The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
ideas and musical understanding, work through some of his technical deficiencies, and take in invaluable lessons from musicians of the highest calibre (including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis). The shedding of his dependency on heroin can be seen as the final step in that process, leaving him ready to make the ascent to the next level of personal and artistic maturity.
He is notoriously self-critical of his playing, especially on record, but those recordings – from all points of his long career – contain some of the most brilliant and imperishable jazz ever committed to tape, and none more so than Saxophone Colossus.
The album’s best known cut is St Thomas, an infectious calypso based on a traditional melody which became the most celebrated of his Caribbean-derived tunes, and has remained a trademark in his repertoire ever since.
Rollins approached all of the tunes through a coherent development of melodic fragments into spontaneous but logically extended improvised choruses. He employed a sophisticated degree of architectural development which was not simply a variation on the accepted bebop model of improvising on the harmonic material (chord changes) of the tune (a process often known as ‘running the changes’), but an alternative approach, employing a variety of patterns and devices, and much variation of rhythm, shape and texture.
The results impressed the critics, but Saxophone Colossus was also the record which really established Rollins as a major jazz name with the public, and remains an undisputed classic.
Miles Davis
Birth Of The Cool
Young bop trumpeter and hip arrangers invent cool jazz.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: Pete Rugolo
Recorded: New York; January–April 1949 and March 1950
Released: February 1957
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Miles Davis (t, ar); Kai Winding, J J Johnson, Mike Zwerin (tb); Junior Collins, Sandy Sielgelstein (French horn); Bill Barber (tb, ar); Lee Konitz (as); Gerry Mulligan (bs, ar); Al Haig (p); John Lewis (p, ar); Joe Schulman, Nelson Boyd, Al McKibbon (b); Max Roach, Kenny Clarke (d); Kenny Hagood (v); Gil Evans (ar)
Track Listing: Move; Jeru; Moon Dreams; Venus De Milo; Budo; Deception; Godchild; Boplicity; Rocker; Israel; Rouge; Darn That Dream
Running time: 35.57
Current CD: Capitol Jazz 5301172
Further listening: Miles Ahead (1957); Porgy And Bess (1958); The Complete Birth Of The Cool (1998)
Further reading: Miles Davis (Ian Carr, 1999); www.milesdavis.com
Download: emusic; iTunes
In the late ’40s, Miles Davis was the trumpeter in the Charlie Parker Quintet in New York. Although in awe of the bebop genius of Bird, Miles was uncomfortable being a lesser instrumental virtuoso than his boss; bop’s default style was that of Dizzy Gillespie, Parker’s former partner, who Miles idolised but whose attack, speed or range he couldn’t get near. Also, he was tiring of the theme-solos-theme structure of much bop and his ears had been tuning into Gil Evans’ adventurous, unorthodox arrangements for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, Anthropology and Thriving From A Riff.
Evans was something of a mentor to a New York group of young modern musicians (including Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis and John Carisi) and when he approached Davis to be allowed to arrange his tune Donna Lee, Davis asked to see the charts and became a regular part of the circle that gathered at Gil’s flat to theorise and experiment. Recognising the ideas of Evans and Mulligan as an ideal vehicle for him to ‘solo in the style that I was hearing’ – a nine-piece band with modern harmonic voicing and light textures – Davis ‘cracked the whip’, as Mulligan put it; he organised rehearsals, got a live engagement at the Royal Roost and, crucially, got Capitol (not a company particularly disposed toward modern jazz) to record the band. Released as singles in 1949 and 1950 and finally gathered as an album in 1957 (when the sides were first named Birth Of The Cool), the eleven original instrumentals (plus one vocal) featured a seamless integration of the arranged and the spontaneous; warm, dense ensembles unusually underpinned by tuba and French horn open up into characterful, smoothly-phrased improvised solos by Davis and the 19-year-old altoist Lee Konitz. The miniature masterpieces include Mulligan’s perky but luminous Venus De Milo, minor blues Israel and the mysterious harmonic pea-souper that is Evans’s Moon Dreams.
Though the band existed for mere months, the recordings were immeasurably influential on orchestral jazz and the West Coast cool school movement, cerebral and (to some) anaemic music played mainly by white musicians that Davis was quick to distance himself from. This was the first of several times in the coming 30 years that Miles Davis projects would profoundly affect the development of jazz.
Nat ‘King’ Cole
Love Is The Thing
Gorgeous, moody and romantic in the extreme.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: Lee Gillette
Recorded: Hollywood; December 19 and 28, 1956
Released: March 1957
Chart peaks: None (UK) 1 (US)
Personnel: Nat ‘King’ Cole (v); Gordon Jenkins And Orchestra
Track listing: When I Fall In Love (S); Love Letters; Stardust; Stay As Sweet As You Are; Where Can I Go Without You?; Maybe It’s Because I Love You; Ain’t Misbehavin’; When Sunny Gets Blue; I Thought About Marie; At Last; It’s All In The Game; Love Is The Thing
Running time: 35.47
Current CD: Not currently available
Further listening: Where Did Everybody Go? (1963), a later Cole–Jenkins collaboration, is darker in tone, reflecting, perhaps, Nat’s admiration for the Sinatra releases that followed in the path of his own
Further reading: Unforgettable: The Life And Mystique Of Nat ‘King’ Cole (Leslie Gourse, 1991); www.nat-king-cole.org
Download: Not currently legally available
Nat ‘King’ Cole could be anything you wanted him to be – a vocal purveyor of pure pop able to apply his talents to the corniest material; a classy supper-club entertainer (known in his day as ‘the sepia Sinatra’); or even a poll-winning piano player able to jam with the best in jazz. He could deliver fine albums seemingly with the minimum of effort: swinging affairs, blues-hued wonders, country capers, lounge warmers filled with sly Latin licks, anything. But Love Is The Thing was the biggest of them all.
In October 1956, Nat was signed by NBC to host a TV show, the first black entertainer to have his own slot on a major network. Gordon Jenkins was brought in to provide the arrangements on Nat’s first series and, despite problems with sponsors, it proved a winner with viewers, Nat’s easy and relaxed style attracting a sizeable audience. When the time arrived for Cole to cut his next album, it made sense to continue the partnership with Jenkins, the creator of a distinctive string sound. The songs selected ranged from perhaps over-used standards such as Stardust and Ain’t Misbehavin’ through to the lovely When Sunny Gets Blue, previously a Johnny Mathis hit, and I Thought About Marie, a Jenkins original. There was also a link with Cole’s past in When I Fall In Love, Where Can I Go Without You? and Love Letters, three songs penned by Victor Young, the composer responsible for Mona Lisa, one of Nat’s most successful singles.
Love