Billboard : 02/23/1957
Score of 84

A re-issue of some of the most brilliantly played and most original material to have been recorded in the early part of the “cool” period (1949–1950). Originally available in Capitol’s “Classics in Jazz” series, these selections have as much, and maybe more, to say today than when they were first issued. It represented a meeting of the minds of Davis, Gerry Mulligan and arranger Evans; the band essentially was the nine-man group that Davis led at the Royal Roost in New York in September 1948. Move, Boplicity, Budo and most of the other titles have truly become classics. This LP ought to be an important seller as long as there is such a thing as jazz.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : May, 1957

Generally regarded as one of the high points in modern jazz, eleven of the twelve numbers recorded by the Miles Davis group in 1949–50 are successfully updated in sound by remastering on one LP. They are not in the least overshadowed by subsequent developments in the idiom and the wide-range brought to the scores by the use of baritone sax, french horn, and tuba give them a rich tonal depth.

Formed with Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans, the band was able to find only two weeks employment in a club. It is more emotional and heated than the cool groups which gravitated to the West coast, and more disciplined than those remaining in the East. For various reasons, some of them economic, its creative impact has not been surpassed by a working unit, or by specially assembled studio groups.

It might do well on the club circuit today, but would do better in the concert hall. Some enterprising entrepreneur should be inspired to make up a package of the Miles Davis quintet, the Gerry Mulligan sextet, and the Modern Jazz Quartet, among others. Musicians from each could be drawn on to form a larger group for the last portion of the concert. Only in a sustained atmosphere of interchange of ideas can such creative work be forwarded.

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Jazz Journal
Gerald Lascelles : September, 1957

Appropriately subtitled Birth of the Cool, this record must rank among the vintage records of modern jazz. Wildly “avant-garde” at the time of its conception in 1948, much of the trend has since been absorbed into the accepted idiom, as practised today. The “mood” music of such pieces as Moon Dreams has no place in jazz, but has provided the foundations for a great number of such interpretations in subsequent years. One must not underrate the contribution made by Gerry Mulligan to this record. He is not only the composer of three of the themes, but also chief arranger and one of the strongest soloists. The mournful strains of the french horn are strong throughout, but its place had not yet been established in the group. Bill Barber’s tuba is present on all three sessions, but this instrument has subsequently disappeared from the modern jazz group. In the main there is a predominance of rhythm but the whole thing is a little too much contrived to please my ears.

Individually, Miles Davis is outstanding in his approach to the new sound, with Winding and Roach working closely in his footsteps. The pianists are unfortunately almost unfeatured, and the presence of John Lewis passes unnoticed. J.J. Johnson, whom I have always preferred to Winding as a soloist, does not show the same competent approach as he did a few years later. The sleeve notes mention “…a surprising German band flavour.” Whilst the direct allusion escapes me, I cannot help echoing a similar feeling, in mentioning that the technical fervour of the music far outweighs any sentiment or feeling, such as one has normally associated with jazz.

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Metronome
Bill Coss : July, 1957

Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool (Capitol T 762): these are the famous tracks cut in 1949 and 1950, with varying personnel including Jay and Kai, Lee Konitz, Mulligan, John Lewis and Max or Kenny. The first two dates were with nine men, the last with eight (no piano). Much of modern jazz on both coasts has owed some allegiance to the ideas contained here as conceived of by Gerry and arranger Gil Evans. I think that there is no doubt that current recording would develop, make for better performances and sound; but this is a set well-worth owning.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 02/10/1957

Birth of the Cool (Capitol) puts on one LP for the first time some of the most important jazz ever recorded—the 1949 sides by the Miles Davis nonet. These arrangements, with their change in voicing, concept, and emphasis, hit the jazz world like a blockbuster and were probably the biggest factor in development of the cool, chamber-type styling so common today. Instrumentation was trumpet, trombone, alto and baritone sax, French horn, tuba, and rhythm. Among the participants Miles led in the three recording sessions were Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Gunther Schuller, John Lewis, Al Haig, Nelson Boyd, Max Roach, and Kenny Clarke. (The album notes omit a pianist for three of the 11 tracks; he is Lewis.) Jeru, Boplicity, Budo, Deception, and Rouge are among the selections. This is an album which is basic for any record library of modern jazz.

