The Art of Manliness - The 3 Musical Geniuses Behind the Most Popular Jazz Album of All Time

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.100 even if you're not very into jazz you probably know kind of blue the jazz album that sold more

00:00:16.740 copies than any other and is widely considered one of the greatest albums ever in any genre

00:00:21.280 among the sextet of musicians who played on the album three stand out as true jazz geniuses

00:00:27.040 miles davis bill evans and john coltrane today on the show james caplan author of three shades of

00:00:33.660 blue miles davis john coltrane bill evans and the lost empire of cool unpacks the stories behind

00:00:39.580 these towering figures we discuss their background their demons their passion for musical greatness

00:00:45.080 and what they contributed to the evolving world of jazz and we discuss why when they got together

00:00:50.420 to record kind of blue the result was the most timeless and beloved jazz album in history

00:00:54.900 after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash blue

00:00:59.080 all right james caplan welcome back to the show brett i am thrilled to be here thank you for having me

00:01:19.100 so we had you on a few years ago to talk about your biography of frank sinatra

00:01:22.980 you got a new musical biography out and it's about the artist who created one of the most

00:01:29.300 influential most popular jazz albums of all time and that is kind of blue headed up by miles davis

00:01:36.160 what led you to take a deep dive into the artist behind this album well truth be told i had lunch with

00:01:43.400 my editor a few years back and we were talking about what book i might do i had had a suggestion for

00:01:50.940 a book idea which went nowhere i won't tell you what it is but he had he had a comeback and his idea

00:01:57.260 was what about a book about kind of blue and i love kind of blue and i had kind of blue and like so

00:02:05.260 many other people was crazy about the album but there is a wonderful jazz writer named ashley khan who

00:02:12.300 wrote the definitive book about that album but it's it's more of a technical book and more of a jazz book

00:02:19.540 strictly a jazz book and what occurred to me when my editor scott moyers proposed this idea was

00:02:26.940 tickling around in the back of my mind uh it was this amazing amazing thing that i had in my pocket

00:02:33.440 brett which was that in 1989 when i was a young pup of a reporter i snagged an incredible assignment

00:02:41.680 from vanity fair to go and interview miles davis and this was on the occasion of his about to be

00:02:47.600 publication of his new memoir then new memoir called miles and i i wangled my way into this

00:02:55.680 interview actually my my brother helped me do it my brother the late uh the late newspaper editor

00:03:02.020 peter w kaplan editor great editor of the new york observer was talking to this editor at vanity fair

00:03:08.120 who was looking around for a writer for miles davis profile and my brother my wonderful brother said

00:03:15.000 well my brother jimmy knows everything there is to know about jazz which was an exaggeration to put

00:03:22.900 it very mildly i knew nothing whatsoever i had maybe three jazz albums at that point but vanity fair sent

00:03:29.480 me and with my knees knocking and my heart thumping i rode up the elevator to the 17th floor of the

00:03:35.180 essex house central park south new york city and walked into the apartment of miles davis and i was

00:03:42.880 terrified because his reputation preceded him but he turned out to be a total pussycat and despite the

00:03:48.700 fact that i knew absolutely nothing i managed to get through an hour talking with him and then he asked

00:03:53.420 me to come back and so i had the piece i did for vanity fair and these years ago recordings i did with

00:03:59.780 the great miles davis and i thought when scott my editor proposed this book about uh kind of blue i thought

00:04:07.420 well that's interesting but what about what about a book about the three geniuses of kind of blue there

00:04:14.680 were six musicians but three of them arguably geniuses miles and john coltrane and bill evans

00:04:21.260 what about those three guys before during and after the recording of that great album what about

00:04:27.620 writing about them as not only as musicians but as men and scott heard that he loved it and we're off

00:04:34.640 to the races yeah i'm glad you went down that route of doing a biography of these men because i love

00:04:39.980 reading biographies of great musicians because i find it incredibly inspiring i know you did a

00:04:45.500 biography of irving berlin yeah and irving berlin the thing that inspired me about him was how much

00:04:50.480 of a workhorse this guy was he was just cranking stuff out yes all the time and that was a big takeaway

00:04:55.500 for me you know a lot of success in life if you're a creator of whether you're a writer a musician

00:05:00.800 it's just putting out a lot of stuff it's not just putting out a lot of stuff but it is having

00:05:06.180 the courage to fail irving berlin wrote 1500 songs and he liked to say i wrote more bad songs than

