The History of Jazz (58 page)

Gil Evans’s cramped Fifty-fifth Street basement apartment became an unlikely salon during this period, a gathering place for the emerging “cool school” players as well as unreformed boppers. Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, John Lewis, and Max Roach were frequently in attendance. Charlie Parker was also a sporadic visitor, but his planned project with Evans never took place—although the two would briefly work together several years later on a subpar recording featuring the altoist in tandem with the Dave Lambert Singers. At the time, Davis took the lead in forming a working band from this coterie of like-minded musicians. Davis, above all, was the visionary and organizer who turned these fledgling concepts into performances and recordings. He scheduled rehearsals, hired halls, and initiated contact with Capitol Records. However, a substantial portion of the band’s arrangements were written by Mulligan—whose important role in the proceedings has often been wrongly downplayed in historical accounts, which invariably focus on Davis and Evans—with the efforts of this triumvirate supplemented by occasional charts submitted by other participants.

There was no tenor sax in the
Birth of the Cool
band—almost a heresy in a jazz orchestra—instead the French horn frequently blended with the other saxes and Davis’s trumpet. The tuba, a throwback to New Orleans days, was used to support the bottom of the harmonies. This freed Mulligan’s baritone to move up in register—sometimes he would double lines with Davis or Konitz. But the conception of the ensemble was as radical as the instrumentation. For a quarter of a century, jazz big bands had been built on the opposition of sections. Reeds, brass, rhythm: these served as separate, quasi-equal forces employed in musical jousting. The interplay between these sections, refined under the guidance of Redman, Carter, Ellington, and others, had come almost to define the sound of larger jazz ensembles. The model for these pioneers of big band jazz was, in some ways, the symphony orchestra, with its similar give-and-take between instrumental groupings. Davis, in contrast, conceived of his band as a single section. The model was not a classical orchestra, but ensemble singing. “I wanted the instruments to sound like human voices, and they did. … It had to be the voicing of a quartet, with soprano, alto, baritone and bass voices. … I looked at the group like it was a choir.”
⁴
Something of the purified aesthetic of choral music also seeped into the music. Evans’s arrangement of “Moon Dreams” captures a sweet languor unknown to the muses of swing or bop; Davis’s medium tempo “Boplicity” sounds as if the band is hesitant to swing too hard, preferring instead to linger awhile in the beauty of each passing chord; even the more insistent charts such as Mulligan’s “Jeru,” Davis’s “Deception,” or John Carisi’s “Israel” come across as similarly chastened.

Was this jazz? Winthrop Sargeant, classical music critic for
The New Yorker
, expressed his doubts. Instead, he staked a claim for the Davis Nonet as an outgrowth of the Western classical tradition. It sounded, to his ears, like the work of an

impressionist composer with a great sense of aural poetry and a very fastidious feeling for tone color. The compositions have beginnings, middles and endings. The music sounds more like that of a new Maurice Ravel than it does like jazz. I, who do not listen to jazz recordings day in and day out, find this music charming and exciting. … If Miles Davis were an established “classical” composer, his work would rank high among that of his contemporary colleagues. But it is not really jazz.
⁵

Jazz fans apparently agreed with Sargeant’s characterization—they virtually ignored the band. In time, the Davis Nonet would be lauded as one of the most innovative groups in the history of jazz, but during its brief tenure, the ensemble drew little attention or praise. Its employment was limited to a few performances at the Royal Roost, and even there the group was billed below the Count Basie band, with whom it shared the stage. After making a few recordings for Capitol Records, the Nonet disbanded.

The cool school may well have benefited from this early failure. The members of the Nonet would have more success as individuals in promoting the cool aesthetic than as part of a single unit. Davis would continue to refine his sound, in a variety of settings, and by the mid-1950s had developed a deeply personal conception of jazz, one that would exert enormous influence on later jazz musicians. Pianist John Lewis would build a major concert hall career as musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, a cool band remarkable for its longevity and popularity, as well as its consistently high musical standards. Lee Konitz’s later work would secure his reputation as one of the most accomplished altoists of his day and a leading exponent of the cool. Gerry Mulligan would take the lead in developing an audience for cool jazz on the West Coast. Gunther Schuller, who had played French horn with the Nonet, would become a key figure in promoting the “Third Stream”—an ambitious and controversial offshoot of cool jazz that aimed to break down barriers between classical and jazz idioms. Even hardened bopper Max Roach, the drummer on most of the Davis tracks, would bring a measured dose of the cool sensibility to his pathbreaking mid-1950s band with Clifford Brown. All in all, the Davis Nonet was much like a band of disciples, gathered together for a brief time before scattering in their several separate directions, each inspired to proselytize others in turn.

