I hadn't listened to the famous Miles Davis "Birth of the cool" session for a very long while, it being one of those records I thought I was so familiar with that it hasn't had a spin for some time. It was whilst I was at college that I read an article in a book about these records that made me eager to listen to the record and once I had acquired a copy it became one of my favourites. if jazz had "stopped" in 1950, you could almost argue that this was some kind of pinnacle in the music.
A lot has been made of this record inspiring a whole new movement of "cool" jazz and it is fair enough to say that a great deal of arranging by big bands in the 50's from Shorty Rogers through to the early Sun Ra records take these arrangements as a cue. Back in 1985, the whole "cool" concept of jazz seemed very significant in my opinion but the movement that was so popular in the 1950's seems less important in the scheme of things these days. If this is cool, a good proportion of ECM records must therefore be almost Ice Age.
Listening to it afresh yesterday I was surprised to see that my perception of the music had total changed. I had always been aware that Gil Evans had only contributed two arrangements (Boplicity" and Moon Dreams") but always believed the whole project to have been Miles' baby but very much steered under the tutelage of the Canadian. I am not now convinced that either of these two individuals are the principle character behind these legendary sessions. For me, the most dominant voice , both as a writer and soloist, is Gerry Mulligan. Of all the arrangements, Mulligan's are perhaps the most immediately recognisable and distinctive plus he seems to have grasped the potential of this instrumental more than any other. I have to say that this music is at it's best when they are playing Mulligan arrangements and quite how the baritone saxophonist managed to fall down the pecking order in these records if difficult to understand in 2017. Even though Miles was the titular leader and organised the sessions, it is Mulligan's involvement which leaves the largest trace if musical DNA by a massive margin. For me , Mulligan was one of the foremost arrangers at this point in time and I have always felt his writing ability was sorely underappreciated. He wasn't as radical as Evans, but I think he was as equally capable.
There are also some really other interesting observations. "Moon Dreams" sounds, for all intents and purposes, like an arrangement for Claude Thornhill's band and is probably the least "hip" of all the arrangements until the final third where Evans does something totally unique and abandons the structure of the tune during the last third. I had not twigged this before. It is totally radical and almost steers the music towards the kind of chamber music written by the Second Viennese school. I am not sure that there were many other arrangers at this time taking these kinds of liberties with song form and the simple building block Evans uses for the final third of this disc mirrors his approach on albums like "out of the cool" which minimal material to produce something amazing. "Boplicity" still sounds exceptional.
The second interesting thing is that the least interesting arrangements are those by John Lewis. They lack the extent of counterpoint that Lewis later became associated with and are really pretty standard big band tracks with the odd riff and instruments combined to hold the harmony behind the soloists. I will need to listen again to this to confirm my suspicions. I would have to say that the two least successful arrangements are "Budo" and "Move" - the latter simply being a rehash of "I got rhythm" (which does use some counterpoint in the head!) "Move" is not played as sharply as many of the other tracks.
The third thing is the one vocal track. I am not impressed by the singer even though he was ok-ish with Gillespie. His singing is a bit out of tune on "Darn that dream" but , even worse, it seems out of time with the modernity of this group's music.
Fourth point, Johnny Carisi's "Israel" is the most modern and "progressive" of all the tunes and offers a window in to the kind of music that Miles would later get involved with. However, this is essentially a blues even if harmonically buckled and twisted in to something that much have sounded shockingly modern at the time. Unfortunately, it is the worst played arrangement of the lot and the band stumble all over the place which is a shame.
The final point that I would like to check again is that there was a passage in one of the Lewis arrangements which sounded like it was written by Evans. I can't remember which track it was and want to listen again to make sure that I was hearing this correct but I will try to identify again when I have the disc in on the car.
A lot has been made of this record inspiring a whole new movement of "cool" jazz and it is fair enough to say that a great deal of arranging by big bands in the 50's from Shorty Rogers through to the early Sun Ra records take these arrangements as a cue. Back in 1985, the whole "cool" concept of jazz seemed very significant in my opinion but the movement that was so popular in the 1950's seems less important in the scheme of things these days. If this is cool, a good proportion of ECM records must therefore be almost Ice Age.
Listening to it afresh yesterday I was surprised to see that my perception of the music had total changed. I had always been aware that Gil Evans had only contributed two arrangements (Boplicity" and Moon Dreams") but always believed the whole project to have been Miles' baby but very much steered under the tutelage of the Canadian. I am not now convinced that either of these two individuals are the principle character behind these legendary sessions. For me, the most dominant voice , both as a writer and soloist, is Gerry Mulligan. Of all the arrangements, Mulligan's are perhaps the most immediately recognisable and distinctive plus he seems to have grasped the potential of this instrumental more than any other. I have to say that this music is at it's best when they are playing Mulligan arrangements and quite how the baritone saxophonist managed to fall down the pecking order in these records if difficult to understand in 2017. Even though Miles was the titular leader and organised the sessions, it is Mulligan's involvement which leaves the largest trace if musical DNA by a massive margin. For me , Mulligan was one of the foremost arrangers at this point in time and I have always felt his writing ability was sorely underappreciated. He wasn't as radical as Evans, but I think he was as equally capable.
There are also some really other interesting observations. "Moon Dreams" sounds, for all intents and purposes, like an arrangement for Claude Thornhill's band and is probably the least "hip" of all the arrangements until the final third where Evans does something totally unique and abandons the structure of the tune during the last third. I had not twigged this before. It is totally radical and almost steers the music towards the kind of chamber music written by the Second Viennese school. I am not sure that there were many other arrangers at this time taking these kinds of liberties with song form and the simple building block Evans uses for the final third of this disc mirrors his approach on albums like "out of the cool" which minimal material to produce something amazing. "Boplicity" still sounds exceptional.
The second interesting thing is that the least interesting arrangements are those by John Lewis. They lack the extent of counterpoint that Lewis later became associated with and are really pretty standard big band tracks with the odd riff and instruments combined to hold the harmony behind the soloists. I will need to listen again to this to confirm my suspicions. I would have to say that the two least successful arrangements are "Budo" and "Move" - the latter simply being a rehash of "I got rhythm" (which does use some counterpoint in the head!) "Move" is not played as sharply as many of the other tracks.
The third thing is the one vocal track. I am not impressed by the singer even though he was ok-ish with Gillespie. His singing is a bit out of tune on "Darn that dream" but , even worse, it seems out of time with the modernity of this group's music.
Fourth point, Johnny Carisi's "Israel" is the most modern and "progressive" of all the tunes and offers a window in to the kind of music that Miles would later get involved with. However, this is essentially a blues even if harmonically buckled and twisted in to something that much have sounded shockingly modern at the time. Unfortunately, it is the worst played arrangement of the lot and the band stumble all over the place which is a shame.
The final point that I would like to check again is that there was a passage in one of the Lewis arrangements which sounded like it was written by Evans. I can't remember which track it was and want to listen again to make sure that I was hearing this correct but I will try to identify again when I have the disc in on the car.
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