The 3 Musical Geniuses Behind the Most Popular Jazz Album of All Time
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Summary
Even if you're not very into jazz, you probably know Kind of Blue as the jazz album that sold more copies than any other and is widely considered one of the greatest albums ever in any genre. Among the sextet of musicians who played on the album, three stand out as true jazz geniuses: Miles Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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even if you're not very into jazz you probably know kind of blue the jazz album that sold more
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copies than any other and is widely considered one of the greatest albums ever in any genre
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among the sextet of musicians who played on the album three stand out as true jazz geniuses
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miles davis bill evans and john coltrane today on the show james caplan author of three shades of
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blue miles davis john coltrane bill evans and the lost empire of cool unpacks the stories behind
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these towering figures we discuss their background their demons their passion for musical greatness
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and what they contributed to the evolving world of jazz and we discuss why when they got together
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to record kind of blue the result was the most timeless and beloved jazz album in history
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after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash blue
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all right james caplan welcome back to the show brett i am thrilled to be here thank you for having me
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so we had you on a few years ago to talk about your biography of frank sinatra
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you got a new musical biography out and it's about the artist who created one of the most
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influential most popular jazz albums of all time and that is kind of blue headed up by miles davis
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what led you to take a deep dive into the artist behind this album well truth be told i had lunch with
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my editor a few years back and we were talking about what book i might do i had had a suggestion for
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a book idea which went nowhere i won't tell you what it is but he had he had a comeback and his idea
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was what about a book about kind of blue and i love kind of blue and i had kind of blue and like so
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many other people was crazy about the album but there is a wonderful jazz writer named ashley khan who
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wrote the definitive book about that album but it's it's more of a technical book and more of a jazz book
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strictly a jazz book and what occurred to me when my editor scott moyers proposed this idea was
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tickling around in the back of my mind uh it was this amazing amazing thing that i had in my pocket
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brett which was that in 1989 when i was a young pup of a reporter i snagged an incredible assignment
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from vanity fair to go and interview miles davis and this was on the occasion of his about to be
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publication of his new memoir then new memoir called miles and i i wangled my way into this
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interview actually my my brother helped me do it my brother the late uh the late newspaper editor
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peter w kaplan editor great editor of the new york observer was talking to this editor at vanity fair
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who was looking around for a writer for miles davis profile and my brother my wonderful brother said
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well my brother jimmy knows everything there is to know about jazz which was an exaggeration to put
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it very mildly i knew nothing whatsoever i had maybe three jazz albums at that point but vanity fair sent
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me and with my knees knocking and my heart thumping i rode up the elevator to the 17th floor of the
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essex house central park south new york city and walked into the apartment of miles davis and i was
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terrified because his reputation preceded him but he turned out to be a total pussycat and despite the
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fact that i knew absolutely nothing i managed to get through an hour talking with him and then he asked
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me to come back and so i had the piece i did for vanity fair and these years ago recordings i did with
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the great miles davis and i thought when scott my editor proposed this book about uh kind of blue i thought
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well that's interesting but what about what about a book about the three geniuses of kind of blue there
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were six musicians but three of them arguably geniuses miles and john coltrane and bill evans
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what about those three guys before during and after the recording of that great album what about
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writing about them as not only as musicians but as men and scott heard that he loved it and we're off
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to the races yeah i'm glad you went down that route of doing a biography of these men because i love
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reading biographies of great musicians because i find it incredibly inspiring i know you did a
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biography of irving berlin yeah and irving berlin the thing that inspired me about him was how much
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of a workhorse this guy was he was just cranking stuff out yes all the time and that was a big takeaway
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for me you know a lot of success in life if you're a creator of whether you're a writer a musician
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it's just putting out a lot of stuff it's not just putting out a lot of stuff but it is having
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the courage to fail irving berlin wrote 1500 songs and he liked to say i wrote more bad songs than
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anyone and it's true he wrote a lot of bad songs and uh you know john lennon paul mccartney wrote bad
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songs and miles davis made bad recordings all these guys had sort of artistic skeletons in their closet but
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they all were incredibly hard workers miles and coltrane and evans practiced and practiced and
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practiced until their fingers practically bled yeah i've been reading a biography of bach that was