00:05:13.440 anyone and it's true he wrote a lot of bad songs and uh you know john lennon paul mccartney wrote bad

00:05:19.560 songs and miles davis made bad recordings all these guys had sort of artistic skeletons in their closet but

00:05:27.040 they all were incredibly hard workers miles and coltrane and evans practiced and practiced and

00:05:35.120 practiced until their fingers practically bled yeah i've been reading a biography of bach that was

00:05:40.960 another workhorse that guy was just constantly putting out stuff and like you said he failed a

00:05:45.400 lot we don't know about all his bad stuff that he wrote but he wrote a lot of bad stuff but we

00:05:49.220 remember his disco period it's little no yeah all right so i think to understand what makes kind

00:05:55.920 of blue so singular we have to do a bit of jazz history and we're going to condense this and it's

00:06:01.680 going to be hard to do because jazz is a very multi-faceted art form but i think the short story

00:06:06.280 is before the 1940s jazz was primarily dance music you went to a jazz band so you could dance to it

00:06:13.740 whether it's the charleston or the lindy hop or whatever but after world war ii you started to see

00:06:18.860 this shift away from jazz as dance music to jazz as more of just an art in and of itself who are the

00:06:26.520 musicians leading this shift away from jazz as dance music and what innovations did they introduce

00:06:31.660 right and the thing i really want to do here brett is i want to avoid any i don't want to put anybody

00:06:39.160 to sleep i don't want to talk about the snoozy history of this or of that what i would like anybody

00:06:44.860 listening to imagine is uh i'd like them to think about the the greatest rock musicians the greatest

00:06:51.480 rap musicians they can think of i want you to think about young in this case uh almost all young men

00:06:58.480 there were certainly women in jazz but few but i want you to think about young guys primarily young

00:07:05.260 black guys back in the 1930s and this happened actually before world war ii and during world war ii

00:07:11.560 this new music called bebop sprang up there was a recording band for various reasons there was a

00:07:17.660 strike during world war ii and uh and so the origins of bebop didn't get recorded but i'd like you to

00:07:24.320 think about these amazing young black guys brilliantly gifted guys like the guitarist charlie christian

00:07:32.380 the saxophonist illinois jacket lionel hampton the vibraphonist and in particular trumpeter dizzy

00:07:39.820 gillespie and alto saxophonist charlie parker those two guys young men really young and they're

00:07:46.640 really like rock musicians they are full of juice and they're full of innovations and they're coming

00:07:52.860 up with this new music that's moving in a way that's different to the way the jazz had moved before

00:07:59.140 different rhythms different harmonies wild and kind of angular and these guys all played in

00:08:06.660 conventional big bands swing bands before the war and they would get in a certain amount of trouble

00:08:13.180 with the band leaders because they really wanted to play this new style music and the band leaders

00:08:18.360 were making their money off of people dancing so there began to be this kind of clash between these

00:08:23.740 young turks and the old guard band leaders and what happened during world war ii was the big bands the

00:08:30.540 swing bands uh got phased out a lot of it had to do with wartime scarcity no gasoline the bands couldn't

00:08:38.480 afford to tour there wasn't enough money the big bands uh began to go out of business and suddenly

00:08:44.280 there were the small bands of these young turks playing this crazy new music called bebop i think

00:08:50.860 that's an interesting point about the impacts we often don't think about this when it comes to art we

00:08:55.940 just think that oh an artist is just they're alone in their head and they're coming up with this stuff

00:09:01.180 but they're being shaped by macro factors right and oh the economic factors of the depression and world

00:09:08.580 war ii that was driving that i mean if it weren't for world war ii and the depression we might not have

00:09:13.860 had these innovations yeah but we also need to think about these musicians struck by genius as though

00:09:20.960 they had been actually hit by pitchfork bolts of lightning john coltrane dizzy gillespie charlie

00:09:27.580 parker miles davis and bill evans all guys born in the 1920s coming up as young men and loving the music

00:09:37.020 the jazz that existed already but full of their own kind of weird ideas about where they could take the

00:09:43.060 music for those who are familiar with bebop how would you describe it how is it different from say

00:09:48.100 you know a swing song like in the mood how would you describe that uh well i would say that bebop

00:09:55.460 is to big band swing music as cubism is to impressionism maybe where you look at a cubist

00:10:03.000 you look at cubist paintings great paintings of picasso and brock and you're seeing something in

00:10:07.700 the early 90 very early 1900s something totally different from anything that had ever been done

