Birth of the Cool

Sure.

So if you ask me to play, like, on, um, Birth of, something from Birth of the Cool-

Yeah

...

So could you just give us a little sense of the kind of arc of your career as you see it?

Yeah, I mean, well, I was just practicing before I jumped on with you guys some Birth of the Cool music that I'm going to perform next Sunday at William Patterson University with Todd Kuhlman, the bassist.

And he's got the arrangements, like the original Birth of the Cool arrangements.

And I can share with you guys and your listeners, that music is difficult.

Yeah.

He was a good piano player.

We had done Bob Felicity and all that stuff with Jerry Mulligan and The Birth of the Cool and all that stuff.

But he wasn't a superstar.

What made Miles a superstar? It was when Miles played Around midnight at the Newport Jazz Festival, it changed his career totally.

But Miles never really cared about a musician's color, only their playing ability.

He started influencing the West Coast version of jazz called Cool Jazz, with all of this experimentation culminating in recording sessions that would be released a decade later as the album Birth of the Cool.

Starting in 1948, Miles started going back and forth to Paris, this time in order to play at the inaugural Paris Jazz Festival.

Paris fell in love with jazz during this period and embraced jazz musicians wholeheartedly.

Erroll Garner, "A Cottage for Sale" from 1945.

Miles Davis, "Boplicity" from the 1949 release The Complete Birth of the Cool.

Dinah Washington with "Honeysuckle Rose" from 1958.

And Lee Morgan, "That's All" from the Introducing Lee Morgan LP from 1957.

[instrumental music]

[instrumental music][jazz music] [applause] [jazz music]

Up next, Vince Guaraldi, Corcovado from 1964; Ben Webster, Set Call from the Gone with the Wind release, 1965; Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery with King of the Road from The Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes, 1966; and James Rivers, Mona Lisa from 1994.

[jazz music]

He was a prodigy.

who came up in the bebop years who played with charlie parker and then many others and was already a famous person in the 1940s he had his great success as leaders of group he experimented with things which later became known as birth of the cool and speaking of cool some very early 50s bands that had a very cool sound and small ensembles as well great records on the prestige label but Miles Davis had fallen in his popularity, and he also had various health problems and was getting himself together, and by the mid-1950s was not as well known.

For the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, Miles was added to the production for a great all-star session called And at that point in time, the Newport Jazz Festival was extremely influential and many big shots in the business were in the audience as well as all the critics.

And Miles took things by storm in that all-star appearance and re-established his name.