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another workhorse that guy was just constantly putting out stuff and like you said he failed a
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lot we don't know about all his bad stuff that he wrote but he wrote a lot of bad stuff but we
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remember his disco period it's little no yeah all right so i think to understand what makes kind
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of blue so singular we have to do a bit of jazz history and we're going to condense this and it's
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going to be hard to do because jazz is a very multi-faceted art form but i think the short story
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is before the 1940s jazz was primarily dance music you went to a jazz band so you could dance to it
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whether it's the charleston or the lindy hop or whatever but after world war ii you started to see
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this shift away from jazz as dance music to jazz as more of just an art in and of itself who are the
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musicians leading this shift away from jazz as dance music and what innovations did they introduce
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right and the thing i really want to do here brett is i want to avoid any i don't want to put anybody
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to sleep i don't want to talk about the snoozy history of this or of that what i would like anybody
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listening to imagine is uh i'd like them to think about the the greatest rock musicians the greatest
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rap musicians they can think of i want you to think about young in this case uh almost all young men
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there were certainly women in jazz but few but i want you to think about young guys primarily young
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black guys back in the 1930s and this happened actually before world war ii and during world war ii
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this new music called bebop sprang up there was a recording band for various reasons there was a
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strike during world war ii and uh and so the origins of bebop didn't get recorded but i'd like you to
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think about these amazing young black guys brilliantly gifted guys like the guitarist charlie christian
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the saxophonist illinois jacket lionel hampton the vibraphonist and in particular trumpeter dizzy
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gillespie and alto saxophonist charlie parker those two guys young men really young and they're
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really like rock musicians they are full of juice and they're full of innovations and they're coming
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up with this new music that's moving in a way that's different to the way the jazz had moved before
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different rhythms different harmonies wild and kind of angular and these guys all played in
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conventional big bands swing bands before the war and they would get in a certain amount of trouble
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with the band leaders because they really wanted to play this new style music and the band leaders
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were making their money off of people dancing so there began to be this kind of clash between these
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young turks and the old guard band leaders and what happened during world war ii was the big bands the
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swing bands uh got phased out a lot of it had to do with wartime scarcity no gasoline the bands couldn't
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afford to tour there wasn't enough money the big bands uh began to go out of business and suddenly
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there were the small bands of these young turks playing this crazy new music called bebop i think
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that's an interesting point about the impacts we often don't think about this when it comes to art we
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just think that oh an artist is just they're alone in their head and they're coming up with this stuff
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but they're being shaped by macro factors right and oh the economic factors of the depression and world
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war ii that was driving that i mean if it weren't for world war ii and the depression we might not have
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had these innovations yeah but we also need to think about these musicians struck by genius as though
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they had been actually hit by pitchfork bolts of lightning john coltrane dizzy gillespie charlie
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parker miles davis and bill evans all guys born in the 1920s coming up as young men and loving the music
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the jazz that existed already but full of their own kind of weird ideas about where they could take the
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music for those who are familiar with bebop how would you describe it how is it different from say
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you know a swing song like in the mood how would you describe that uh well i would say that bebop
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is to big band swing music as cubism is to impressionism maybe where you look at a cubist
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you look at cubist paintings great paintings of picasso and brock and you're seeing something in
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the early 90 very early 1900s something totally different from anything that had ever been done
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before you're seeing this angular crazy looking stuff on canvases and uh at the time people reacted
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violently against it they just thought it was nonsense and almost almost sinful it was so terrible looking
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to so many people it wasn't beautiful a lot of people had a similar reaction to bebop when it came in
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you had this new music that was moving fast that was moving in a crazy way that was being played faster
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than jazz had ever been played before that you couldn't dance to right it had a beat but you
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couldn't dance to it yeah uh but but a lot of young people and the people who weren't absolutely set on
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dancing began to be fascinated by this new music they would stand and they would listen in awe as
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diz and bird charlie parker were playing these new bebop songs and it began yeah began to turn into art
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music it began to turn into music that you could as dizzy gillespie said you don't necessarily have
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to dance to a song to really feel it sometimes you can hear a groove so strong it'll make your back
