The Birth (and Death) of the Cool [Hardcover]

Ted Gioia (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2009

“Describing 'cool' as a set of ;beliefs, values, and behavior patterns; rooted in the personal and musical styles of Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Miles Davis (with a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny).”—Publishers Weekly

“Like Dim Sum for the intellectually curious and literary-minded, Gioia's chronicle of the birth and death of cool samples a variety of genres and disciplines.”—ForeWord Magazine

“A sign of the worth of Gioia´s book is that it is hard to summarize... Gioia has an extremely interesting thesis and, if he is correct, the impact of these changes will be very substantial in the entertainment industry, mass marketing, and consumer behaviour. Time will tell whether Gioia´s argument will bear out, until then it is well worth reading and keeping in mind.”—Jazz Times

It's hard to imagine that "the cool" could ever go out of style. After all, cool is style. Isn't it? And it may be harder to imagine a world where people no longer aspire to coolness. In this intriguing cultural history, nationally acclaimed author Ted Gioia shows why cool is not a timeless concept and how it has begun to lose meaning and fade into history. Gioia deftly argues that what became iconic in the 1950s with Miles Davis, James Dean, and others has been manipulated, stretched, and pushed to a breaking point—not just in our media, entertainment, and fashion industries, but also by corporations, political leaders, and social institutions. Tolling the death knell for the cool, this thought-provoking book reveals how and why a new cultural tone is emerging, one marked by sincerity, earnestness, and a quest for authenticity.

Ted Gioia has published six highly acclaimed books. Gioia's The History of Jazz was selected as one of the twenty best books of the year in The Washington Post and was a notable book of the year in The New York Times. He is also the author of Delta Blues, Work Songs, and West Coast Jazz. Visit him at www.tedgioia.com.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

We're through being cool, Devo announced back in 1981, and Gioia contends that the rest of America has slowly caught up. Describing cool as a set of beliefs, values, and behavior patterns rooted in the personal and musical styles of Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Miles Davis (with a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny), Gioia argues that while their ironic detachment once held sway, earnestness has made its way back on top. His narrative history of cool hits intriguing touchstones, such as Lee Strasberg and Frank Sinatra, while a time line appendix provides even more cultural referents—for the new sincerity as well, culminating with the arrival of Susan Boyle and Twitter. At times his explanations for how trendy loses out to homespun can be reductive, as when he offers the boom in motivational self-help books for teen readers as evidence of a postcool generation. Sometimes it's downright confusing: anime and manga are presented as quintessentially uncool with only the barest of explanations. Gioia's conversational tone breezes through such rough patches, however, and though one might welcome more historical context for the long-running tension between cool and uncool as coexisting movements in American culture, he's at least zeroed in on a major shift in the balance between the two. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

We're through being cool, Devo announced back in 1981, and Gioia contends that the rest of America has slowly caught up. Describing cool as a set of beliefs, values, and behavior patterns rooted in the personal and musical styles of Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Miles Davis (with a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny), Gioia argues that while their ironic detachment once held sway, earnestness has made its way back on top. His narrative history of cool hits intriguing touchstones, such as Lee Strasberg and Frank Sinatra, while a time line appendix provides even more cultural referents--for the new sincerity as well, culminating with the arrival of Susan Boyle and Twitter. At times his explanations for how trendy loses out to homespun can be reductive, as when he offers the boom in motivational self-help books for teen readers as evidence of a postcool generation. Sometimes it's downright confusing: anime and manga are presented as quintessentially uncool with only the barest of explanations. Gioia's conversational tone breezes through such rough patches, however, and though one might welcome more historical context for the long-running tension between cool and uncool as coexisting movements in American culture, he's at least zeroed in on a major shift in the balance between the two. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Publisher's Weekly

Like Dim Sum for the intellectually curious and literary-minded, Gioia's chronicle of the birth and death of cool samples a variety of genres and disciplines. In the end, the reader has not consumed great portions from any literary group, yet he finds himself gratified. Part Jazz history, part African American history, part Sociological and Marketing text, this work defies easy classification. It is a must-read for marketing and sociology "philes" that no music historian, particularly a Jazz Historian, should be without. One might expect this work, coming from the author and musician who penned such notable works as Delta Blues and The History of Jazz, to delve into the cool world of Jazz. And it does. Far from an expose on the cool, cool world of Jazz and the hip musicians who personified it, however, this book is an in-depth study of cool and its influence on society. The cool, as Gioia explains, was a psychological attitude, cultural phenomenon, and worldview which is relatively new to society. In fact, it was only decades-old, yet is already dead. Commoditized, co-opted by the corporate machine, cool became merely a marketing tool. The current postcool Zeitgeist rejects materialism and sees coolness as superficial, even suspicious. And, as Gioia writes, the death of cool has come with a price: society is angrier. One only needs to listen to talk radio or read Internet blogs for evidence that we have lost our cool. Like everything else, this postcool era will pass one day. But Gioia says the cool will never return. --ForeWord Reviews (November/December 2009) by Robert L. Brandon Jr.

