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
About the Author
Ted Gioia is a musician and author, and 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 author of Delta Blues, Work Songs and West Coast
From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Carolyn See This very attractive book, with a cover that subtly recalls a Miles Davis LP from over half a century ago, is a study of how the notion of "cool," with all its elegance and purity, was co-opted by wretched American corporate types who, in true fairy-tale fashion, killed the cool golden goose that they thought was going to lay them golden eggs. To put it more plainly, the author sets up his work with three short biographies of early jazz icons -- Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Miles Davis -- and lays out what he thinks they stood for, both in their music and in the outer world. Then, in just a few following chapters, he takes some dizzying leaps to places where readers may have trouble following him. Gioia's contention is that the mantle of cool passed all too soon from these aloof, original, extremely gifted musicians to another set of equally iconic but very public figures, such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Jordan and Woods were hired to endorse Nike and General Motors, who traded on their images to sell running shoes and cars. In an evolution of events that no one expected, "square" personalities like Rush Limbaugh began to intone from the radio, Bob Dole endorsed Viagra, and comparatively unprepossessing contestants like Susan Boyle appeared on "Britain's Got Talent." That, according to the author, signified the end, the death, of the whole idea of "cool." (The term "square" is mine here. Gioia never uses it.) The author is a musician, music historian and very active businessman. Thus, he's looking at the world through a pair of spectacles with two very different lenses: jazz and commerce. As far as I can see, his 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. Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world. These three, coming roughly between Young and Davis, were the epitome of "cool," elusive, smart and aseptically pleasing. They were far, far from famous -- that was part, I suppose, of what made them cool in the first place. They're here in these pages, very respectfully and accurately treated, which is one proof, I believe, that the author knows what he's talking about. And if I have trouble following his reasoning about American business, I'm sure it's my fault, not Gioia's. But on Page 102, after having established the historical origins of the word "cool" as it pertains both to jazz and to American lifestyle, the author, without much warning or fanfare, begins to substitute "trend," "trendiness" and "trend-setting" for "cool." So that while Davis used to play, for instance, with his back to the audience, and Lester Young, when he didn't like a certain turn of events, would take a whisk broom from his pocket and brush off his shoulders and, according to a fellow musician, "was so quiet that when he talked each sentence came out like a little explosion" -- suddenly, this meticulous attention to a certain kind of personal manners turns into a heavy commercial drama having to do with Nike, Michael Jordan, those Air Jordans, the crass mercantile selling of image and then the making of billions of dollars. What is "cool," anyway? Maybe it's Warne Marsh, almost totally obscure and penniless, coming in late to a fourth-rate Hollywood nightclub, playing like an angel with a couple of sidemen, but never speaking to or even acknowledging another human being. Then dying in an obscure San Fernando Valley nightclub, sliding off a stool (as I heard the story) while playing "Out of Nowhere." Incomparably cool, in life and in death. It's hard to see how this translates into running shoes or the Gap pushing T-shirts, but if the author says it does, I believe him. I would just say, though, that squares always existed side by side with cool, and the squares were always in the majority: Arthur Godfrey strumming his ukulele and singing "She's Too Fat for Me" was concurrent with Miles, not after him. And although the author says that in the 1950s people were too cool to sing old songs, there was always Kate Smith shouting out "God Bless America" and hitting much the same vibe as Susan Boyle in 2009. Even in its heyday, the "cool," as a way of life, was followed only by a minority -- that's what made it cool. I don't believe you can buy or sell "cool." As the author says, if you try, it dies in your hands. But is that whole mind-set actually, really, dead? I hope not, but who knows? This double-vision book looks at an obscure branch of American vernacular music and pairs it with a particularly creepy branch of American advertising. It will force you to think about making connections you haven't made before. bookworld@washpost.com
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