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crack is what dizzy said and yeah bebop heavy on the improvisation you know swing not so much you'd have
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a little bit but it was pretty much set bebop a lot of improvisation yeah bebop was by definition
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uh improvised it was what they called head arrangements arrangements uh memorized by the
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musicians and improvised on the stand and it was very small groups it was quartets quintets sextets at
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at the most playing in these little tiny clubs on 52nd street the street as it was known all these
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brownstones in the one block between fifth and sixth avenue used to be speakeasies turned into jazz
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clubs in the 1940s and with these little tiny smoky clubs little tiny groups playing this wild new
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music you had you had a scene that had never been seen before and never been seen since bebop was
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really synonymous with new york city and synonymous with the street with 52nd street you know as you
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said i think it's important to to point out these guys they're very they're very driven they're very
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ambitious and what's interesting about jazz music particularly bebop it is collaborative right
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you're you're working with the group but at the same time it's almost it's almost competitive too
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it was it was actually extremely competitive these guys were always trying to oh hell yeah do each other
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yeah yeah yeah and a lot of that began in harlem at the great clubs at the savoy at mittens playhouse
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with felonious monk and dizzy and and bird and miles played up there and so many other great musicians
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and yes absolutely there was this tradition called cutting and one musician is is playing up there in
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the bandstand another musician would just jump up on there with the same instrument a guy had been
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playing and and play his own solo and try and try and better him and you could put the other guy to
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shame if you play better than he did it was an accepted tradition and it was not battle of the
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bands it was battle of the players and it was darwinistic determined who's going to come out on
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top yeah sometimes those musical beefs turned physical they'd actually get there'd be fistfights
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sometimes with these guys it was all really physical it was all about sweat it was about thrill
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it was about excitement it was about this music that nobody had ever heard before and it was powerful
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it was sexy it was it was vital it was brand new all right so this period uh of the development of
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bebop jazz this was the period where miles davis and these other musicians who eventually were on
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kind of blue this is when they came to age this is when they were this was the stew they were in
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when they were in their early 20s right when they're the formative years um so i think we start
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exploring these individual members of kind of blue let's start with miles davis first he's the
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coolest of the cool when it comes to jazz musicians what's interesting though is that his upbringing
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was more affluent and conventional than a lot of people might think miles miles was well off and
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there's no two ways about it miles his father uh miles two miles davis that we know was actually
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miles three miles dewey davis the third miles his father was a dentist and as such he was a
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professional man well respected successful made money had a horse farm miles uh miles grew up as a
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young prince he rode horses at his father's farm he had beautiful clothes he was a handsome young kid
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and his his musical genius was recognized early miles had a kind of unique upbringing in that it was so
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privileged but at the same time miles knew that he possessed this strange and powerful gift of musical
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genius and he knew he had to take it someplace and the place he knew he had to take it was new york city
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he had to get there somehow the way he got there i think maybe this is how he convinced his parents to get him
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there as he was a student at the famous juilliard school of music he got this juilliard which is very about
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formal music development how did he go from there to becoming this jazz musician that we know today
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that just added all these innovations to jazz miles his father was very traditionalist and he wanted to
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his son to succeed in a traditional way maybe even become a classical musician and so miles came up with
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this great strategy the strategy was let me go to new york and enroll at juilliard and i will develop
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myself and become an educated musician well there was a there was a certain amount of deception in
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the strategy what miles really wanted was to get to new york city and to hook up with to connect with
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dizzy and bird he had met dizzy gillespie and charlie parker in st louis miles's hometown when bird and
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dis came through playing with a band and he wanted to get back with them get to new york so he enrolls at
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juilliard he goes to new york city in 1944 he's 18 years old and after a couple of months at juilliard
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everybody around him is white all the other students are white all the teachers are white and there was
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one day in particular in a classroom when a woman was teaching a class started talking holding forth
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about the blues and saying that black people sang and played the blues because they picked cotton and
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they were miserable and they were downtrodden and they had been slaves and miles finally couldn't
