Birth of the Cool | |
|---|---|
| Studio album by Miles Davis | |
|
Publication |
1954 (1957) |
|
admission |
1949, 1950 |
| Label (s) | Capitol Records |
|
Format (s) |
EP, LP, CD |
|
Title (number) |
8 or 11 (12) |
| occupation |
|
|
Studio (s) |
new York |
Birth of the Cool is a jazz album by Miles Davis that is at the transition from bebop to cool jazz . His first collaboration with arranger Gil Evans was with the so-called "Capitol Orchestra".
The album
The album , released in 1957 as a long-playing record , contains eleven music tracks. Originally, some of the compositions, recorded on two studio dates in 1949 and one in 1950, were released on shellac records by Capitol Records ; these eight pieces had already been summarized in 1954 on a vinyl EP of the Classics-in-Jazz series. In 1971 a new edition of the LP was added as the twelfth track “Darn That Dream” (with singer Kenny Hagood ), which has since been included in all further editions.
The Capitol Orchestra brought together African-American musicians who came from bebop on the one hand, and white musicians who came from Claude Thornhill's big band on the other . This band project played together for the first time in August and September 1948 for two weeks at the Royal Roost . In 1949 they also played in the Clique Club . The group was not financially successful and was disbanded in 1950.
The instruments of this "middle band", based on the timbres of Gil Evans, included a trumpet (Davis), an alto saxophone ( Lee Konitz ), a baritone saxophone ( Gerry Mulligan ), a trombone ( J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding ) , a piano ( John Lewis or Al Haig ), double bass ( Al McKibbon , Joe Shulman or Nelson Boyd ) and drums ( Max Roach or Kenny Clarke ) also a French horn (partly Gunther Schuller ) and a tuba ( Bill Barber ) as Melody instrument. So strange floating, dark sounds could arise. The wind instruments were often used in the arrangements as independent voices. But when they did meet, they were performed in parallel, but in six-part chords that were unusual in jazz at the time. The musicians played with a light, vibrato-free tone. Based on the aesthetic created for Claude Thornhill, which was transferred to this orchestra, a peculiarly introverted music emerged. Polyphonic passages are particularly noticeable in Gil Evans' arrangements; Mulligan was already working (in "Jeru") with time changes. The most advanced composition Israel, a polyphonic blues , comes from Wolpe's student Johnny Carisi .
Tracks from the original album
- Move ( Denzil Best ) - 2:32
- Jeru ( Gerry Mulligan ) - 3:10
- Moon Dreams ( Chummy MacGregor , Johnny Mercer ) - 3:17
- Venus de Milo (Mulligan) - 3:10
- Budo (Miles Davis, Bud Powell ) - 2:32
- Deception (Davis) - 2:45
- Godchild ( George Wallington ) - 3:07
- Boplicity (Cleo Henry) - 2:59
- Rocker (Mulligan) - 3:03
- Israel ( Johnny Carisi ) - 2:15
- Rouge ( John Lewis ) - 3:13
- Darn That Dream ( Eddie DeLange , Jimmy Van Heusen ) - 3:26
Recording dates
(recorded in New York )
1, 2, 5, 7 - January 21, 1949
4, 8, 10, 11 - April 22, 1949
3, 6, 9, 12- March 9, 1950
Arrangements
1, 5, 11 - John Lewis
2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12 - Gerry Mulligan
3, 8 - Gil Evans
10 - Johnny Carisi
meaning
Davis said of the recordings in his autobiography : “We played our way into people's ears a little more gently than Bird or Dizzy , moving towards the mainstream. More's was not "Anders saw this. Joachim-Ernst Berendt :" With these pieces a sound image was enforced, which has school making cast on the development of cool jazz "to an important, and even" programmatic concept album "was. Birth of the Cool but only in retrospect of the history of jazz. Because the tracks were only released on record when Davis' cool recordings from the mid-1950s were already on the market. Still, they influenced West Coast jazz a lot.
