I'm going to do a series on the best jazz albums of all time. By the end you'll see why I started here. But first allow me a brief digression.
Jazz is possibly the most misunderstood genre of 20th century music. In its heyday it was for drug addicts, beatniks, and bohemians. Today its reserved for arrogant intellectual elitists who think of popular music as lowbrow. And throughout all those years its detractors, at whomever they were aiming their criticisms, have always said the same things: "It makes no sense." "It's just noise." "There's no form." "It's boring." The popular perception of jazz musicians and the people who listen to them has swung back and forth so far over the last century you start to wonder what people will be saying about hip-hop in eighty or so years.
But through all these ups and downs it has always, at its core, been about one thing: improvisation. The purest and most eviscerating form of artistic expression. So its no surprise that Jazz hit its pinnacle of cultural visibility and acceptance in the sixties, arguably the freest and most expressive decade of the last century. With some of the best jazz music ever made coming out in the years leading up to, and during that period. To make a contemporary analogy, 1959 was to jazz, as 1991 was to alt. rock. And that's where I'm going to start.
Enough pre-amble. The first thing you need to know about this album is that it can be played at ANY time. One major misconception about jazz is that it needs to be listened to closely. Not true. Like any kind of music it can be played softly in the background, it can be blasted but not really listened to, and it can be picked apart and analyzed for deeper meaning. This album in particular is good for any kind of mood music. Its good road music, its good post work chill out music, its good going out music, and yes, its good sex music. This album, when played as background music can be used for almost anything. But this is a review so let's crank it up and really listen.
Now when I say crank it up, I mean really, really loud. You have to remember this album was recorded in 1959 and it has an effect on it called "hearing the room" which you CANNOT find on modern digitally recorded albums. And what that means is exactly how it sounds. You can actually hear the room they were in when they recorded it. That's not reverb. That's the echo from the floor and ceiling of the recording studio. You can hear it most in the beautifully warm upright bass, the piano and the drums. They echo softly, almost imperceptibly, because they were playing into omni-directional microphones that picked up a lot of ambient noise. You don't hear it so much with the horns because they were blowing right into their mics.
And the horns: Miles Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, and Cannonball Adderley on alto sax. I can't even come up with a modern analogy of this supergroup. Listen to Miles' solo on the first track, "So What." This is the perfection of "cool jazz" which Miles founded ten years earlier with his first major release "Birth of the Cool." This solo is possibly the most quoted, emulated, and practiced of all major studio jazz recordings. Miles says more in these 32 bars than most singers do in a whole song. The lyrical quality of his tone is more evocative than most people's voices, and he hangs back in the rhythm with such ease, almost like its not even there. All the horn players do in turn. Listen closely and you'll hear that he doesn't play on the beat even once. It gives the whole effort the feeling of carelessness, like they aren't even trying. Like they are hanging out playing just to play, and it's just that easy. And in point of fact, these six guys had never practiced these tracks before they played this session. Miles just told them what he was going for, and they played. Think about that. Think about being so good at what you do, that you can do it with nothing more than six people, their instruments, and a mood to guide you.
Oddly enough the high point and the low point of this album come in the same song. The eleven minute "All Blues" is the blueprint jazz jam. Every horn player takes his time with his solo, and it never gets boring. They all weave deftly around the chord progression, slide out of key into an intriguing dissonance, and then slip right back in just when it starts to get jarring. These guys turn what is a really simple, really easy song, inside out. It's a jazz standard, with a repetitive bass riff, and a short melody. But when they take their turn to improvise they each make it their own and it's incredible. Unfortunately a seemingly sudden and uncalled for fade out jeopardizes the whole mood at the end of the track. And you can't help but wonder what the guys would have come up with had they been forced to tie off the end of the song.
The album closes with a devastating rendition of "Flamenco Sketches" with Miles using a mute on his trumpet. His instrument sounds like its weeping, and every time he comes back in after one of his band mates has soloed you can't help but get goose bumps. That track is why this is a Miles Davis album and not titled as a group effort. With his performance there he makes the rest of the album his own.
I've waited long enough, so I'll say it now. This is the greatest jazz album ever made. And as a testament to how misunderstood jazz truly is, it's also the most accessible. The performances are effortless and powerful. The recording is sharp and colorful. And the historical importance (if you are in to that kind of thing) of these six guys coming together to make a studio album cannot be overstated. In short this is not just an album for jazz lovers, but for music lovers of all tastes and presumptions. If you've listened to jazz and never heard this album, you are missing a key piece of the puzzle. And if you've never listened to jazz at all, this is the place to start.