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stand it anymore and he stood up and he said listen i play the blues i'm not downtrodden i don't play the
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blues because i'm downtrodden and this stuff is all ridiculous miles felt that he was learning from
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white people about white music and to a certain extent those lessons meant something to him he was
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studying the great modernists like stravinsky and shostakovich and rachmaninoff but juilliard turned
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him off and he got together with uh with dizzy and bird as quickly as possible and very quickly got hired
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by charlie parker to join his band an incredible thing here is this young kid out of the midwest who
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everybody thought couldn't play that well but bird heard something in miles and hires him and before
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long miles is playing great well going back to this idea of the ambition of these men miles davis he was
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super ambitious and the way he got with charlie bird like he had to go look for him he was constantly
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he was on the prowl he was hitting the pavement trying to get in touch with charlie bird parker which
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just reminds me now when you when a lot of young men are young they're willing to just go and just
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relentlessly pursue pursue pursue pursue until they get what they want that's exactly right i mean
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there was no no internet no google no google maps in those days i mean charlie parker who was a major
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heroin addict and a major hedonist was at large in manhattan uh doing heroin drinking having sex with
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many many many many women all over the place there one night here another night sleeping wherever he
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felt like it so he wasn't that easy to track down and miles searched all over midtown searched the
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street went up to harlem searched all over harlem couldn't find bird then one night uh he's he's
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standing outside a jazz club and he hears a voice in back of him he said hey miles you've been looking
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for me and it was bird did miles davis drop out of juilliard he dropped out of juilliard after uh
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yeah really after one year that was it for miles and and formal education but but he really did keep
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on educating himself and he took some of the lessons from juilliard again listening to these great
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modernists of western classical music and the new harmonies uh they were bringing to the music
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miles thought a lot about that listened to a lot of it so no more formal education but for miles from
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then on it was the education of the bandstand how did his father take him dropping well listen another
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thing happened which was that after world war ii miles went to europe went to france to play jazz and
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found there a welcome that he had never found in the united states found white people who weren't
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seeing him as a black man but just as another human being fell in love with this great singer juliet
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greco but then had to come back to the states and back to being a second class citizen so depressed by
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coming back to having to be a black man in in the america of of 90 the late 1940s that he fell into a
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heroin addiction and uh miles and miles and miles went back home uh more than once more than twice
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actually to try and kick heroin his father helped him with this and but eventually miles had to do it
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himself miles his father was disappointed that he dropped out of juilliard at the same time miles his
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father understood that his son was a great musician and a troubled young man he did his best to help
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miles but again in the end miles had to do it himself going back to miles davis's heroin addiction
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heroin is a character that keeps reoccurring reappearing in your your history what was going on why
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was heroin such a heavily used drug amongst jazz musician during this time period before world war ii
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the drugs of choice among jazz musicians had been two they had been marijuana and a lot of songs
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about reefer in jazz prior to world war ii and alcohol of course and a lot of musicians suffered
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from alcoholism and even died from alcoholism during world war ii and especially immediately thereafter
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a lot of heroin came into the united states a lot of this had to do with organized crime suddenly there
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were pushers pushing heroin on jazz musicians and then there was charlie parker and charlie parker was
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the biggest heroin addict uh of of all of jazz music he was also a transcendent musical genius and this
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awful myth arose that among musicians among young black and some white jazz musicians that if you wanted to
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play like bird you had to do like bird in other words if you used heroin maybe you could achieve
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that transcendent high of musicianship that charlie parker achieved and it was a myth it was this terrible
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falsehood and a lot of a lot of guys died but uh heroin addiction became widespread in jazz uh right
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after world war ii and stayed for about the next 15 years the way you described it the use i mean with
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charlie bird he would sometimes just be like passed out on the stand and then it was his turn to do his
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solo he'd just get up and just crank it out like nothing was wrong and then he was a phenomenon he was
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an absolute absolute phenomenon he was a big strong guy he had the constitution of a horse
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but even in the end charlie parker uh couldn't overcome heroin he didn't die of overdose but he
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really died of overuse of heroin he died in 1955 at age 34 and when the coroner came uh to examine his
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corpse he estimated charlie parker's age as the mid-50s 34 years old wow so with miles's heroin
