The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (43 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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very sensitive inside and hide it one way or another on the outside, men with certain androgynous qualities who like to surprise people, great melodists, whose lyrical and melodic strengths were combined with a softness or delicacy of tone.
Many of the players who became associated with the so-called cool school were in fact strict Lester Young devotees. The poise involved in coming up with those graceful, perfectly balanced melodic inventions was what they were going for, rather than flat-out or percussive expressionism. In fact, the leadoff tune of
Birth of the Cool
, "Jeru," by baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, who was to go on from there to make a large name for himself, is based on a phrase that Young played at the end of his 1944 Keynote recording of "Sometimes I'm Happy" (Young quoted it himself from an old song called "My Sweetie Went Away").
As for Davis himself, his sound is sharper and more piercing than it is on the Parker recordings; it has, in fact, hardened into what it would be until about 1954, when it would again shift, take on a little more of a Clifford Brownish, clarion type of sound on open horn and when he would begin using the Harmon mute in earnest. At times his dexterity is reminiscent of Fats Navarro's (for an illustration of Davis bopping at full throttle, listen to his solos on "Move," "Hot House," and "Ornithology" - with an all-star group including Bud Powell, Sonny Stitt, and Max Roach - on
Charlie Parker and the Stars of Modern Jazz at Carnegie Hall, Christmas 1949
[Jass J-CD-16]), but his sound on long held notes is unmistakable, the articulation is softer, the notes slur into each other more, and there is more space left in his solos.
Davis doesn't try to fill every moment with notes; sometimes he lets a little time pass, which focuses attention on what the rhythm section is doing, i.e., on the background. An example of that is the Davis/Sonny Rollins version of "Oleo" from June 1954 (available on
Bags Groove
[Prestige/OJC-245]), in which Rollins sometimes lets two measures go by without playing. Thelonious Monk was also an exponent of this philosophy, which all great players use in their way. Some just put more of an emphasis on it than others do.
Davis also used space in another way, which is, in a sense, percussively. Sometimes in these recordings (in "Venus de Milo" particularly) he will lead you to expect a note in a certain place, usually by playing a repeated rhythmic figure, then he leaves out the note, often an accented note and often at the end of a phrase. No wonder he was a good boxer, one of his big hobbies (he was friends with Sugar Ray Robinson). He would use this device throughout his career.
Not long after these epochal recordings, Davis's career went into a kind of
 
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eclipse. There are a number of recordings from the next five years, but he sometimes had trouble getting work, and this was compounded by personal problems - 1950s parlance for drug addiction. He wasn't at the helm of a project as ambitious as the
Birth of the Cool
sessions again until 1957.
Bluing
The first session after
Birth of the Cool
that is worth buying is what is usually called the "Conception" session, with Sonny Rollins and nineteen-year-old Jackie McLean, from October 1951. But a few other sessions that took place before that one should at least be mentioned.
In May 1950 Davis went into the studio to record some sides with Sarah Vaughan and with a small group including Budd Johnson and trombonist Bennie Green. Available on
The Divine Sarah Vaughan: The Columbia Years, 1949-1953
(Columbia C2K 44165), the eight sides recorded that day feature Davis very sparingly, although he does take a nice sixteen-bar solo on a medium-tempo version of "Nice Work If You Can Get It." His eight-bar bridge on "Ain't Misbehavin'" is full of a huge sadness.
January of 1951 found Davis and Max Roach in the studio again with Charlie Parker; they recorded a medium-tempo blues, "Au Privave," a themeless, up-tempo ride through the chords of "Out of Nowhere," which they called "She Rote," one of Bird's favorite tunes, "Star Eyes," and a slow walking-tempo ''K.C. Blues," available on
Charlie Parker, The Verve Years, 1950-51
(Verve 821 684-1). Davis makes cogent statements on all four tunes, and Bird is in top form.
On his first Prestige session as a leader (available on
Miles Davis and Horns
[Prestige/OJC-053]), from May 1951, Davis was teamed with new tenor star Sonny Rollins for the first of several studio occasions, and Bennie Green shows up again, too. There's a pleasant, medium-tempo version of "Whispering," two poignant takes of Rodgers and Hart's "The Blue Room," and a relaxed blues called "Down." "Morpheus," by pianist-composer John Lewis, later of the Modern Jazz Quartet, is interesting, as many writers have noted, for its combination of up-tempo bebop playing and its formal, almost modern classical structure. Not an entirely successful piece, but an interesting one.
Some of the same kind of experimenting with an almost contemporary classical sound can also be heard on Davis's next session (included on
Miles Davis/Stan Getz/Lee Konitz - Conception
[Prestige/OJC-1726]), where he recorded as a sideman with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. Two of the pieces were composed by George Russell, an important modern composer. But if you're looking for Davis, there are better places to look.
 