Jazz is possibly the most misunderstood genre of 20th century music. In its heyday it was for drug addicts, beatniks, and bohemians. Today its reserved for arrogant intellectual elitists who think of popular music as lowbrow. And throughout all those years its detractors, at whomever they were aiming their criticisms, have always said the same things: "It makes no sense." "It's just noise." "There's no form." "It's boring." The popular perception of jazz musicians and the people who listen to them has swung back and forth so far over the last century you start to wonder what people will be saying about hip-hop in eighty or so years.
But through all these ups and downs it has always, at its core, been about one thing: improvisation. The purest and most eviscerating form of artistic expression. So its no surprise that Jazz hit its pinnacle of cultural visibility and acceptance in the sixties, arguably the freest and most expressive decade of the last century. With some of the best jazz music ever made coming out in the years leading up to, and during that period. To make a contemporary analogy, 1959 was to jazz, as 1991 was to alt. rock. And that's where I'm going to start.
Enough pre-amble. The first thing you need to know about this album is that it can be played at ANY time. One major misconception about jazz is that it needs to be listened to closely. Not true. Like any kind of music it can be played softly in the background, it can be blasted but not really listened to, and it can be picked apart and analyzed for deeper meaning. This album in particular is good for any kind of mood music. Its good road music, its good post work chill out music, its good going out music, and yes, its good sex music. This album, when played as background music can be used for almost anything. But this is a review so let's crank it up and really listen.
Now when I say crank it up, I mean really, really loud. You have to remember this album was recorded in 1959 and it has an effect on it called "hearing the room" which you CANNOT find on modern digitally recorded albums. And what that means is exactly how it sounds. You can actually hear the room they were in when they recorded it. That's not reverb. That's the echo from the floor and ceiling of the recording studio. You can hear it most in the beautifully warm upright bass, the piano and the drums. They echo softly, almost imperceptibly, because they were playing into omni-directional microphones that picked up a lot of ambient noise. You don't hear it so much with the horns because they were blowing right into their mics.
And the horns: Miles Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, and Cannonball Adderley on alto sax. I can't even come up with a modern analogy of this supergroup. Listen to Miles' solo on the first track, "So What." This is the perfection of "cool jazz" which Miles founded ten years earlier with his first major release "Birth of the Cool." This solo is possibly the most quoted, emulated, and practiced of all major studio jazz recordings. Miles says more in these 32 bars than most singers do in a whole song. The lyrical quality of his tone is more evocative than most people's voices, and he hangs back in the rhythm with such ease, almost like its not even there. All the horn players do in turn. Listen closely and you'll hear that he doesn't play on the beat even once. It gives the whole effort the feeling of carelessness, like they aren't even trying. Like they are hanging out playing just to play, and it's just that easy. And in point of fact, these six guys had never practiced these tracks before they played this session. Miles just told them what he was going for, and they played. Think about that. Think about being so good at what you do, that you can do it with nothing more than six people, their instruments, and a mood to guide you.
Oddly enough the high point and the low point of this album come in the same song. The eleven minute "All Blues" is the blueprint jazz jam. Every horn player takes his time with his solo, and it never gets boring. They all weave deftly around the chord progression, slide out of key into an intriguing dissonance, and then slip right back in just when it starts to get jarring. These guys turn what is a really simple, really easy song, inside out. It's a jazz standard, with a repetitive bass riff, and a short melody. But when they take their turn to improvise they each make it their own and it's incredible. Unfortunately a seemingly sudden and uncalled for fade out jeopardizes the whole mood at the end of the track. And you can't help but wonder what the guys would have come up with had they been forced to tie off the end of the song.
The album closes with a devastating rendition of "Flamenco Sketches" with Miles using a mute on his trumpet. His instrument sounds like its weeping, and every time he comes back in after one of his band mates has soloed you can't help but get goose bumps. That track is why this is a Miles Davis album and not titled as a group effort. With his performance there he makes the rest of the album his own.
I've waited long enough, so I'll say it now. This is the greatest jazz album ever made. And as a testament to how misunderstood jazz truly is, it's also the most accessible. The performances are effortless and powerful. The recording is sharp and colorful. And the historical importance (if you are in to that kind of thing) of these six guys coming together to make a studio album cannot be overstated. In short this is not just an album for jazz lovers, but for music lovers of all tastes and presumptions. If you've listened to jazz and never heard this album, you are missing a key piece of the puzzle. And if you've never listened to jazz at all, this is the place to start.