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addiction he goes from making it becoming part of charlie bird's band he becomes a success
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then he starts heroin and goes to being totally unreliable nodding off on the stand when he was
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playing when he did show up his hair would just clothes would just be a mess and that was a big
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change because before that he took a lot of pride in his appearance and sometimes he just didn't even
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show up to gigs i mean pretty much he basically almost flushed his career down the toilet but he did
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finally go cold turkey on heroin though he did continue to use cocaine and alcohol throughout
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his life and that was partly you know i think partly to deal with some of the pain he had because he
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had a sickle cell anemia and he's also just really brooding throughout his life you know people called
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him the prince of darkness but when he put heroin behind him he became a more reliable artist
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we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so when davis finally kicked heroin this is when he started making a lot
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of the innovations to jazz that he's famous for during this time the 50s when he starts developing
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what's been called cool jazz how would you describe cool jazz and then how did the jazz community
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initially receive these innovations miles knew a guy named gill evans this brilliant arranger and
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conductor from canada who miles met on the street on 52nd street and in gill evans he found a
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kind of a musical co-equal a guy who loved the same kind of jazz and the same kind of modern western
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classical that miles loved and miles loved this guy and they formed this very tight bond of friendship
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and musical friendship and miles and gill evans started to create this music together gill evans was
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arranging this music a lot of people were writing arrangements were writing songs for for a new kind
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of jazz that involved a lot of a lot of musicians sometimes as many as eight or nine or ten or more
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orchestras but charts written arrangements and a kind of jazz that was something similar to what
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came to be known as third stream it was almost a marriage of western classical and jazz written down
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on charts and the initial recordings that would later come to be called the birth of the cool were done
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by miles in conjunction with gill evans and were received early on there's no other word but but to say coolly
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they were not met with warm affection by jazz musicians or by the public the records didn't sell at first
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they weren't even called the birth of the cool at first and in particular dizzy gillespie was kind of scathing
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about this new arranged classical sounding jazz he said that jazz was really meant to make you sweat
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i don't know if i can say this i'll say it anyway jazz was supposed to make you sweat in your balls and
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this music didn't make you sweat in your balls dizzy wanted a music that was improvised and not written down
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on charts or if it was written down on charts something that really had the power to as he said earlier to
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to make your back crack to to be a strong groove these were not strong grooves they were smoother
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they were cooler and so it was a different branch of jazz and it was an important branch of jazz
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but not received warmly at first did it eventually get warmly received it eventually became called the
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birth of the cool and cool jazz and it was much admired by west coast musicians jerry mulligan
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chet baker went out to the west coast uh became west coast jazz and uh which became uh very very
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popular dave brubeck out there cool jazz achieved its own success during the 1950s and especially after
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the fading of bebop which really happened with the death of charlie parker in 1955
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how did miles davis handle the cool reception to his innovation like you know dizzy gillespie and these
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all the other guys like he admired them when he was a young man how do you feel like oh i got this
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new thing and everyone's like this is not good well he was playing both sides of the street he was
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playing the cool jazz and he was playing his own his own quintet and sextet jazz coming up with these
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great new innovations in jazz as bebop was starting to ebb a new kind of jazz was rising up and miles
00:28:06.560
not only was creating cool jazz but he was one of the innovators of what came to be called hard bop
00:28:15.380
now hard bop in a certain way means absolutely nothing what's hard about it what's bop about it
00:28:20.960
it was a new kind of jazz that was much more soulful much more based on uh on gospel on blues
00:28:29.340
people like horace silver for example came up art blakey and the jazz messengers it was a jazz that
00:28:38.020
was unlike bebop which was like cubism this was more deeply felt it was more emotional it was more
00:28:47.900
bluesy it was kind of a return to swinging and maybe you could even dance to a lot of it so miles was
00:28:55.840
innovating both ways and when you ask what his reaction was miles never particularly gave a shit
00:29:01.980
about what anybody's reaction was to his music miles went his own way at all times constantly
00:29:08.580
innovating and what was his work ethic like was he just constantly performing as much as he could
00:29:12.880
is that how he approached these innovations like did the innovations come in practice or did they
00:29:17.880
really come out when he performed live miles was a guy i'll tell you i'll tell you a little story
00:29:23.800
about miles miles once was on the road with his quintet and he heard late at night in the hotel
00:29:32.720
he heard one of his musicians practicing behind behind the door of his hotel room miles bangs on the door
00:29:40.800
and barges into this guy's room and he says to this guy i pay you to practice on the bandstand not in
00:29:49.400
your room miles wanted spontaneity now this may sound paradoxical he worked with gil evans on these
00:29:56.320
