Revisting of the Miles Davis

HERE'S THE THING:  If jazz musicians were only heard, not seen, Miles Davis would not be a household name.

Or, if jazz musicians were measured simply by the expression and depth of their recordings, Miles Davis would not have had a career in music.  Unless the career involved shining Clifford Brown's horn.

Or, for those studying for the SAT, ponder this --

Miles Davis : Jazz :: Andy Warhol : Art

I bought Birth of the Cool during my junior year of high school, 2005.  I bought it from Wal*Mart.  I wanted to start a jazz collection.  It seemed like a good album to start with.  Look at the damn cover!    

For me, it had the same allure as, say, the movie poster for Pulp Fiction.   The sun glasses, the redness of "Cool."  The odd transposition of "the".  As in:  We don't the play by rules, baby.  It's not The Birth of Cool.  We does drugs.  

I heard about the album when I was working with a college guy who told me, before Christmas, he planned to spend the winter reading Mein Kamp and listening to Birth of the Cool.  Never got to ask how that worked out for him, but I'll bet he found more immediate utility from the former.    

I kept hearing about Miles Davis from a different friend who lamented that Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis never collaborated.  Then there was another friend who was always reciting this movie quote from an Adam Sandler movie.  The quote was something like. If peeing your pants is cool, then call me Miles Davis.  

So I bought the album from Wal*Mart.  I was excited.  I was expecting an aggressive, strutting sound -- a sound that I would later discover in hard bob.  

Birth of the Cool is not hard bob.  It is neither aggressive nor strutting.  It is cerebral and aloof.  At times it is nancing.  The cover would be better if it showed Miles wearing horn rim glasses and studying over a chart with Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz, both of whom appear on the LP and were huge names in jazz and in the crafting of the tunes.  Incidentally, they were about as photogenic as your varsity chess club.  To paraphrase Alex Baldwin, to give them the album art would be...to waste it.  

The titular cool is cool jazz, a movement stemming away from the bebop pioneered by, among others, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.  

Say what you will about that song, but they do not waste your time.  It is performed with technical precision as well as soulfulness.  Cool jazz literally toned this down this type of sound.  Cool means  emotionally cool, as in unable to feel emotions.  As in the guy in the chess club who has trouble relating to kids his own age.  A better name would be sociopath jazz.  Just before he was let go from the AV Club, Leonard Pierce had this to say about the album:

    Birth Of The Cool [...] represents Davis’ first major excursion as a bandleader, stepping out on his own with a smooth, frosty trumpet tone and a keen eye for assembling the right talent for the right project. The sound this nonet developed later became known as “cool jazz” for its intricate arrangements, subdued tempos, and clean emotional vibe. Though Davis, irked by the attention it brought other musicians from the white press, disowned the style, it wouldn’t exist without him, and Birth Of The Cool is its founding document.

Not sure what he means by "clean emotional vibe."  What Miles Davis does in Birth of the Cool is a tactic he practiced successfully his entire career: use your connections and social tenure to surround yourself with young, prodigious talent.

Let's jump back a few years before Birth of the Cool was recorded.  Miles had earned this social status playing alongside Charlie Parker.  If you listen to their recordings, you can hear the clever usage by Parker of the pretty girl / ugly girl juxtaposition.  A hardworking Miles still sounds Bush-league compared to a heroin-addled Bird.

Fast forward to the end of the forties, and Bird is sliding further into drug addiction, and Miles is cashing in his social cache with the nonet. The sound is thick and vibrant.  It's smoking lounge music.  I once put on this album at a party in college.  It was switched off before "Move" had finished playing.  And that's one of the more accessible charts on the album.  

But back in 2005, the nascent jazz snob was very worried.  I was all about being an elitist, but not at the expense of listening to really boring music.  And did this album sound boring.  Back in 2005, this song sounded really, really boring.  Here, I defy you to not to find this song boring:

   

After five years of playing jazz, studying its history, and creating memories that I associate with the music, I can find this song not boring.     

My problem with Miles Davis is that his entire career is spent building his image with the help of better talented musicians.  And then Miles is held up as one of the iconic jazz musicians, when in fact his performing, at best, is sub-par.  In a blog post on jazz.com, Ted Gioria points outs that the nonet was extremely important, but not simply because of Miles.  

  Yet with hindsight, we can make the claim that this was the most important jazz band in the world in the late summer of 1948. For the next decade and beyond, the jazz world would be dominated by the individuals gathered together on the stage of the Royal Roost. Davis himself would rise to stardom, sign with the Columbia label, and release a series of seminal LPs, including several collaborations with Gil Evans. Gerry Mulligan would soon hitchhike to California and serve as a catalyst in spurring the West Coast jazz scene. John Lewis would enjoy success as musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Lee Konitz would contribute his own unique take on cool jazz, often alongside Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh, or in a host of other settings. Max Roach would help shape the hard bop movement in his quintet with Clifford Brown. Gunther Schuller, who would record with the nonet although he was absent from the Royal Roost engagement, would serve as the visionary behind the Third Stream movement in jazz.

Anyone who puts Miles in the same performing category as Dizzy or Clifford or Lee Morgan is listening with their eyes.  Miles is a mood player.  He is best when he can let a few notes go at choice moments and call that art.  And maybe that is art.  But if you make concession that Miles Davis' playing is sub-par, then why not listen to the modern extension of cool jazz, as played by a competent musician?

It's probably for the best that Miles is consumed by a wider audience for all the wrong reasons while better jazz musicians receive far less cultural noting.  Imagine if you heard Charlie Christian name-dropped on Two and A Half Men.  Maybe serious film buffs feel this way about Woody Allen: let people feel sophisticated for liking him!