Cool Jazz Online History

"Cool Jazz" is a term a cat like me doesn't like to use... You see, I think the term is now "played out"! It's CORNY now! The "easy listening" radio stations have turned it out like a five dollar whore... Dont't get me started!!

During the 1940's there were many different styles of music coming out at the same time. This style of music started during the late 1940's at about the same time as bebop, and remained popular for several decades.

This music was more smooth, moody, quiet, relaxed and easier than bebop, and may have been influenced by the harmonies of 20th-century art music composers like Stravinsky and Debussy.

AHAH! Didn't I tell you jazz used any music it felt like and adapted it into somethng new? Even Charlie "Bird" Parker used classical strings in a whole album! But I am getting off the subject...

Two of the most important contributors to this style were trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist, bandleader, and composer-arranger Gil Evans... Isn't interesting that this cat Miles always turns up with revolutionizing Jazz? Other cool jazz musicians were saxophonists Stan Getz, trumpeters Chet Baker, guitarists Wes Montgomery, pianists Dave Brubeck.

Although Miles Davis first appeared on bebop recordings of Charlie Parker, his first important session as a leader was called The Birth Of The Cool recorded in 1957 This album continues to be one of the top 10 selling albums of jazz each year...amazing!

ALOT of babies were conceived using this "The Birth Of The Cool" album as background music... you dig?

The cool jazz style has been described as a reaction against the fast tempos and the complex melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ideas of bebop. These ideas were picked up by many west coast musicians, and this style is thus also called West Coast jazz.

This music is generally more relaxed than bebop. Other musicians in the cool style include saxophonists

A real cool cat in my book is that saxaphone dude Stan Getz. This player helped popularize Brazilian styles such as the bossa nova and samba. These and a few other Latin American styles are sometimes collectively known as Latin jazz.

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