arranged charts that were the birth of the cool but in the music that he played with his groups with his
00:30:03.340
small groups on the bandstand he wanted everybody to be finding new ways right on the bandstand so
00:30:10.040
he had perfected his technique through playing thousands upon thousands of hours miles wasn't
00:30:19.240
one to woodshed as much as bill evans for example or as john coltrane john coltrane was an insane
00:30:25.940
incessant practicer but miles treasured spontaneity above all things okay so another artist that played
00:30:34.740
on kind of blue was the pianist bill evans another one of my favorite musicians i got his album portrait
00:30:39.820
and jazz i love listening to it what was his background as a musician bill evans was a glasses wearing
00:30:48.660
white guy from new jersey who could have been and maybe should have been in some ways a great
00:30:56.040
classical pianist he studied classical piano he loved classical piano he had amazing technique
00:31:02.560
but something else happened when he was a teenager he fell head over heels in love with jazz and this is
00:31:09.460
in the 1940s bill evans is hearing all this all these great new sounds and jazz falls in love with them
00:31:17.460
he goes to college to study classical music but at the same time he has also even before he goes to college
00:31:25.140
he has turned himself into the fastest boogie woogie player in new jersey he keeps up this romance with jazz
00:31:32.560
he keeps playing jazz even as he's studying classical music in college and finally when he is in his mid-20s
00:31:40.760
decides to go to new york and he's going to make it in jazz or he's going to die trying if he doesn't
00:31:46.800
make it he's just going to have to go home he plays a lot of dances and weddings bar mitzvahs the way
00:31:53.320
all jazz musicians have to do to make a dime when they're coming up and one night bill evans had a gig at
00:32:00.920
the village vanguard great jazz club in greenwich village there was a famous group at the time
00:32:06.320
called the modern jazz quartet who were playing the vanguard and bill evans was the in-between player
00:32:11.780
when the modern jazz quartet were taking a break bill evans would would play piano in between when
00:32:19.340
the modern jazz quartet were playing the the whole club would go dead silent reverent listening to
00:32:24.900
modern jazz quartet when bill evans would start playing in between everybody started eating and drinking
00:32:29.820
and clinking glasses and plates anyway one night bill evans is playing his in-between piano and he
00:32:35.640
looks down at the end of the grand piano and there is the penetrating gaze of miles davis staring at him
00:32:43.580
miles is looking at evans he's listening he's taking it in he's hearing things he had never heard before
00:32:49.720
in jazz piano and a few months later miles hires evans what did davis see in evans what was evans doing
00:32:56.640
that caught his attention evans despite the fact that he looked like this nerd from new jersey
00:33:01.960
was bringing harmonies and textures out of modern western classical out of stravinsky out of shostakovich
00:33:11.580
out of rachmaninoff that nobody had brought to jazz before miles had genius ears and he was hearing
00:33:20.720
in evans a kind of jazz piano that miles felt he that was brand new and miles really wanted to bring
00:33:28.520
into his group evans talked about how he really wanted to bring feeling into his piano like he wanted
00:33:34.300
you to feel something when he played and the way he played he'd just kind of like hunch over his head
00:33:39.840
down you could tell he was really trying to bring in the emotion to the piano yes evans deeply felt all that
00:33:47.800
he played he deeply loved the western classical that had informed his jazz playing and he wouldn't
00:33:56.860
he couldn't perform unless he was in a kind of emotional reverie unfortunately the thing that happened
00:34:05.100
as soon as evans joined miles band there was a huge backlash suddenly in the biggest small jazz group in
00:34:16.460
the united states in the most successful small jazz group in the united states there was a white guy
00:34:24.000
among black players and among black audiences and among black jazz musicians a great backlash against evans
00:34:31.300
it was psychically extremely damaging to evans he was uh he was a highly sensitive guy miles reassured
00:34:40.840
him but same time miles had a way of continuing to to haze bill evans miles miles had a sense of humor
00:34:48.060
somebody once asked miles what his hobby was and miles said making fun of white people on tv
00:34:53.180
miles liked to make fun of evans too sometimes when evans would hazard a musical opinion miles would say we
00:34:59.560
don't want no white opinions here but miles also deeply respected evans as as a musician and miles used to
00:35:07.600
say he didn't care what color his musicians were and so evans had these conflicting forces working he was
00:35:14.180
accepted uh by miles unbelievably by the great miles davis and evans set about as soon as he joined miles's band
00:35:24.500
evans set about turning himself into the biggest junkie in miles's band and even though miles wasn't using heroin
00:35:31.300
anymore some of his other musicians were and evans joined them and then surpassed them as a heroin
00:35:38.260
user and this had unfortunately a huge effect on evans's music on his life on his career and it shortened
00:35:46.940
his life he died at age uh at age 51 in 1980 so was evans using heroin as a way to i don't know kind of be
00:35:54.940
accepted was that what he maybe was thinking yeah i mean it was sort of a corollary of the of the bird
00:36:00.800
right to to play like bird you have to do like bird it was this ridiculously conformist idea that
00:36:08.400
evans picked up on if you're going to be a hip jazz musician you got to do heroin and it was insane
00:36:14.860
it was crazy but it got him a kind of acceptance among musicians that he had never had when he was the
00:36:22.660
nerd wearing glasses from new jersey yeah that made us a lesson even amongst groups who consider
00:36:28.100
themselves iconoclast or non-conformist there still is going to be a sense of conformity that you have
00:36:33.680
to be aware of oh there's another musician that played on kind of blue was john coltrane we've been
00:36:39.520
talking about in a little bit throughout this conversation what made him such an amazing saxophone
00:36:44.500
player well again it's that bolt of lightning it's the same thing with sinatra walking around hoboken
00:36:52.500
at age 12 and hearing the music of the spheres there's young john coltrane growing up in north carolina
00:36:59.700
and then uh and then philadelphia walking around and sensing some kind of genius in himself
00:37:07.140
that he was too shy he was a deeply shy deeply reserved uh very very modest human being so he was
00:37:17.560
conflicted he was conflicted he had a terribly sad uh childhood boyhood and early and young manhood
00:37:25.520
he lost his father when he was very young which was terribly painful to him and some other important
00:37:31.660
male relatives and so he became sad he became withdrawn he went within himself he knew he had this
00:37:38.840
musical talent he wasn't sure exactly what to do with it the thing he mainly did was practiced and
00:37:45.000
practiced and practiced he would play his saxophone everybody said everybody who knew him as a kid as a
00:37:51.320
teenager as a young man would talk about and they would hear him practicing behind closed doors at all
00:37:56.900
hours and if anybody complained coltrane would sit on his bed and practice the fingering of his saxophone
00:38:03.100
so an insane over practicer but he was also so modest that he began to play in bands that were beneath him
00:38:11.600
really playing r&b walking the bar and he didn't really come out of himself emerge as himself until he was
00:38:19.680
