The Complete Birth of the Cool [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

Miles Davis | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 19, 1998)
• Original Release Date: May 19, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Blue Note Records
• ASIN: B000006Q6B
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,743 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Birth of the Cool is the first important leader date from Miles Davis, one of jazz's most seminal figures and farsighted practitioners. Having made his reputation in large measure from playing with bop giant Charlie Parker, Davis confounded expectations when he embraced the "cool" arranging style of Gil Evans, an arranger for Claude Thornhill's band. Evans, who was employing unique voicings by adding French horns and tuba to Thornhill's instrumentations, also emphasized a diminished use of vibrato in both reeds and brass, producing a drier, "cool" sound. Two of Evans's arrangements, "Boplicity" and "Moon Dreams," appear on the album. Also involved are baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who contributed such outstanding tunes as "Jeru" and "Venus de Milo," and Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis. The result is a date that has withstood the tests of time, fashion, and Davis's own extraordinary growth as a performer. An enhanced set, The Complete Birth of the Cool expands the original issue with previously bootlegged live recordings of Davis's nonet at the Royal Roost in New York in 1948. Although the sound quality is far from perfect, the performances are remarkable, and worth the additional expense for the serious fan. --Fred Goodman

Product Description

These pivotal, way-ahead-of-their-time 1949-1950 nonet recordings (with Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, Gil Evans et al ) remain jazz classics-though their sonic quality's always been a bit lacking. But now, thanks to the magic of Mark Levinson's Cello System, they've been remastered to bring out the voicings that make them so incredible. Plus, this release features 11 live tracks recorded over two weeks at the Royal Roost in September 1948-the only gigs this group ever did!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One Of Mile Davis' Important Albums August 1, 2000

By "skapunkbluesjazzrock"

Format:Audio CD

The Birth of Cool album is the most important album of Davis' earlier works. This album is important for two reasons, one being that this is Davis' first widely noticed album as a leader of a group. The second reason is that this is the album that created the "cool" style of jazz. The remastered edition of The Birth of Cool sounds fresh today, and the band seems to work really well together. This album also showcases the first time that Miles and Gil Evans created an album together, which they would repeat to their success many times. The added live recordings aren't of the best quality, but the quality isn't exactly bad either. This is a very important landmark for Miles Davis, and I recommend fans pick up this album which is probably the most important of his earliest work.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Miles changes jazz for the first time September 27, 2003

By Manny Hernandez HALL OF FAME

Format:Audio CD

In his professional life, Miles Davis was an agent of change and a permanent self critic. Also, he would always surround himself of the best possible musicians (he said, "I'm hiring a [musician] to play, not for what color he is") to help in materializing his musical vision. Leaving behind the enviable position of musical director of Charlie Parker's group, Miles assembled a nonet (several of its members coming from the ranks of Claude Thornhill's Orchestra), Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis among them, and with their help gave birth to the new sound in jazz at the time: the Cool, an attempt to sound like a big band with a significantly smaller ensemble (a nonet, in this case), by means of a collective writing approach.

The album, recorded throughout three sessions between January of 1949 and March of 1950, marked the beginning of a series of outstanding works of Miles along with musical mentor and genius arranger Gil Evans. Its slower and softer sound resonated throughout the jazz world, taking jazz to a new level and influencing musicians all over the place, mostly in California it would help give shape to a mellow sound that would later be called West Coast Jazz (Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, etc.)

It is hard to pick favorite tracks in such a brilliant production. Four different arrangers and a rich assortment of composers, from Davis and Evans, to Mulligan, Lewis, Bud Powell and several others, along with the assorted lineup of musicians (only Davis in trumpet and lead, Mulligan in baritone, Lee Konitz in alto, and John Barber in Tuba were part of all three recording sessions) allow the careful listener to see tunes from a number of different points of view. For example, how does a pianoless Gerry Muligan tune sounds like ("Rocker"), how does a song arranged by John Lewis sound like when it's also a composition of his ("Rouge") as opposed to when it's someone else's ("Move") or how does Max Roach sound on drums with a bunch of other musicians vs. how does Kenny Clarke sound with the same (well, almost) bunch of guys.

There are so many possibilities to the album that the best favor you can do to yourself is to get it and incorporate it into your musical collection and language from now on. This version (The COMPLETE Birth of the Cool) is a bit more expensive than it's "incomplete" counterpart, but it carries live versions of a number of the studio tracks, something of a rarity, considering the nonet did a very small number of live dates.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Early Milestone - with bonus tracks June 12, 2004

By MikeG

Format:Audio CD

The music on this CD was recorded in 1949/50, but acquired its famous album title only retrospectively, in 1957. As a jazz term, 'cool' means something more specific than the vague, all-purpose adjective-noun it has since become. It came to particular prominence in the 1950s to describe a more cerebral, less impassioned way of playing jazz. It's generally supposed that these sessions were part of the inspiration for the 'cool school' of jazz.which flourished especially on the West Coast in the 1950s. That's possibly the main reason for the historical importance of the 'Birth of the Cool' sessions and the album may therefore be of more appeal to those interested in the historical development of jazz than to listeners who merely enjoy Miles's own playing.