We're through being cool, Devo announced back in 1981, and Gioia contends that the rest of America has slowly caught up. Describing cool as a set of beliefs, values, and behavior patterns rooted in the personal and musical styles of Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Miles Davis (with a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny), Gioia argues that while their ironic detachment once held sway, earnestness has made its way back on top. His narrative history of cool hits intriguing touchstones, such as Lee Strasberg and Frank Sinatra, while a time line appendix provides even more cultural referents--for the new sincerity as well, culminating with the arrival of Susan Boyle and Twitter. At times his explanations for how trendy loses out to homespun can be reductive, as when he offers the boom in motivational self-help books for teen readers as evidence of a postcool generation. Sometimes it's downright confusing: anime and manga are presented as quintessentially uncool with only the barest of explanations. Gioia's conversational tone breezes through such rough patches, however, and though one might welcome more historical context for the long-running tension between cool and uncool as coexisting movements in American culture, he's at least zeroed in on a major shift in the balance between the two. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Publisher's Weekly

Ted Gioia... has written an extended essay on a phenomenon that draws on his own field of expertise. And he has hit upon the one essential point: He writes that the cool "eventually boiled down to how one was perceived by others. Coolness, even more than beauty, is inevitably in the eye of the beholder." This is a remarkable insight into all of modernity, not just "the cool." --"Cool Gone Cold" in The Weekly Standard, 11/29/09 by Ann Marlowe

A sign of the worth of Gioia's book is that it is hard to summarize...Gioia has an extremely interesting thesis and, if he is correct, the impact of these changes will be very substantial in the entertainment industry, mass marketing, and consumer behavior. Time will tell whether Gioia's argument will bear out, until then it is well worth reading and keeping in mind. --Jazz Reviews by John Schu on 12/01/09

Cool is dead. For those of us who missed the funeral, Ted Gioia offers a probing eulogy, reminding us of the cool we once knew-that intangible tangle of image and irony, artifice and fashion. --Paste Magazine by Marti Buckley Kilpatrick

Gioia's conversational and informative style makes the pages fly by as a Chet Baker solo. --Jazz Weekly by George W. Harris

[Gioia's] perceptions and insights about jazz, the actual "birth of the cool" (as a mind-set as well as a point of view about musicianship) are flawless. His chapters on Beiderbecke, Young and Davis are what reviewers like to call lapidary; they are jewel-like, particularly the pages about Miles playing with Charlie Parker in the early New York days. The prose is so strong, simple and evocative that it brings the reader almost to tears with longing. What wonderful nights! What insanely terrific music! What a marvelously enchanted meeting of minds and sensibilities! The book is worth much more than its price for these three chapters alone. --The Washington Post by Carolyn See on December 18, 2009

Going over the history of cool and where society may be heading next, Ted Gioia gives readers a fascinating read of cool. "The Birth and Death of the Cool" is a choice pick for any cultural studies collection. --The Midwest Book Review, Library Bookwatch by James A. Cox

It will force you to think about making connections you haven't made before. --statesman.com on 1/9/10 by Carolyn See

Ted [Gioia] is right up there with Gene Less, Doug Ramsey, Nat Hentoff and a host of others who have taught us so much about Jazz over the years and enriched our listening experience with their unique insights and knowledge about the music and its makers. --Jazz Profiles Blog by Steve Cerra

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Speck Press (November 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933108312
• ISBN-13: 978-1933108315
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #657,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ted Gioia is a pianist, critic and music historian. The Dallas Morning News has called him "one of the outstanding music historians in America." Two of Gioia's works have been named notable books of the year by the New York Times, and three others have been honored with the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award. In addition, Gioia was one of the founders of the jazz studies program at Stanford and formerly served as editor-in-chief of www.jazz.com, a major music web portal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Flawed, April 29, 2010

By 

Sussex Pond Pudding (Somewhere in the desert, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Birth (and Death) of the Cool (Hardcover)

Gioia has written a thought-provoking volume in which he suggests that the era of cool is over and has been replaced by postcool, a concept that he defines as a shift in popular culture from cool's supposed superficiality and ironic detachment to the supposed placement of value on authenticity, straight-forwardness and sincerity. While this makes for a nice, fun read, Gioia's book fails on a number of crucial points.