recognized until he was seen and heard by miles davis and coltrane he made a lot of innovations to jazz
00:38:26.000
as soon as he was as soon as coltrane was able to to rid himself of the need to imitate charlie parker and there
00:38:35.680
was a whole generation dozens upon dozens of saxophonists who needed to rid themselves of the
00:38:43.760
towering mountain-like influence of charlie parker as soon as soon as coltrane was able to find his own
00:38:52.340
voice he found a way of playing saxophone again as miles said louder and faster than anybody else
00:39:00.500
and then beginning to explore chords beginning to explore music in a way nobody had even charlie
00:39:07.620
parker had never explored before playing tunes in a way that that didn't necessarily go with
00:39:15.020
the way people had heard these songs before when you listen to charlie parker play when you listen to
00:39:21.380
a great saxophonist like dexter gordon play they were so wonderful so beautiful sunny rollins too
00:39:27.680
they would often quote from uh from popular songs of the day or other jazz songs one thing i say about
00:39:34.620
coltrane was that coltrane only quoted from god he heard things and played things nobody had played
00:39:40.980
before all right so in 1959 all these guys synced up along with cannonball adderley to and cannonball i
00:39:48.960
just want to interject yeah so on kind of blue you had not just these three geniuses miles and train and
00:39:55.200
evans but you had three other great players you had cannonball adderley and you had paul chambers
00:40:01.460
great bassist who died tragically young i think 36 years old again heroine you had jimmy cobb great
00:40:08.740
drummer cannonball adderley was a terrific musician terrific alto saxophone player who was soulful in a way
00:40:18.620
that coltrane was the great experimenter and cannonball was the great soul player and cannonball
00:40:26.260
was itching to go out on his own and and lead his own band very soon after kind of blue would do
00:40:31.740
exactly that uh you may remember the the terrific jazz standard mercy mercy mercy that was cannonball's
00:40:39.060
song and that that's a clue of what cannonball brought to the music but six great musicians on the
00:40:45.040
album so they all came together and they produced kind of blue it's considered a day to be you know
00:40:50.280
modal jazz the way they describe it how would you describe modal jazz and what kind of blue is well
00:40:57.360
again i don't want anybody to to snooze on us don't want anybody to go to sleep modal jazz sounds
00:41:02.480
mathematical it sounds academic it sounds i don't know what miles wanted to do was something nobody had
00:41:09.800
done in jazz before jazz from the time of its formation at the turn of the 19th into the 20th
00:41:16.440
century all the way up to 1959 jazz had been full of chords it had been uh blues chords or had been
00:41:23.440
based on songs of the american songbook standard tunes t for two and stuff like that and what you had was
00:41:31.740
music that was based on a lot of chords and it was beautiful but miles was restless he was a restless
00:41:39.540
artist he was restless his whole life he was always throwing off styles he was throwing off friends
00:41:45.720
he was throwing off lovers always changing and miles wanted to create something brand new and very very
00:41:51.960
simple and so he wanted to throw out all these chords and he had gone to a performance of le ballet
00:41:58.820
african african ballet where they were playing all these african instruments and he was he was enchanted by it
00:42:06.740
and he was enchanted by the music too a lot of which was kalimba uh african finger piano and so it was a
00:42:12.960
whole different style of music a whole different sound of music and it wasn't based on chords it was
00:42:19.040
based on just a couple of chords and so miles had this idea of creating an album that would be
00:42:24.980
more about just a chord or two sometimes just one chord for bar upon bar of the music with people
00:42:32.460
improvising over that single chord or maybe just two chords as in the great linchpin of kind of blue
00:42:38.500
the greatest arguably one of the greatest jazz tunes ever recorded so what so what is just two
00:42:45.640
chords listen to it one chord then another chord and you have these amazing improvisations including
00:42:52.520
miles's over just these two chords miles wanted something that was quieter and simpler yeah and the back
00:43:00.640
of kind of blue the jacket bill evans wrote this thing called improvisation and jazz and he talks
00:43:05.820
about the making of kind of blue and he said that basically miles david had this had this basic
00:43:11.100
framework that he wanted to to have but he conceived of these settings only hours before the recording
00:43:17.040
dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played and then he says
00:43:22.500
bill evans says therefore you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances
00:43:27.480
and an amazing thing about kind of blue and it's hard to wrap your head around but every full take
00:43:35.880
on kind of blue was a first take and i'm going to say that again every full take on the album was a first
00:43:44.500
take so totally spontaneous and yeah built on these tiny little sketches miles would bring in a piece
00:43:51.160
of paper not even staff paper not even music paper but just a piece of regular white paper with a few notes
00:43:57.080
drawn on it and show it to the guys and these again miles was somebody who really needed anybody who
00:44:03.960
played with him to be able to instantly get it and to improvise beautifully right on the bandstand
00:44:10.840
and somehow you know bill evans later said every musician uh has recorded dozens of times you never know you
00:44:19.440
go into a recording studio on a wednesday morning and you never know what's going to come out of it
00:44:24.500
something good something bad something great maybe nobody knew walking into this these two sessions
00:44:31.620
for kind of blue that greatness would result somehow or other lightning struck and these six guys all came
00:44:39.400
together all got in this incredible groove together and played these historic first takes is that why you
00:44:46.880
think kind of blue is endured okay i never get tired of listening to this thing i think it's because
00:44:51.940
it's all first takes like when you listen to it you think like you just feel like i'm listening to
00:44:56.320
something that's never never happened before and never never happened before never happened again
00:45:01.380
it's it's really hard to say brett there's something very mysterious about it going back to sinatra for
00:45:07.380
a second again you listen to sinatra i listen to sinatra as annoyed with him as i can get sometimes
00:45:13.460
for all kinds of reasons the guy always gives me goosebumps what is it that's giving me goosebumps
00:45:20.060
about sinatra what is it about kind of blue that gives you goosebumps there's a mystery to it there's
00:45:26.160
a mystery to this album there's something about this album that you can't there's a quiet what i call it
00:45:31.500
i call a quiet majesty to kind of blue that you can't put your finger on it's it's really hard to
00:45:37.580
define but it's the best-selling jazz album of all time and arguably the best loved why is that
00:45:43.780
there's just this quiet to it and this mystery that just puts you in a different place it takes
00:45:49.380
you to a different place and what i love about kind of blue you have to listen to the whole thing it's
00:45:53.800
not one of those things where you can just listen to songs but you could but to get the full effect of
00:45:58.240
it you have to listen to the thing in its entirety yeah and you have to and you want to yeah
00:46:03.380
yeah so they make this singular album what happened to these guys after they made kind of blue the three
00:46:10.240
