What is ‘cool’? If you look in a hip dictionary, all you’ll see is a photo of Miles Davis. The man practically invented the meaning of the word as we know it.

Before Miles, there were two types of bands – those that played ‘sweet’ music and those who played it ‘hot’. For example, in 1946, one extreme was Guy Lombardo, and the other, Charlie Parker. For a quarter century, the music that got under your skin was referred to as ‘hot’ because it played against the mainstream and relied on rhythmic drive, technical ability, and inspired inventiveness for its essence.

‘Bop” players took the essence of ‘hot’ to its extreme by blowing solos that were virtually impenetrable to anyone without a jazz license, and as a result the audience dwindled because they couldn’t begin to comprehend what they were listening to. Then, in 1948, seemingly out of nowhere, Miles introduced “The Birth of the Cool”, a collection of recordings that turned jazz on its head by incorporating classical elements (via his collaborator, Gil Evans) to jazz structures. While his contemporaries pushed ‘hot’ jazz to new extremes, Miles found a way to simmer down and yet still sound relevant. The very notion of not breaking a sweat took on an appeal and it became ‘cool’ to be ‘cool’ instead of ‘hot’. You can thank Miles Davis for that notion. 

Unfortunately, heroin slithered its way into the cool personality profile, and Davis’ career foundered for almost five years. Nevertheless, Prestige Records signed him, and he released a string of recordings that were uneven at first but grew stronger as he developed. He also managed to put the heroin down and took up boxing. He started using a mute to soften his sound and experimented with space and a softer sense of phrasing that separated him from the ‘hard bop’ players.

In 1955, Columbia Records worked a deal to take over Davis’ contract after he completed a remaining four-album obligation with Prestige. Meanwhile, Davis put together his first ‘classic’ quintet, with Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and John Coltrane. In two marathon sessions, the quintet recorded enough material to satisfy the Prestige contract, and the label released four rather incredible albums (Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’ and Steamin’) incrementally while Miles worked the same group of musicians for Columbia. The sudden influx of great albums only created more interest in the new band, a situation where everyone came out a winner.

Davis couldn’t have picked a better title song to kick off his new band, on a new label, with a new sound. In Davis’ hands, Thelonious Monk’s melancholy “’Round Midnight” conveyed incredibly complex emotions. Simultaneously languid, romantic, and dramatic, it was the perfect vehicle of expression for his muted horn, and it benefited even more because of the starkly different expressive approach of Coltrane. It was probably all intuition, but the band sounds like they rehearsed for days to perfect this moment. The album emphasizes the sultry side of the band, with four of the six tracks moving at a distinctly mellow pace. It follows the standard formula of jazz albums from this era by emphasizing ‘classic’ songs as a means for soloing over the chord progressions, with an original track or two thrown in for good measure, but the net result sounds like so much more. The real pleasure is hearing Davis and Coltrane intermingling with dynamically different ideas. In one swoop, Davis became a jazz icon with “’Round  About Midnight”, and from this point forward, he never once looked back.

Featured tracks:

‘Round Midnight

Ah-Leu-Cha

All of You

Bye Bye Blackbird

Tadd’s Delight

Dear Old Stockholm

March 1957 – Billboard Did Not Chart