The historical interest centres primarily on these pieces as examples of jazz composition and arrangement. Along with the work of composer-arranger Tadd Dameron and some of Gil Evans's arranging for the Claude Thornhill Band, these scores were innovative in adapting the procedures of 'Be-Bop' to orchestrated jazz and in the ways in which they deployed the instruments of the nine-piece band, which included, unusually, French horn and tuba alongside trumpet, trombone and alto and baritone saxes. They skilfully exploit the variety of timbres and tone colours to create a sound suggestive of a larger band. This is especially true of Evans's pieces, which show his interest in rich, unusual and shifting chord voicings, although Mulligan's more ingenious arrangements also create some full-sounding, inventive passages. There's a brilliant moment in Evans's arrangement of 'Boplicity' when, within the space of just a few bars, a thematic figure spreads through the instrumentation with a kind of 'rippling' effect as a bridging section between Mulligan's and Miles's solos. It is inspired scoring in its own right, but it also seems to anticipate in miniature some of what Evans was later to do with larger jazz orchestras. His slow ballad arrangement, 'Moondreams', makes use of a favourite Evans technique of varying the chord voicings for different sections of a composition, to give the piece a sense of variety and continuous development. In the final bars he also employs a kind of 'impressionist' technique when the music seems to dissolve into little asymmetrical fragments of melody and rhythm before resolving itself in a brief, quiet coda.

Some of the other tracks - like John Lewis's arrangement of the up-tempo, 'Move' - are entertaining as scaled-down 'big-band' performances without being as strikingly original as Evans's scores. John Carisi's contribution, 'Israel', is one of the most adventurous themes on the album, seeming to point a way forward from 'Be-Bop' to a more advanced harmonic style, but doing so by means of a skilful variation on one of jazz's most 'traditional' forms, the 12-bar blues. It may be that Gerry Mulligan's arrangements tend to be underrated by comparison with Evans's - perhaps because they sound more influenced by the styles and procedures of mainstream jazz. But his scores have their innovative touches, like the rhythmic and harmonic 'dislocation' he gives to the middle-eight section of 'Jeru'. In their own right they are characterful, enjoyable pieces, and since he contributed most of the arrangements he was a major factor in the success of the album and its subsequent influence. He contributes an interesting reminiscence of the sessions as an addition to the liner notes.

Another interesting 'historical' dimension of Birth of the Cool is the collaboration of three composer-musicians who in the 1950s went on to make major contributions to modern jazz through their subsequent individual projects: Lewis with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Mulligan with his pianoless quartets and Concert Jazz Band, and Evans with his later collaborations with Miles and others.

This was, I believe, Miles's first album under his own name; but it's his early-fifties small-group sessions that best document his progress as a jazz improviser, particularly those which produced such classics as "Walkin", "Bemsha Swing" and "Bags' Groove" - as well as a series of fine ballad performances (there is little ballad playing on this album). Arguably, Miles had been a 'cool' musician from the start of his career with Charlie Parker. If so, these sessions can be seen as part of a process (begun during his time with Parker) of his adapting the 'hot' medium of Be-Bop to his own stylistic purposes. However, the liner note argues a contrary view: that Miles could not really be categorised as a 'cool' player. For me, Miles's improvised solos here are less interesting than his later work was to become, when the overt expression of feeling had became more prominent in his music. He was some way from developing that individual sound, with its brooding 'flat' tonality and emotive colouring, which from the late 1950s was to make him one of the most immediately identifiable soloists in jazz. An additional limitation is that the soloists were restricted to very short solos, so that one of the strengths in Miles's later music - his ability to 'build' an improvisation over two or more choruses - was not possible in these sessions. Nevertheless, there are some well-constructed solos from Miles, especially on "Jeru", "Godchild" and "Rocker", suggesting that the need for brevity encouraged him to make short solos as structured and 'eventful' as he could.

So, historically significant though it is, Birth of the Cool won't necessarily appeal to those who have discovered Miles's music via Kind of Blue, Milestones, Sketches of Spain, etc. Less immediate in its appeal than that later work, it is perhaps music that you have to 'learn to like' - though maybe that's generally true of modern jazz.

The more devoted of Miles's fans will welcome the inclusion, on this 'complete edition', of the live, 'Royal Roost' performances by the band. As they were 'unofficial' recordings of radio broadcasts, the sound is not as good as on the studio sessions, but some of the playing has more vitality.