The roots of Lewis’s Modern Jazz Quartet actually predated the Davis Nonet. As early as 1946, a predecessor group including Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, drummer Kenny Clarke, and bassist Ray Brown performed together as the rhythm section in Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. This same unit later recorded as the Milt Jackson Quartet in the early 1950s. By 1952, when the band had regrouped as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Percy Heath had taken over for Brown on bass. (After the replacement of Kenny Clarke with Connie Kay in 1955, the quartet would maintain the same personnel for almost four decades—an unprecedented achievement in the jazz world, where a band’s longevity is typically measured in weeks or months.) This career-long partnership impacted the music: few ensembles, of any era or style, could play together so fluidly, so effortlessly, so well as the MJQ.

Moreover, no group went further in establishing a valid chamber music style for jazz. This was more than a matter of tuxedos and concert halls. The Modern Jazz Quartet’s music captured an intimacy and delicacy, and a sensitivity to dynamics, that was closer in spirit to a top-caliber string quartet than to anything in the world of bop or swing. But unlike their classical world counterparts, the MJQ thrived on the tension—whether conscious or subliminal—between their two lead players. The young Nietzsche made his reputation by untangling the Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies in art—analysts of the MJQ need to do the same. The Bacchic tendency, in this case, is epitomized by Jackson, a freewheeling improviser, at his best when caught up in the heat of the moment. Lewis the Apollonian, in contrast, served as Jackson’s collaborator, adversary, and spur, all rolled into one. He constructed elaborate musical structures for Jackson to navigate, embellish, and, at times, subvert. Such tensions between opposites often underpin the greatest art, but rarely make for stable partnerships—and, in fact, Jackson’s desire to perform in less structured musical environments led to the Modern Jazz Quartet’s breakup in 1974. But a few years later, the group came back together, for the first of many reunion concerts, tours, and recordings.

Milt Jackson’s singular efforts also served to bring the vibraphone into the modern age. He pared down the previously dominant style of Lionel Hampton, refining a more distilled approach, swinging but in a softer, more relaxed manner. Commentators have sometimes suggested that Jackson’s success came from emulating the saxophone on the vibes. There is some truth to this generalization: Jackson’s phrases breathed, unlike the note-filled cadenzas and ornamentation of Hampton’s solo outings. His melodic lines had a lighter, airier quality, without the brittle tinniness heard in the work of many previous vibes and xylophone players. Jackson’s formative experiences had also included stints with Gillespie, Parker, and Monk, where he had been tested—and found worthy—in the heat of many bop battles and had mastered the intricacies of modern jazz. This background carried over to his work with the MJQ, where Jackson managed to retain a feel for the intensity of bop even in the midst of Lewis’s most attenuated compositions.