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One of those places is definitely on Davis's next Prestige session, from October 1951 (available as
Miles Davis Featuring Sonny Rollins: Dig
[Prestige/OJC-005]), with a sextet including Sonny Rollins again, altoist Jackie McLean on his first recording, and a rhythm section of Walter Bishop, Jr., Tommy Potter, and Art Blakey. Blakey is largely responsible for making this session a cooker, a definite departure from the so-called cool approach. If there was anything Blakey liked to do more than swing, it was to swing some more.
There's a lot to listen for here in Davis's playing, a lot you can learn about the way he thinks. A good place to start is in his long solo on "Bluing," a medium, walking-tempo blues where he really reaches into his bag of tricks and pulls out a classic blues solo. His tone is very clear here. Listen to the fluttering device he uses to make a rhythmic point as he goes from his second chorus into his third. Perhaps because Blakey is such an aggressive presence, Davis seems to be thinking in terms of rhythmic shapes. In his fourth chorus, listen closely to how he staggers percussive, broken phrases one after the other, as if trying to elicit a response from Blakey. This technique of playing only a part of a phrase, stopping at odd places (usually on the up beat), and picking it up a beat or two later was probably something he learned from Bird, who made scintillating use of it four years earlier on the Dial "Klactoveed-sedstene," to name one example when Davis was standing next to him in the studio. In any case, it's fun and instructive to notice how Rollins, in his solo, does the same thing; it is a technique that he has used throughout his career.
Davis sounds happy, even buoyant, on this session. He sounds especially so on his beautiful reading of the medium-tempo standard "It's Only a Paper Moon." Some of the buoyancy of this session, again, must be attributed to Blakey, who accents on the second and fourth beats of every measure (instead of Roach's even four), which imparts a different, often more swinging feeling to the rhythm section and tends to elicit different accenting from the soloists.
You can hear this, too, on "Out of the Blue," based on the chords of the standard "Get Happy." On this tune, as elsewhere in this session, Davis shows off some half-valve effects, used for expressive effect, and on his second solo, listen for the way he gets all over the trumpet, from the middle to the high register. In ''Dig," based on the chord changes to "Sweet Georgia Brown," you can hear how he uses space; at several points he just stops playing for several beats. All in all, this is a swinging, mature bebop date and definitely one of the essential Davis records.
Compulsion
In the early months of 1953 Davis recorded with two different pairs of well-known saxophonists; the sessions played back-to-back make for some in-
 
