The Birth of the Cool

This is not what I’m supposed to be doing but alas anything to put off grading papers. A former student asks me for a mix of some “cool jazz,” so I’m rooting through my records asking myself what is “cool jazz” anyhow? Miles in the 1950s, right? West coast bebop? And what distinguishes cool from bop really, anyway? Cool is bop lite? If bop is a traffic jammed intersection, cool is a cruise down the boulevard; if bop is a hothouse of ideas, cool is a supper club martini. At its best cool jazz was swing scaled down to bop group size allowing musical ideas to breathe again. But it's more a mood than fresh set of ideas and probably, more than anything else, a precursor to drecky smooth jazz. So if I keep fussing w/ this mix much longer I’ll probably end up where I can’t stand listening to it. Besides, the student and I started talking ab music last year in the first place b/c he’s a hiphop head. He’s probably expecting some ‘60s soul-jazz, Lonnie Liston Smith and the like, the stuff more commonly sampled by Gang Starr, etc. Another day. For now, the birth of the cool sounds real good on a rainy night.

“Sometimes I’m Happy,” Lester Young
“Jeru,” Miles Davis
“Blues for Pablo,” Miles Davis and Gil Evans
“Figure 8,” Lennie Niehaus
“Crazy Rhythm,” Stan Getz
“Let’s Get Lost,” Chet Baker
“Foolish Things,” Lennie Tristano Quintet
“All The Things That You Are,” Paul Desmond
“Willow Weep For Me,” Zoot Sims
“Rainy Night,” Red Mitchell
“Linus and Lucy,” Vince Guaraldi Trio
“Soul Sauce,” Cal Tjader
“Take Five,” Dave Brubeck Quartet
“Martians Go Home,” Shorty Rogers
“American Haikus,” Jack Kerouac
“Las Cuevas De Mario,” Art Pepper
“My Foolish Heart,” Bill Evans