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 06/15/1957

Finally collected for reissue, these are the records which announced cool jazz. Whatever they owe to the scorings of Claude Thornhill’s dance band, we can see a heritage going to such Tadd Dameron pieces as Lady Bird, to Freddy Webster’s trumpet, to L. Young’s attack and certain Basie performances, and behind them to Bud Freeman, Bix, Trumbauer, also moods of King Oliver and Bunk Johnson. Most celebrated are Boplicity and Israel, but one wishes that the lively straightforwardness of Move could have a more careful hearing. Why wasn’t Darn That Dream included, and why aren’t the arrangers identified?

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Down Beat : The Birth of the Cool
Nat Hentoff : 05/02/1957 & 05/16/1957

Among jazzmen, particularly player-writers, Gil Evans is uniquely admired.

“For my taste,” Miles Davis says, “he’s the best. I haven’t heard anything that knocks me out as consistently as he does since I first heard Charlie Parker.”

Coincident with Miles’ recent tribute, Capitol released a few weeks ago the first complete collection of those 1949–50 Davis combo sides which were to influence deeply one important direction of modern chamber jazz (Birth of the Cool, Capitol 12″ LP T762).

Evans was perhaps the primary background factor in making these sessions happen, and he wrote the arrangements for Moon Dreams and Boplicity.

Boplicity is listed as the work of “Cleo Henry,” a nom-de-date for Davis, who wrote the melody after which Evans scored the written ensembles. “Boplicity,” declares Andre Hodeir in Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, “is enough to make Gil Evans qualify as one of jazz’s greatest arranger-composers.”

Despite these and other endorsements from impressive jazz figures, Evans is just a name to most jazz listeners. In the last few years, he has written comparatively little in the jazz field as such; but his influence on modern jazz writing through the effect of his work for the Claude Thornhill band of the ’40s and the Davis sides has remained persistent.

“Not many people really heard Gil,” Gerry Mulligan explains. “Those who did, those who came up through the Thornhill band, were tremendously affected, and they in turn affected others.”

Gil has now decided to return to more active jazz participation and is writing all arrangements for a Davis big band Columbia LP to be recorded at the end of April. He’s also become more interested in creating original material, an area he’s largely avoided up to now.

Evans once again is at a crossing point of his career.

He was born Ian Gilmore Green in Toronto, Canada, on May 13, 1912, and took his stepfather’s name. Gil is self-taught and says, “I’ve always learned through practical work. I didn’t learn any theory except through the practical use of it; and in fact, I started in music with a little band that could play the music as soon as I’d write it.”

Evans first learned about music through jazz and popular records and radio broadcasts of bands. Since he had no traditional European background either in studying or listening, he built his style entirely on his pragmatic approach to jazz and pop material.

Sound itself was his first motivation. “Before I ever attached sound to notes in my mind, sound attracted me,” he says. “When I was a kid, I could tell what kind of car was coming with my back turned.”

Later, “it was the sound of Louis’ horn, the people in Red Nichols’ units like Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman, Duke’s band, the McKinney Cotton Pickers, Don Redman. Redman’s Brunswick records ought to be reissued. The band swung, but the voicings also gave the band a compact sound. I was also interested in popular bands. Like the Casa Loma approach to ballads. Gene Gifford broke up the instrumentation more imaginatively than was usual at the time.”

Gil led his own band in Stockton, Calif., from 1933–38, playing accompaniment-rhythm piano and scoring a book of pop songs and some jazz tunes. When the band was taken over by Skinnay Ennis, Gil remained as arranger until 1941.

“I was also beginning to get an introduction to show music and the entertainment end of the business,” Evans recalls. “We used to play for acts on Sunday nights at Victor Hugo’s in Beverly Hills, and the chance to write for vaudeville routines gave me another look at the whole picture.”

Thornhill had also joined the Ennis arranging staff, and the two wrote for the Bob Hope radio show while the Ennis band was on the series. The radio assignments gave Evans more pragmatic experience in yet another medium.

“Even then,” Evans remembers, “Claude had a unique way with a dance band. He’d use the trombones, for example, with the woodwinds in a way that gave them a horn sound.”

