Birth of The Cool - Background

Background

In 1947 Miles Davis was playing in Charlie Parker's quintet, replaced Dizzy Gillespie, who had left in 1945 due to Parker's growing alcohol and drug problem. Davis recorded several albums with Parker at this time, including Parker's Sessions for the Savoy and Dial labels. By 1948 Davis had three years of bebop playing under his belt, but he struggled to match the speed and ranges of the likes of Gillespie and Parker, choosing instead to play in the mid range of his instrument. In 1948 Davis, becoming increasingly concerned about growing tensions within the Parker quintet, left that group and began looking for a new band with which to work.

At the same time, arranger Gil Evans began hosting informal salons at his apartment, located on 55th Street in Manhattan, three blocks away from the jazz nightclubs of 52nd Street. Evans had gained a reputation in the jazz world for his orchestration of bebop tunes for the Claude Thornhill orchestra in the mid-1940s. Keeping an open door policy, Evans's apartment came to host many of the young jazz artists of late-1940s New York. The salon featured discussions about the future of jazz, including a proposed group with a new sound. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia:

were developing a range of tools that would change the sound of contemporary music. In their work together, they relied on a rich palette of harmonies, many of them drawn from European impressionist composers. They explored new instrumental textures, preferring to blend the voices of the horns like a choir rather than pit them against each other as the big bands had traditionally done with their thrusting and parrying sections. They brought down the tempos of their music . . . they adopted a more lyrical approach to improvisation . . .