guys of my book all wanted to go out in different directions miles had already of course led many of
00:46:16.900
his own groups and would continue to do so coltrane coltrane very much wanted to become a leader and
00:46:23.360
very quickly became one one month after finishing kind of blue coltrane recorded the great transformational
00:46:31.240
album giant steps with that amazing number on it giant steps and very soon thereafter would make a
00:46:38.560
love supreme and other great albums and become this pivotal iconic it's an overused word but there's
00:46:48.580
nobody like coltrane coltrane wanted to be coltrane he loved playing with miles but he wanted to be
00:46:54.020
coltrane he had to be and evans had to be evans evans went out he wanted to play trios piano trios
00:47:01.060
he did that for the rest of his short career some would argue that evans didn't go as far musically
00:47:07.300
artistically as miles or coltrane did some have argued otherwise one of the great musicians i
00:47:13.600
interviewed for my book was john baptiste and john baptiste talked about an amazing album that evans
00:47:19.500
recorded called conversations with myself what did evans do he double tracked he played piano and then on
00:47:27.160
another track he played along with himself playing piano and john baptiste argued that's a real
00:47:33.760
innovation so evans didn't play music he never played music that was difficult to understand he felt
00:47:40.700
deeply he played beautifully lyrical music for the rest of his career but it was a lyrical music unlike
00:47:48.840
piano music that other people were playing so they they all needed to go in their own directions and did
00:47:55.160
miles davis continue to try to push the envelope with jazz constantly that's all he ever did was
00:48:00.400
push the envelope but the thing the thing about miles was that miles loved to sell records miles loved
00:48:08.440
money he loved living the good life he loved having ferraris and he loved fine wine beautiful women
00:48:18.040
great art he loved having his own big apartment on the upper west side he loved all the things that money
00:48:24.900
could buy and so he had to sell a lot of records to do that so he's always looking out for commercial
00:48:31.400
opportunity and when rock and roll music upset jazz's apple cart and then some it really dropped an atomic
00:48:39.820
bomb into jazz in the early 1960s night of february 9th 1964 the beatles play ed sullivan and that was the end
00:48:48.560
of jazz really in many ways really jazz started dying that night miles had to find a way forward
00:48:56.440
and so one of the ways he found forward was something that came to be known as fusion it was a combination
00:49:02.180
a blending of jazz and and rock and roll electric instruments electronic instruments electric guitar
00:49:08.880
electric piano electric organ and a lot of people hated it a lot of jazz purists hated it but miles
00:49:16.760
recorded bitches brew which was another huge success for columbia records and for miles davis
00:49:22.680
miles found a way forward commercially which wasn't always popular with the gate guardians of jazz yeah
00:49:30.180
i've heard fusion jazz was jazz's last-ditch effort to make jazz popular again well that's one way of
00:49:39.160
putting it but i would say that a lot of it holds up you listen to bitches brew today and it's a powerful
00:49:44.720
album you listen to that beautiful beautiful album feed de kilimanjaro of miles davis with a lot of
00:49:52.880
electronic instrumentation on it and that is gloriously lyrical music with with a lot of electric and
00:50:01.760
electronic instruments on it that holds up so some of it holds up and jazz just it changed it transmogrified
00:50:12.800
throughout the 1960s unfortunately for jazz a lot of what happened in american culture impacted jazz it
00:50:21.280
was not only rock and roll music that beat jazz down but it was the fragmentation of american culture in
00:50:28.000
19 in the 1950s miles davis was an american superstar you could go up to a student on a midwestern college
00:50:36.560
campus and say miles davis and they would know who you were talking about and they would like jazz and
00:50:42.080
they would think jazz was hip and jazz was the music of the future what happened in the 60s and 70s and
00:50:49.440
80s and then when the internet came in was the fractionalization of american culture we became in a
00:50:56.080
nation of ten thousand tribes and so jazz continues to exist but today it's niche music like so many other
00:51:04.160
kinds of music and it has its passionate adherents and it has its geniuses there are great jazz players
00:51:10.480
today and singers today people like robert glasper and people like jasmine horn esperanza spaulding
00:51:18.960
aaron deal brad meldow all these wonderful wonderful vocalists instrumentalists but jazz is you know
00:51:28.640
in 1957 everybody in the united states would know who duke ellington louie armstrong ella fitzgerald
00:51:37.360
miles davis were how many people today know who i i'm not going to name any musicians i just named
00:51:46.000
because i just named them but they're wonderful musicians they're great musicians but they are known to
00:51:52.080
the comparatively few who love jazz these days are these musicians today who are playing are they
00:51:58.240
innovating like miles davis did or have we reached the edges of innovation in jazz and now it's just
00:52:03.760
we're perfecting it's kind of like classical music like there's not really much innovation going on
00:52:08.320
we're just perfecting what's there yeah i don't think it's ever possible within your time to know
00:52:13.840
exactly where you are i think it's really only possible years and decades afterwards to know where the
00:52:20.240
music is going and so as an example where coltrane went after giant steps and after love supreme he
00:52:28.800
began playing up and down these chords into reaches of chords that nobody had heard before and people
00:52:35.200
even jazz aficionados who had loved coltrane's music began to get very impatient with him and feel this
00:52:42.320
music is too difficult to listen to anymore and then people like ornette coleman and and cecil taylor came
00:52:49.600
in playing what was then called free jazz and this was jazz that didn't even have any chord structure
00:52:55.440
there were no melodies anymore it was sounded to so many people just like a lot of noise it was one of
00:53:01.600
the things that drove a lot of people away from jazz but in retrospect a lot of people think it's great
00:53:08.000
music is anybody doing anything like that today i would say that you have people doing things today that
00:53:14.720
may fall with difficulty on some ears but i think it's going to take a long time before we know
00:53:20.640
before it all gets sorted out well james it's been a great conversation where can people go to learn
00:53:24.720
more about the book in your work ah well they can go to my website jamescaplin.net they can go to
00:53:31.280
to penguin press's website and they can go to your terrific podcast this terrific conversation we had
00:53:38.640
right here brett fantastic well james caplin thanks for time it's been a pleasure my pleasure too
00:53:43.600
my guest here is james caplin he's the author of the book three shades of blue it's available on
00:53:48.880
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at his website
00:53:52.720
jamescaplin.net also check out our show notes at awim.is slash blue where you find links to resources
00:53:58.320
we delve deeper in this topic and make sure you give kind of blue a listen it's a great album it's
00:54:12.960
well that wraps up another edition of the awim podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:54:16.880
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00:54:20.720
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00:54:41.120
remind you to listen to the awim podcast but put what you've heard into action