In 1939, Claude decided to form his own band. Evans recommended the band for a summer job at Balboa, and he notes that Claude was then developing his sound, a sound based on the horns playing without vibrato except for specific places where Thornhill would indicate vibrato was to be used for expressive purposes.

“I think,” Gil adds, “he was the first among the pop or jazz bands to evolve that sound. Someone once said, by the way, that Claude was the only man who could play the piano without vibrato.”

“Claude’s band,” continues Evans, “was always very popular with players. The Benny Goodman band style was beginning to pall and had gotten to be commercial. I haunted Claude until he hired me as an arranger in 1941. I enjoyed it all, as did the men.”

“The sound of the band didn’t necessarily restrict the soloists,” Gil points out. “Most of his soloists had an individual style. The sound of the band may have calmed down the over-all mood, but that made everyone feel very relaxed.”

Evans went on to examine the Thornhill sound more specifically: “Even before Claude added French horns, the band began to sound like a French horn band. The trombones and trumpets began to take on that character, began to play in derby hats without a vibrato.”

“Claude added the French horns in 1941. He had written an obbligato for them to a Fazola solo to surprise Fats. Fazola got up to play; Claude signaled the French horns at the other end of the room to come up to the bandstand; and that was the first time Fazola knew they were to be added to the band.”

“Claude was the first leader to use French horns as a functioning part of a dance band. That distant, haunting, no-vibrato sound came to be blended with the reed and brass sections in various combinations.”

“When I first heard the Thornhill band,” Gil continued, “it sounded, with regard to the registers in which the sections played, a little like Glenn Miller, but it soon became evident that Claude’s use of no-vibrato demanded that the registers be lowered. Actually, the natural range of the French horn helped cause the lowering of the registers. In addition, I was constantly experimenting with varying combinations and intensities of instruments that were in the same register.”

“A characteristic voicing for the Thornhill band was what often happened on ballads. There was a French horn lead, one and sometimes two French horns playing in unison or a duet depending on the character of the melody. The two altos, a tenor, and a baritone or two altos and two tenors. The bottom was normally a double on the melody by the baritone or tenor. The reed section sometimes went very low with the saxes being forced to play in a subtone and very soft.”

“What made for further variations in sound was the personal element; a man might have a personal sound in playing—let’s say, his bottom part—that differed from the sound someone else might get.”

Evans is concerned with making clear that “Claude deserves credit for the sound. My influence, such as it has been, was really through him. His orchestra served as my instrument to work with. That’s where my influence and his join, so to speak.”

“In essence,” Evans clarifies, “at first, the sound of the band was almost a reduction to an inactivity of music, to a stillness. Everything—melody, harmony, rhythm—was moving at a minimum speed. The melody was very slow, static; the rhythm was nothing much faster than quarter notes and a minimum of syncopation. Everything was lowered to create a sound, and nothing was to be used to distract from that sound. The sound hung like a cloud.”

“I should add, incidentally, that Claude’s desire was to avoid unnecessary activity even extended to the correction of mistakes. There was a minimum of discussion of music. He hated to correct an error. ‘Find it yourself,’ was his attitude. If a guy was out of tune, Claude would touch the fellow’s note as he was passing through the harmony part on the piano, to show him the way it should be played instead of telling him.”

“But once this stationary effect, this sound, was created, it was ready to have other things added to it. The sound itself can only hold interest for a certain length of time. Then you have to make certain changes within that sound; you have to make personal use of harmonies rather than work with the traditional ones; there has to be more movement in the melody; more dynamics; more syncopation; speeding up of the rhythms.”

“For me, I had to make those changes, those additions, to sustain my interest in the band, and I started to as soon as I joined. I began to add from my background in jazz, and that’s where the jazz influence began to be intensified.”

The next addition Thornhill made in modern band instrumentation was the tuba.

“In the old days,” Gil explains, “the tuba had been used mainly as a rhythm instrument. The new concept with Thornhill started when Bill Barber joined the band, around the middle of 1947 or in 1948. Claude deserves credit, too, for the character of the sound with tuba added.”

“But as I said, things had to be added to the sound. Claude gave me a fairly free hand, and our association was a good one until he began to feel there were elements being left out of his music that he wanted in there and that elements were being added that he didn’t want in there.”