Lewis, in contrast, brought a distinctly academic flavor to his jazz work. He had studied music and anthropology at the University of New Mexico and had continued his education at the Manhattan School of Music, where he eventually earned a master’s degree. He too had worked in major modern jazz bands, including Parker’s and Gillespie’s, and the influence of Bud Powell could be heard, albeit muted, in his playing. For all this, Lewis was a reluctant bebopper. He lacked Powell’s fire, instead favoring a more flowing, at times delicate style, one that remained somewhat at odds with the bop idiom. Yet Lewis’s meticulous craftsmanship and formalist tendencies made him an ideal participant in the Davis
Birth of the Cool
project. Still, none of these early associations prepared listeners for the burst of creativity Lewis revealed as musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Although his tastes have often been described as conservative—fueled no doubt by his interest in traditional forms— Lewis showed a voracious appetite for new sounds and experimentation that few jazz artists of his day (or any other) could match. Along with Schuller, he played an key role in furthering Third Stream collaborations between jazz and classical musicians; in addition to his responsibilities with the MJQ, Lewis formed Orchestra USA in the early 1960s, an unfairly forgotten ensemble that straddled a number of musical styles and idioms. Years later he would renew these ambitions, working with Gary Giddins and Roberta Swann to found the American Jazz Orchestra. Lewis was also an early advocate of the jazz avant-garde and was among the first supporters of Ornette Coleman, whom he encouraged to attend the Lenox School of Jazz in 1959, at a time when most jazz players were ridiculing or ignoring Coleman’s work. Lewis could find jazz material in traditions few would have thought hospitable to it— everything from fugues to commedia dell’arte—but he was equally successful at penning more recognizably jazz-oriented pieces, such as his wistful ballad “Django” or his riff-driven “The Golden Striker.” For want of a better title, he has been claimed as part of the cool jazz movement. Certainly he played a role in the growing popularity of cool jazz during the 1950s, but Lewis’s activities were far too varied to be subsumed under any one heading.

Although he never participated in the Davis Nonet, Stan Getz figured as one of the most prominent cool players of the period. On the heels of his ethereal 1948 performance on “Early Autumn” with the Woody Herman band—a late Swing Era vintage that, in retrospect, can be seen as a harbinger of the coming cool school— Getz set out on his own. At first, he settled in New York, where he worked briefly as a staff musician for NBC. The confines of a regular job proved, however, too restrictive for a restless improviser such as Getz. When his recording of “Moonlight in Vermont,” made with guitarist Johnny Smith (whom he had met at NBC), showed signs of broadening the popular following he had gained while with Herman, Getz opted to become a full-time combo leader. During the course of the decade, Getz fronted a number of polished ensembles, including a quartet with pianist Horace Silver, a quintet with guitarist Jimmy Rainey, and a West Coast band with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. Getz’s lyrical style and strong improvisational skills also made him a frequent choice for all-star recording dates. Noteworthy sessions from this period include a live recording with trombonist J. J. Johnson, a collaboration with Gerry Mulligan, and a heated encounter with Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt, with the last session eliciting some of the most assertive tenor work of Getz’s career. Despite the quality and quantity of his 1950s work, Getz became an increasingly isolated figure on the jazz scene as the decade progressed. Many factors contributed to his fall from grace: a much-publicized arrest for attempting a drugstore robbery to support his substance-abuse habit; his decision to relocate overseas; his often changeable personality—but, at bottom, it came mostly from factors beyond Getz’s control. Jazz tenor sax playing in those years was moving further and further away from Getz’s cool stylings. Harder-edged players, such as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, were establishing a new model for how the tenor should sound. Getz, who was always a reluctant modernist—his embrace of bop mannerisms had never obscured the more traditional roots in his playing—seemed in danger of sounding old fashioned before his thirty-fifth birthday.

But, in the early 1960s, Getz mounted a major comeback that encompassed both critical success and immense popular acclaim. His 1961 recording
Focus
featured Getz’s sleek improvisations darting in and out of Eddie Sauter’s acerbic string writing. But the strong reception of this work in the jazz community paled in comparison to the huge public response to Getz’s ensuing bossa nova projects. Getz may not have been the first to recognize the jazz potential of this music—Antonio Carlos Jobim’s compositions and João Gilberto’s vocals had attracted many admirers since their initial Rio de Janeiro recordings from the late 1950s—but no one did more to bring it to the attention of audiences outside Brazil. Getz’s 1962 recording of “Desafinado” eventually reached number fifteen on the
Billboard
single charts, and his
Jazz Samba
LP remained on the album charts for over a year, briefly capturing the top position. Quick to capitalize on this success, Getz released several other bossa nova recordings, as did a host of other jazz musicians, anxious to benefit from the Brazilian fad before it faded. In the summer of 1964, just when it seemed as if the public’s appetite for the new sound had been sated, Getz achieved an even more celebrated hit single with “The Girl from Ipanema.” The
Getz/Gilberto
LP climbed to number two on the charts, kept from the top spot only by the Beatles.