Today (May 25) is the birthday of Miles Davis.
A toast and a moment of silence, to my homey, and fellow Gemini
you an Illini, booman? i've been paying tribute by listening to all 31 Miles tunes on the ipod, everything from Round Midnight to Finding Forrester. didn't comment b4 on this thread because i don't care for that 'cool jazz' moniker, sounds too much like 'smooth jazz' to me. liked most of the suggestions, but have to draw the line at Chuck Mangione--land of make believe
--even if he did own one of Dizzy Gillespie's uptilted trumpets.
Actually Yitwail,
.....I'm from St. louis. Alton, and East St, Louis are like suburbs in the greater St.Louis metropolitan area.
.....What Chuck and Bob James did could be called "Smooth" Jazz, but what Miles, Cannonball Adderly, and others of that ilk did in the post Be-Bop era, was called "Cool Progressive".
i know about 50s cool stuff, some of it was also termed "third stream" i think. MJQ was a proponent; Jimmy Giuffre, although now obscure, might have been included. and there was the west coast jazz phenomenon, notably Chet Baker & Gerry Mulligan, mostly white musicians for some reason. there was also Chico Hamilton, who had a cellist in his band, Fred Katz. but ultimately, it got supplanted by Hard Bop & various Avant-garde/free ensembles in the 60s. this is sketchy and generalized, for example, at one time organ bands were big--Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Richard Groove Holmes, Johnny Hammond Smith, Charles Earland, even a noted woman player, Shirley Scott--but i'm not sure if they were considered hard bop, or had their own category, soul jazz perhaps. anyway, you didn't need to explain the terminology for me, but i appreciate it nonetheless.
Yesterday night (May 24) I heard Billy Hart's drums in a live concert, and I am now listening to "On the Corner" of Miles Davis, in which Billy Hart is playing drums.
I happened to like Chuck because of the sweet tone of his rare ax. However I have bought very few albums of artists after Coltrane....Improvisation being the soul of Jazz, it seems to me Jimi Hendrix was the successor to Coltrane. and there are other Rock musicians, and groups that satisfied my hunger for gutsy improv.
ditto Coltrane & Hendrix. but chops alone isn't sufficient, or Al DiMeola, whom I like, would be the greatest guitarist of all time, whereas Thelonious Monk was one of the most interesting players ever, even though Miles once refused to play with him, saying he wanted "a real piano player." while his music was impeccable, maybe Miles' character wasn't. after those remarks, Charlie Mingus wrote an editorial in Down Beat criticizing Miles's disrespect for Monk, and justifiably so. wasn't that many years before, when Dizzy Gillespie had to play the trumpet part on Charlie Parker's recording of Koko, because Miles couldn't play it fast enough. not to mention Miles happily recording Monk tunes like Round Midnight & Straight No Chaser.
Very learned and relevant post yit. Listening to Miles play on Parker's early recordings is...well...embarrassing. Perhaps growing up in a relatively well to do family and going to Julliard made Miles a little self-conscious. But Kind Of Blue is a watershed moment and cements his legacy.
Monk did seem to be technically a below average player but I can't think of anyone that wrote more distinctive and brilliant melodies.
thanks, panzade. i just listened to the 2 infamous examples of early Miles, Billie's Bounce and Now's the Time. on the former, his solo's decent, but i counted at least 3 wrong notes while playing the melody; considering all the rehearsing, plus multiple takes, that preceded the final take, it's a testament to Parker's patience that he kept Miles in the band. Miles' solo on Now's the Time is non-professional, to say the least; so much so that Miles' pianist on the Milestones LP, Red Garland, could play the solo note by note with block chords at a faster tempo on the track Straight No Chaser.