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structive contrast. The second of the two, recorded in February and available on
Miles Davis and Horns
(Prestige/OJC-053), finds Davis with the two-tenor team of Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, disciples of Lester Young above all, doing some charts prepared by Cohn. Kenny Clarke plays drums here, and his evenly accented four-to-the-bar approach is an interesting contrast to Blakey's playing on the "Conception" date. The best cut is "For Adults Only," which has a lyrical, sweet Davis solo. "Willie the Wailer" and "Floppy'' are probably most valuable for Cohn's and Sims's Lester Young - inspired tenor solos, but in general there isn't a whole lot going on here.
The previous month's date, available as
Collectors' Items
(Prestige/OJC-071), is another story. Davis led a group including his old boss Charlie Parker on tenor sax, playing next to the rapidly growing Sonny Rollins, in front of a murderously swinging rhythm section of Bird's pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Philly Joe Jones, who would later play with Davis's great quintet of the late 1950s, here recording with Davis for the first time.
Almost every mention of this date discusses how screwed up the session was, how Bird got drunk and fell asleep, how Davis was in a bad mood and almost left because producer Ira Gitler made a salty remark to him. Somehow, though, some extremely hot music got recorded that day. The results are discussed in detail in the Ensembles section from an ensemble point of view, but it is worth owning just for Davis's fine playing. Throughout, he is in a swinging, bluesy, sassy frame of mind; Rollins and Parker are in excellent shape, too, and it is a treat to hear Bird in one of his few tenor recordings. Each plays great stuff on "Compulsion"; on both takes of "The Serpent's Tooth," Rollins quotes the tune "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," a not-so-subtle message for Bird. In fact, on take two of "Serpent" he does just that, playing a swaggering, imaginative solo, while Bird seems to be having a little trouble - notice the silence toward the beginning of his solo and the slight trouble he seems to have with articulation. At that, it's a fine solo.
Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight" was the last tune on the date and is a performance full of sadness. But overall, this is a swinging session, with a lot happening. Davis wouldn't record with Philly Joe Jones again for a couple of years, but when he did, look out.
Tune Up
Davis was doing some heavy wrestling with his demons during 1953 and 1954; he made a string of recordings for Prestige and Blue Note (some of the latter were in 1952), mostly quartet sides, that contain beautiful open-horn work and constitute Davis's Blue Period. In a sense he was biding time until he could kick his heroin habit and really come into his own, but he recorded some fine music.
 
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Miles Davis, Volume 1
(Blue Note 81501) and
Volume 2
(Blue Note 81502) are both worthwhile for Davis lovers. The first volume consists of a 1952 sextet session with trombonist J. J. Johnson and altoist Jackie McLean and a 1954 quartet set with Horace Silver on piano. The sextet sides include beautiful, moody Davis features on "Dear Old Stockholm," "Yesterdays," and "How Deep Is the Ocean,'' as well as McLean's line on "Sweet Georgia Brown," recorded the year before as "Dig" and titled "Donna" here. "Chance It," by the way, was a bebop favorite also called "Max Is Making Wax" and "Something for You." The quartet sides are somewhat less satisfying, since Davis seems in places to be having some trouble with his embouchure or lip.
Volume 2
consists entirely of tracks recorded at a 1953 session with J. J. Johnson, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath, pianist Gil Coggins, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Art Blakey. There are two takes apiece of the cookers "Ray's Idea," Bud Powell's "Tempus Fugit," and Jimmy Heath's "C.T.A.," as well as two excellent Johnson originals, the lyrically orchestrated cooker "Kelo" and the lovely ballad "Enigma." There is also a lone take of the Dizzy Gillespie/Walter Fuller ballad "I Waited for You." The whole session has an inspired feel to it, with Blakey stirring up all kinds of ideas in the rhythm section and very good solo work from all involved. Davis's sound was particularly clear and singing on this day. The arrangements are well thought-out and contribute to the excitement. Highly recommended.
In 1953 and 1954 Davis recorded two quartet sessions for Prestige, which are available as
Blue Haze
(Prestige/OJC-093). He plays open horn on both sessions. On the first, John Lewis plays piano, Percy Heath is on bass, and Max Roach plays drums. "Smooch," a Charles Mingus composition on which Mingus replaces Lewis at the piano, is one of the most haunting recordings Davis ever made, a ballad taken at a very slow tempo, with Roach's cymbals seeming almost to breathe behind the heartbreaking melodic line. Don't miss this.
The other session is fine, too. Davis's "Four" is a jazz standard; the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross did a version in which they put words to Davis's and pianist Horace Silver's solos. Notice, on "Old Devil Moon," the use of what is called a pedal tone, which has the effect of building up tension, with the repeated rhythmic phrase the rhythm section plays, until the soloist takes a break and everything goes back into straight-ahead four-four. (Davis and Silver do the same thing on "Take Off" and "The Leap" on
Miles Davis, Volume 1
[Blue Note 81501].) Davis always liked using these kinds of implicit suspensions of time and would later make much of exploring the technique further, as his protégé John Coltrane would.
Davis recorded a lot of lasting music in 1954. One tune on
Blue Haze
is from

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