In the first place he traces the concept of cool to jazz musicians, the earliest being Bix Beiderbecke. As a personal hero of mine I fully support the notion of Bix's coolness, however, Gioia completely ignores the numerous examples of cool that exist prior to Bix gracing the Earth. Among the first to spring to mind is Oscar Wilde and those referred to collectively as dandies (a decidedly uncool word despite what it defines). Wilde even received modern-style media attention for his antics, which Gioia uses as an indicator of cool, whereas Bix had to wait long after his death to get any attention outside of jazz circles. He also ignores the large number of French writers who certainly qualify for cool: Baudelaire and Rimbaud being prime examples. Gioia then moves on to Lester Young and Miles Davis as further embodiments of cool. I would be hard pressed to find anyone who would disagree with him here.

Gioia details the tragic meeting between Beats and Capitalism. He discusses Jack Kerouac and crew and describes their influence on the nation's youth. He then reports on the reactions of the uncool (parents, the media, etc.) to this movement. It is, of course, disapproval, which, naturally, makes the Beats loom larger in the eyes of the cool kids of America and increases the appeal of the Beat aesthetic, ethics and lifestyle (a word that Gioia hates but that does have a certain utility when discussing sociological phenomena). So, as is to be expected, a marketing vampire realizes that money can be made off of the back of this movement thus taking whatever dignity it had and turning it into a tool of capitalism. Gioia believes that cool gets hijacked by the 1960's and commodified. I am in agreement up to this point.

Gioia's argument really starts to fall apart around this time. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that there is real cool and corporate cool and that the two have little to nothing in common. He goes so far as to lump Paris Hilton and Nike into cool alongside Bix and Kerouac. I highly doubt that any cool person reading this would accept a world of cool in which Lester Young and Miles Davis share space with the Backstreet Boyz, Pepsi and Kiss (all examples from the book). Only the most radically cool-challenged person would be unbothered by such a concept. Gioia uses this notion to support further arguments and examples throughout the rest of the book. This has about as much to do with the concept of cool as sex does with selling cars. Sex can be used to sell cars but in no way do cars teach us anything about sex.

Now, I understand that a definition of cool is going to be subjective and hardly scientific. I subscribe to the notion that cool, like obscenity, is known when it is seen. At least by a cool person. How do we know whether a person is cool or not? For starters, I'd say that accepting Gioia's bizarre examples of what cool is probably means that a person is very uncool. Very likely without the possibility of redemption. It'd take an awful lot of bossa nova to fix that kinda mind.

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this book is that Gioia, who has written, amongst other things, one of the greatest books on jazz to ever have been published (West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960), proves himself to be so uncool. Putting aside his jaw-droppingly ambiguous stance on the value of jazz (!), his complete misunderstanding of Frank Sinatra's art, and his sympathy for the saccharine singer-songwriter infestation of the Seventies, Gioia voices his approval for Harry Potter, the rapid worldwide spread of Junior Achievement, talk radio, geek chic and a downright nauseating series of books that, by the grace of God, I had never heard of before called "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens (The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens). He goes on to speak admirably of a 14 year old who created an internet business that sells office furniture and the down-home sweetheart winners of American Idol as well. All this in his celebration of sincerity, authenticity and straight-forwardness. Did Gioia learn nothing from the jazz world? What is more sincere, authentic and straight-forward than a Chet Baker trumpet solo?

The world of postcool that Gioia describes is a world that has lost all of its poetry, all of its adventure; a world in which children are deprived of floating down the Mississippi and adults buy their children books on how to be better teenagers (I really cannot get over that one!); a world where not buying a brand name has become a spiritual experience; a world where status is defined downwardly but is accorded far greater value than when Kerouac donned his first pair of khakis without a single thought toward anything other than keeping his legs covered; a world in which a a TV program creates art through the votes of tasteless fools; a world where the loudest and most ugly-minded radio host rises to the top of the food chain; a world in which nuance, subtlety and style is forsaken for a false honesty that is more contrived and posed than anything to come out of the Age of Cool.

I closed this book longing for something cool (hip June Christy reference, my dear highly effective teenagers) and terrified that Gioia might be right about the direction that this country is heading, even if he happens to like it. On goes a Bud Shank record, on goes a pair of khakis and sandals, in goes the martini, flick goes the lighter.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Worth Reading for the Origins of Cool, but Deeply Flawed in Scholarship and Execution, February 23, 2011

By 

S. Hawkins "SMH" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Birth (and Death) of the Cool (Hardcover)

Ted Gioia presents an enjoyably written argument that covers the rise of the cool, the apex of cool, and the ultimate decline into a post-cool situation from which traditional notions of cool will never return. The result is an interesting conceit -- much of it well researched, sourced, and argued -- but ultimately one that is too reductive and simplistic to be entirely effective.