“I had been with him from 1941–42. Then came the war, and when he reorganized, I was with him again from 1946–48. My final leaving was friendly. The sound had become a little too somber for my taste, generally speaking, a little too bleak in character. It began to have a hypnotic effect at times. The band could put you to sleep.”

“An example of the variation in our thinking was the tuba. He liked the static sound of the tuba on chords. I wanted the tuba to play flexible, moving jazz passages. He liked a stationary effect so much in fact, that if he could have had his way, I think he would have had the band hold a chord for 100 bars with him compensating ably for the static effect with the activity of his piano. You see, the static sound of the orchestra put the demand for activity on him.”

“And carrying his feeling for sound further, Claude has the best sound on piano of anyone I know. I know it’s a mechanical instrument and yet it can sound so different when he plays it; the sound has a foundation when he plays. And he can feel a piano, allow for differences in different pianos.”

Gil returned to the jazz aspects of his work with Thornhill, saying, “I wrote arrangements of three of Bird’s originals, Anthropology, Yardbird Suite, and Donna Lee. And I also got to know Charlie well. We were personal friends, and were roommates for a year or so. Months after we had become friends and roommates, he had never heard my music, and it was a long time before he did.”

(Gerry Mulligan explains: “What attracted Bird to Gil was Gil’s musical attitude. How would I describe that attitude? ‘Probing’ is the most accurate word I can think of.”)

“When Bird did hear my music,” Gil continued, “he liked it very much. Unfortunately, by the time he was ready to use me, I wasn’t ready to write for him. I was going through another period of learning by then.”

“As it turned out, Miles, who was playing with Bird then, was attracted to me and my music. He did what Charlie might have done if at that time Charlie had been ready to use himself as a voice, as part of an overall picture, instead of a straight soloist.”

Gil’s influence worked in other ways as a corollary to the Davis Capitol sessions and to his writing for Thornhill. “I was always interested in other musicians. I was hungry for musical companionship, because I hadn’t had much of it before. Like bull sessions in music theory. Since I hadn’t gone to school, I hadn’t had that before.”

“I got to know a lot of the writers, and I used to recommend my musical friends to Claude as arrangers—men like Gerry Mulligan, Johnny Carisi, Gene Roland, and Tom Merriman.”

It was during this ’46–48 period, incidentally, that among Thornhill’s sidemen were Lee Konitz, Red Rodney, Rusty Dedrick, Roland, Louis Mucci, and Jake Koven, whom Evans describes as “a very good trumpet player in the Louis Armstrong tradition with his own voice—there aren’t many of those left.”

Evans was asked what he thought his influence had been on the development of Mulligan.

“I don’t really know,” Gil replied. “We got together often; we were musically attracted to each other. Gerry, John Brooks, John Carisi, and George Russell, and I. The way we influenced each other was not of much importance. I feel we kept our own individuality through having each other as musical colleagues, rather than by having a common platform or working alone.”

“As for the influence of Claude’s band, its sound and writers, I would say that the sound was made ready to be used by other forces in music. I did not create the sound; Claude did. I did more or less match up with the sound the different movements by people like Lester, Charlie, and Dizzy in which I was interested. It was their rhythmic and harmonic revolutions that had influenced me. I liked both aspects and put them together. Of course, I’m not the only one who has done that. Those elements were around, looking for each other.”

“Jazz musicians had arrived at a time when they needed a sound vehicle for ensembles, for working with larger bands, in addition to the unison playing between solo work to which they were accustomed.”

“The point was,” Evans went on, “that an interdependence of modern thought and its expression was needed. If you express new thoughts and ideas in old ways, you take the vigor and excitement out of the new thoughts.”

“For example, Miles couldn’t play like Louis because the sound would interfere with his thoughts. Miles had to start almost with no sound and then develop one as he went along, a sound suitable for the ideas he wanted to express. He couldn’t afford to trust those thoughts to an old means of expression. If you remember, his sound now is much more highly developed than it was at first.”

“Getting back to Claude, the sound of the Thornhill band became common property very fast. And all of us writing for the band at that time used it in our individual manners; some made more use of the sound than others.”