"In addition to nifty arrangements, these numbers contained the safest solos of Davis that he had made on record up to this point," wrote his biographer Eric Nisenson. According to Nisenson, Davis had found his style at that time; the recordings appeared as Birth of the Cool . The cool label stuck to Davis for a while: “I never understood why it was called that; I think what they really meant is a soft sound - not that piercing, ”said Davis.
The music magazine Jazzwise added the album to " The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World " list.
Newer editions
The CD Complete Birth of the Cool (1998) contains, in addition to the tonally revised original titles, further recordings of the nonet from September 4 and 18, 1948; these were originally recorded for a radio broadcast by Symphony Sid in the "Royal Roost". They also appeared separately under the title Real Birth of the Cool or as Cool Boppin '.
Due to the great importance of the album for jazz, the sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder, known for his numerous jazz recordings, re-digitized the original recordings. This CD was released in 2000 under the title Birth of the Cool - The Rudy Van Gelder Edition on Blue Note Records .
New recordings of the arrangements
In 1991 Gerry Mulligan decided to revive the arrangements again; Miles Davis was interested, but Re-Birth of the Cool was recorded after his death. John Lewis and Bill Barber from the original band took part, as did Wallace Roney , Phil Woods , Dave Bargeron , John Clark and the Mulligan rhythm team. The re-interpretations of the individual pieces no longer had to stick to the single format, so that longer solos were also recorded.
Joe Lovano presented three of the arrangements on his album Streams of Expression 2006 (Move, Moon Dreams and Boplicity), which were rewritten for a more conventional and somewhat larger line-up and embedded in a new Birth of the Cool suite by Gunther Schuller that was harmonious has much more complex structures than the original.
literature
- Ralf Dombrowski : Basis-Diskothek Jazz (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 18372). Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-018372-3 .
- Stephanie Stein Crease: Gil Evans: Out of the Cool - His life and Music. Chicago: A Cappella Books / Chicago Review Press, 2002. ISBN 978-1-55652-493-6 .
Web links
- Birth of the Cool on the Internet Archive
- Noal Cohen: The Birth of the Cool Legacy, Part 1: Miles Davis. Noal Cohen's Jazz History Website - Jazz History and Discography, July 17, 2018, accessed July 22, 2018 .
References and comments
- ↑ See liner notes by Pete Welding and Ralf Dombrowski: Basis-Diskothek Jazz . Stuttgart 2005, p. 58
- ↑ cf. Stephanie Stein Crease: Gil Evans: Out of the Cool - His life and Music. Chicago 2002, p. 156ff.
- ↑ Andre Asriel: Jazz. Aspects and Analysis. Lied der Zeit Musikverlag, Berlin 1986, p. 187
- ^ As a pseudonym for Davis and Gil Evans
- ↑ Miles Davis: The Autobiography . Hamburg 1993, p. 143
- ↑ Joachim E. Berendt: The Jazz Book. From rag to skirt . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 97
- ^ Ralf Dombrowski: Basis-Diskothek Jazz . Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, p. 67
- ^ Scott Yanow: Jazz: A Regional Exploration Westport CT 2005, p. 141
- ↑ Eric Nisenson: Miles Davis. Round About Midnight: A Portrait . Vienna 1985, p. 78
- ↑ cit. after Nisenson, p. 78.
- ↑ Keith Shadwick wrote in his statement: "The wonder of Miles' career is the sheer amount of times he seized the moment, grabbed the right people, and got them to deliver their best creative thoughts for him. The first time was with Charlie Parker, but by the time he landed a contract with Capitol for some modern jazz sides with an augmented group, he was able to operate freely, pulling in the restless writing talents of Gil Evans, John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan and John Carisi to create a unified and superbly subtle backdrop for his emergent lyricism. The world is changed, part one. " The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World
- ↑ coupled with six tracks by the Tadd Dameron Band with Miles Davis , including the tracks Good Bait, Focus, Webb's Delight and Cashbah
- ↑ See Scott Yanow: Re-Birth of the Cool .
- ^ Will Layman, J. Lovano: Streams of Expression (detailed review, English)