Gioia's pinpointing Bix Beiderbecke as a progenitor of the cool aesthetic is nicely done (as is the subsequent segue he builds into into Lester Young's and then Miles Davis' respective personae), and his case for jazz and the notion of signifying serving as the unconscious role model for the Cool aesthetic is tremendously well noted. Additionally, his analysis of the origins and ambiguity of the word "Cool" itself is an exceptionally fun read.

However, he loses ground as he moves out of jazz -- clearly his comfort zone -- into the popular cultures of the 1970s onward. Arguing that the post-cool age moved honesty and a lack of irony out of the fringe sounds clever, but his argument requires some serious visual blinders to the point of being academically dishonest. For starters, this thesis means ignoring the entire (decidedly non-ironic) folk movement revival of the 1960s, and either tacitly viewing Woodstock as an anomaly, or just ignoring its existence as a cultural benchmark. From the modern era, Gioia fails to point out the fact that a band such as The Strokes - embodiments of his described cool aesthetic - are routinely voted the most influential band of the past decade (more generally, Gioia apparently has either never heard of hipsters, underestimates their impact and importance to current social trends, and/or is ignoring them in favor of his overall argument).

It seems ultimately that Gioia's thesis requires some tweaking of facts to fit his story, and avoids a clear look at the overall situation. Sure, he is correct that homespun Taylor Hicks bested glamorous Katharine McPhee in American Idol, but he fails to note that Katharine is the one who actually went on to a successful career while Taylor Hicks' sales dragged to the point he was dropped by his label (he also notes the plain-looking Buddy Jewell besting Miranda Lambert in Nashville Star...but again, ignores that Lambert is the one to enjoy a vital career).

While arguing that rap and hip hop of the 1980s is the nadir of style-over-substance, Gioia misses the point entirely in looking at such artists as A Tribe Called Quest or Public Enemy, who more accurately seem to be torchbearers of the Cool aesthetic of Miles that Gioia loves, yet also offer politically engaged social commentary. In fact, a troubling point seems to be that once Gioia seems to exit his comfort zone of 1950s jazz, he seems outright ignorant of the landscape, in favor of using exceedingly limited and discrete examples (or, as noted above, often distorted points) to push his view along.

While it's certainly true that today's talk show radio shows are decidedly non-Cool and prone to the brusque and grating tone of a post-Cool age that Gioia discusses, it is nevertheless curious that he ignores the vitriolic and violent behavior of Southern whites during the Civil Rights struggle that took place during his constructed Cool period. Perhaps most baffling, however, is his listing of Miles Davis as somehow embodying Ghandi's peaceful philosophy - ignoring Miles' own admissions of anger issues and domestic violence. In fact, Miles Davis seems to, quite frequently, have embodied the post-Cool aesthetic Gioia describes given his frequently aggressive and profane attacks on whites, and it is curious that Gioia ignores this completely (this is not to suggest that Miles was not cool...but rather to point to Gioia's oversimplifying). Unlike pop culture of the past two decades, Miles Davis' career is undoubtedly within Gioia's knowledge base and comfort zone; why on earth would he so profoundly distort a fact? While other points might be forgiven as errors of understanding or lack of a full picture, this one seems outright dishonest.

Ultimately, this is - up to a point - a worthwhile read. Gioia writes in a fun and conversational approach, and certainly, he is hitting upon some key shift in the public conscience. However, his statement of facts are often highly suspect (or, as pointed out, flat-out wrong), and often simply suggest a man whose generational comfort zone has passed.

As a final warning, upon finishing this book, you will find yourself overwhelmed with the desire to pick up Lester Young albums. That alone is recommendation enough for this book.

3.0 out of 5 stars More An Opinion Piece than a Factual Tome, December 19, 2011

By 

Buick60 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Birth (and Death) of the Cool (Hardcover)

Wouldn't it be great if everyone could write an opinion piece of what they like, and call it "cool?" Or label everything they don't like or which they disagree as "uncool?" Is "cool" relative, or subjective? Who's to say what "cool" is? This is interesting reading, but accept it as only one man's opinion. "Cool" is not limited to any particular brand of music style, religion, fashion, lifestyle, taste, and "cool" has evolved and splintered into so facets and directions. What, Jazz musicians can't dig talk radio? Poets can't dig classical music? Who's to say? I may dig Chet Baker and not Miles Davis, so which "cool" category do I fall into?