“The idea of Miles’ little band for the Capitol session came, I think, from Claude’s band in the sound sense. Miles had liked some of what Gerry and I had written for Claude. The instrumentation for the Miles session was caused by the fact that this was the smallest number of instruments that could get the sound and still express all the harmonies the Thornhill band used. Miles wanted to play his idiom with that kind of sound.”

“Miles, by the way, was the complete leader for those Capitol sides. He organized the band, sold it for the record contract, and for the Royal Roost where we played.”

“I remember,” Gil says grinning, “that original Miles band during the two weeks we played at the Royal Roost. There was a sign outside—’Arrangements by Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans, and John Lewis.’ Miles had it put in front; no one before had ever done that, given credit that way to arrangers.”

“Those records by Miles indicate,” Gil said, “what voicing can do, how it can give intensity and relaxation. Consider the six horns Miles had in a nine-piece band. When they played together, they could be a single voice playing a single line. One-part writing, in a way. But that sound could be altered and modified in many ways by the various juxtapositions of instruments. If the trombone played a high second part to the trumpet, for instance, there would be more intensity because he’d find it harder to play the notes. But you have to work these things out. I never know until I can hear it.”

“After those records, what we had done seemed to appeal to other arrangers. There was, for one thing, a lot of tuba-type bands. I’m glad for Barber’s sake, but I think it was overdone. It was done sometimes without any definite meaning except to be ‘traditional.’ It got to be traditional awfully fast to do a date with French horn and tuba.”

This is the first of two articles.

The May 16, 1957 piece continues the story here:

(Ed. Note: An innovator in jazz arranging is Gil Evans, whose scores for Boplicity and Moon Dreams on Miles Davis’ 1949 sessions were significant writings. For years he worked with Claude Thornhill. Following is the second part of Nat Hentoff’s story on him.)

After Thornhill, Evans continued his own way, the way that made it impossible for him to be part of a movement for any length of time, or for that matter, to be fulltime in jazz. He had to follow his curiosity into other phases of music.

“My interest in jazz, pop, and sound in various combinations has dictated what I would do at various times,” he explains. “At different times, one of the three has been the stronger.”

“Since 1948, I’ve been having a lot of additional experiences in music—act music, vaudeville, night clubs. I learned to cross voices so that an arrangement that was good in Erie, Penn., for five voices could be used for 20 musicians on TV. I learned about the pacing of singer’s songs. My pacing up until then had been orchestral, not vocal.”

“I also did some radio work and some TV orchestrating. As for jazz dates, one reason I didn’t do much was that nobody asked me. About seven or eight years ago, I did some writing for Billy Butterfield on London. And then Helen Merrill called me recently and asked me to write her EmArcy album (EmArcy 12″ LP MG 36078). I was glad she did.”

“I’ve also been trying to fill in gaps in my musical development in the past year. I’ve been reading music history, biographies of composers, articles on criticism, and listening to records from the library. And I’m working as much as I can.”

“There are other reasons for my not having done too much jazz writing in the last few years. As I said, I have a kind of direction of my own that seems to cross three things—pop, jazz, and sound. Now I feel ready to do more jazz.”

“An additional reason is that I won’t write underscale. There’s a lot of underscale writing in the business, package deals whereby an arranger does a certain amount of scores for so much money. A lot of a&r men work that way, and there are enough good craftsmen and some creative writers who go along. I’m enough of a union member to refuse. It makes me too mad.”

“I feel a lot of victories were won in the union movement by men who had to sacrifice a lot, and it’s a shame to have it thrown down the drain by the next generation.”

“A friend of mine, a young writer just getting started, was told by an a&r man at a relatively new major label that if he insisted on charging scale, he’d never be used there again.”

“You have to decide what kind of a writer you’re going to be. You’ve got to have enough confidence in your own ability to stick up for scale.”

Gil was asked about a reputation he has among part of the trade of being a slow writer, and he said: “I have more craft and speed than I sometimes want to admit. I want to avoid getting into a rut. I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over. I’m not a craftsman in the same sense as a lot of writers I hear who do commercial and jazz work, too. They have a wonderful ability with the details of their craft. The details are all authentic, but when it’s over, you realize that the whole is less than the sum of the parts.”

