Overview
As bop continued to evolve, so, too, did the styles and tastes of musicians. While some musicians looked back to more traditional styles of jazz, others continued to explore the new possibilities of modern jazz. This section covers the birth of a new style labeled cool jazz, whose practitioners cultivated a variety of approaches and sounds, even though they all leaned toward an aesthetic of emotional restraint and understatement. We will learn how Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Bob Brookmeyer, Stan Kenton, Lennie Tristano, Stan Getz, and Gerry Mulligan contributed to the beginnings of Cool Jazz.
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to do the following:
- Identify notable musicians who contributed to cool jazz
- Understand how cool jazz evolved
- Recognize the related style of West Coast jazz
- Appreciate the Modern Jazz Quartet’s role in pioneering third-stream jazz
Jimmy Giuffre
Composer, arranger, clarinetist, and saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre (1921-2008) was an influential figure in the cool jazz movement, with connections to West Coast jazz. Giuffre grew up in north Texas, studied music in college, and earned valuable experience playing in the Air Force Orchestra while stationed in Los Angeles. He remained there following his discharge.
Giuffre worked as a staff composer and arranger for a number of big bands in the 1940s. As we have noted, Four Brothers ♫ was his bebop-inflected composition and arrangement for Woody Herman's Second Herd in 1947, and Giuffre was also a member of the Lighthouse All-Stars in the early 1950s.
Giuffre led a number of different combos over the ensuing decades, and he took part in the development of various jazz styles, including explorations of free jazz in the 1960s. His first combo as leader, though, offered a fresh and distinct take on cool jazz. His trio without drums — consisting of himself on saxophone, Jim Hall on guitar, and Ralph Peña on bass — is a model of cool understatement and nuance in a marvelously interactive improvisational setting. In particular, the superb guitar work of Jim Hall (b. 1930) is noteworthy. Over the decades, Hall's influence has come to rival that of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, the guitar greats of the generation ahead of him.
Let's listen to the Jimmy Giuffre 3 in a performance of Giuffre's piece That's the Way It Is ♫. Observe that Hall treats his guitar in this performance as a horn-likeA term used to describe the single-note melodic improvisations of pianists and guitarists imitating the style of horn players, since their instruments also allow them to play more than one note at a time. instrument, playing only single-line melodies. That leads the group to an approach and sound similar to that which we heard in the pianoless quartet led by Gerry Mulligan, with its emphasis on counterpoint between the instruments.
Miles Davis made his television acting debut when he appeared in an episode of Miami Vice where he played a pimp named Ivory Jones.
