Jazz, from its origins until World War II, was America's hot new music of the 20th century, and this music spread like wildfire to Europe and beyond. Shortly after the war ended a calming influence manifested itself in jazz and a new genre emerged with its own soundscape and quickly rose to worldwide popularity and influence--Cool Jazz. This book traces the history of this music to its roots in French Impressionism and European Neo-Classicism, describes the key roles played by Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young, Lennie Tristano, Claude Thornhill, and Dave Brubeck in the development of this genre, and focuses on the major figures associated with a group of landmark recordings and on an ensemble that felicitously came to be known as The Birth of the Cool. The contributions of Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, and John Carisi are considered in detail, and the scores of this music, arranged for Davis's nine-piece band, are analyzed and compared. The influence of this music persists to the present day, and the final chapter of The Birth of the Cool of Miles Davis and His Associates suggests continuities and developments that might still be explored by interested readers. The book is illustrated with photos of musicians and manuscripts, contains many musical examples and a detailed index, has both a bibliography and a short discography, and it includes a compact disc that contains many of the key recordings discussed in the text [Publisher description].

The idea of 'cool' is one of the most pervasive forces in modern culture - but what is it? Where does it come from? Who invented it? BIRTH OF THE COOL is the first serious examination of how cool came about - its meaning, its heroes and its place in the world, from the gritty avant-garde fringes of the culture in after-hours joints in Harlem and cold water flats on the Lower East Side, to the centre of the mainstream. Focusing on New York from 1948 to 1965 and bringing together the era's most evocative black and white photographs, Lewis MacAdams takes us from the jazz joints where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker invented bebop to Jackson Pollock's studio; from Willam S. Burrough's frenetic experiences on the road to the Black Mountain School of Zen.

Publisher description

The result was 'Round About Midnight, an engaging firsthand account of Miles's fascinating and difficult career.

The story of the final recordings of one of the greatest jazz musicians of the twentieth century

The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, founded in Los Angeles in 1952, was widely acclaimed as the first small ensemble in jazz that did not include a chordal instrument such as a piano or guitar. Using original scores and detailed transcriptions of Mulligan's early work, The Gerry Mulligan 1950s Quartets offers an intimate look at Mulligan's musical development from his teenage years to adulthood, analyzing the ways in which his compositions and arrangements evolved through collaborations with Elliot Lawrence, Gene Krupa, and Claude Thornhill, culminating with Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool nonet. Featuring original interviews with Mulligan's associates, author Alyn Shipton presents a fresh take on Mulligan's harmonic creativity, in the process tracing the ups and downs of Mulligan's personal life, heroin addiction, imprisonment, and eventual sobriety.