Another facet of the Evans works is that he has to rehearse his arrangements personally. “They’re very personal, and they’re not so highly stylized that it’s easy to catch on to what I have in mind right away. My arrangements don’t sound right unless they’re played by a certain group of players, and unless I’ve rehearsed them.”

(“Gil,” says Mulligan, “is the one arranger I’ve ever played who can really notate a thing the way the soloist would blow it. He can notate things the way they really sound. For example, the down beats don’t always fall on the down beats in a solo, and he makes note of that. It makes for a complicated notation, but because what he writes is melodic and makes sense, it’s not hard to play. The notation makes the parts look harder than they are, but Gil can work with a band, can sing to them what he wants, and he gets it out of them.”)

“Up to now,” Evans summarizes his present attitude, “there were some sections on records I’d done that I liked, but I didn’t like any as entities. I’m still developing my own personal sense of form, which comes out of all this background I’ve told you about. Until recently I hadn’t done much composing of originals because the path I follow hadn’t led toward it.”

“Now my interests and need for further self-expression are developed to a point where I am concerned with original composition. I’ve been more of a sentence composer up to now. I was interested in the language. I did good bits of work. Maybe 16 bars in a pop song, I’d take my own chorus, so to speak. And I would always stay pretty close to the melodic line.”

“Economics has also convinced me not to give all my attention to arranging any more. I used to do my composition inside standards, other people’s songs. But that’s been a dead end for me. Once I’m paid for the arrangement, I’m done. With originals, it’s different.”

“I’ve never really been too concerned with the importance of what I was doing. I was more interested in learning and in the practical way. I didn’t look back until recently when I started to be mentioned in books and articles.”

“This being mentioned is a disadvantage as well as an advantage. It kind of establishes one as an elder statesman before one feels like one. I don’t enjoy being called a granddaddy when I’m still active, still learning, still writing, and will always be writing.”

“Being an elder statesman may be all right for someone who doesn’t want to establish new landmarks. But it’s not my groove.”

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Liner Notes by Unknown

In 1949 Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans—they’d never met before—gravitated together with the natural affinity of kindred souls. Individually, they were emerging as three of the brightest talents in the field of modern jazz. Combined, they gave each other a spiritual boost that resulted in many all-night sessions of earnest discussion, writing and playing—productive work on new musical ideas, new voicings, new concepts of jazz.

Out of this enthusiastic experimenting came a group of memorable arrangements, and they are the ones in this album. The band, basically, is the great nine-man group that Miles led during a two-week stand in September, 1948, at the Royal Roost in N.Y.

What made these recordings startle jazz listeners at first was a change in both voicing and emphasis. New instruments had been coming into jazz for some time, of course, but here the tuba and French horn were integrated into new, polished combinations that were the beginning of modern chamber voicings in jazz.

The change in emphasis had mainly to do with the stress placed on written portions and on major thematic material. The role of the solo wasn’t at all lessened, but these recordings marked the end of the period when thoughtful musicians could be content with perfunctory riff tunes.

The specifics of this music that will strike the new listener are these: a grand, rumbly group sound, a nice balance of power between ensemble and solo work; short, spirited solos; generous use of clever variations on original motifs; and simple-seeming arrangements with, occasionally, a surprising German band flavor.

Considered delightful but startling at first, these recordings have since become classics, essential to any record library of modern jazz, and as enjoyable today as when they first appeared.

Miles Davis was born in 1926, and has been playing trumpet since he joined a high-school band in East St. Louis at the age of 13. Three years later he was adept enough to be playing club dates around St. Louis, and his keen ear was picking out the fascinating notes of a modern style that was just beginning. Then Billy Eckstine played St. Louis with his band, which included Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and when the three heard Miles, they quickly encouraged him to try New York. Once there, Miles was taken under the Bird’s wing, and he started developing even faster. In 1945, Miles began several years of study at Juilliard, building a theoretical background that had begun much earlier with a one-dollar chord book. Since the early post-war years, he has played with most of the leading modern musicians, and his stature has grown steadily. His playing is fast and precise, yet relaxed and lyrical too, and his creative musical thinking is emulated by soloists of every horn.