00:10:13.320 before you're seeing this angular crazy looking stuff on canvases and uh at the time people reacted

00:10:20.320 violently against it they just thought it was nonsense and almost almost sinful it was so terrible looking

00:10:26.700 to so many people it wasn't beautiful a lot of people had a similar reaction to bebop when it came in

00:10:32.840 you had this new music that was moving fast that was moving in a crazy way that was being played faster

00:10:39.640 than jazz had ever been played before that you couldn't dance to right it had a beat but you

00:10:44.400 couldn't dance to it yeah uh but but a lot of young people and the people who weren't absolutely set on

00:10:52.480 dancing began to be fascinated by this new music they would stand and they would listen in awe as

00:10:58.940 diz and bird charlie parker were playing these new bebop songs and it began yeah began to turn into art

00:11:06.460 music it began to turn into music that you could as dizzy gillespie said you don't necessarily have

00:11:12.300 to dance to a song to really feel it sometimes you can hear a groove so strong it'll make your back

00:11:19.520 crack is what dizzy said and yeah bebop heavy on the improvisation you know swing not so much you'd have

00:11:25.700 a little bit but it was pretty much set bebop a lot of improvisation yeah bebop was by definition

00:11:32.220 uh improvised it was what they called head arrangements arrangements uh memorized by the

00:11:38.200 musicians and improvised on the stand and it was very small groups it was quartets quintets sextets at

00:11:45.400 at the most playing in these little tiny clubs on 52nd street the street as it was known all these

00:11:53.080 brownstones in the one block between fifth and sixth avenue used to be speakeasies turned into jazz

00:11:58.860 clubs in the 1940s and with these little tiny smoky clubs little tiny groups playing this wild new

00:12:06.700 music you had you had a scene that had never been seen before and never been seen since bebop was

00:12:14.800 really synonymous with new york city and synonymous with the street with 52nd street you know as you

00:12:20.260 said i think it's important to to point out these guys they're very they're very driven they're very

00:12:25.400 ambitious and what's interesting about jazz music particularly bebop it is collaborative right

00:12:31.660 you're you're working with the group but at the same time it's almost it's almost competitive too

00:12:35.600 it was it was actually extremely competitive these guys were always trying to oh hell yeah do each other

00:12:41.020 yeah yeah yeah and a lot of that began in harlem at the great clubs at the savoy at mittens playhouse

00:12:47.080 with felonious monk and dizzy and and bird and miles played up there and so many other great musicians

00:12:54.160 and yes absolutely there was this tradition called cutting and one musician is is playing up there in

00:13:01.700 the bandstand another musician would just jump up on there with the same instrument a guy had been

00:13:06.980 playing and and play his own solo and try and try and better him and you could put the other guy to

00:13:12.840 shame if you play better than he did it was an accepted tradition and it was not battle of the

00:13:18.320 bands it was battle of the players and it was darwinistic determined who's going to come out on

00:13:22.980 top yeah sometimes those musical beefs turned physical they'd actually get there'd be fistfights

00:13:28.660 sometimes with these guys it was all really physical it was all about sweat it was about thrill

00:13:34.760 it was about excitement it was about this music that nobody had ever heard before and it was powerful

00:13:41.140 it was sexy it was it was vital it was brand new all right so this period uh of the development of

00:13:47.820 bebop jazz this was the period where miles davis and these other musicians who eventually were on

00:13:53.340 kind of blue this is when they came to age this is when they were this was the stew they were in

00:13:57.940 when they were in their early 20s right when they're the formative years um so i think we start

00:14:04.860 exploring these individual members of kind of blue let's start with miles davis first he's the

00:14:09.840 coolest of the cool when it comes to jazz musicians what's interesting though is that his upbringing

00:14:15.520 was more affluent and conventional than a lot of people might think miles miles was well off and

00:14:24.180 there's no two ways about it miles his father uh miles two miles davis that we know was actually

00:14:30.600 miles three miles dewey davis the third miles his father was a dentist and as such he was a

00:14:36.580 professional man well respected successful made money had a horse farm miles uh miles grew up as a

00:14:43.980 young prince he rode horses at his father's farm he had beautiful clothes he was a handsome young kid

00:14:51.880 and his his musical genius was recognized early miles had a kind of unique upbringing in that it was so

00:15:00.160 privileged but at the same time miles knew that he possessed this strange and powerful gift of musical

00:15:08.520 genius and he knew he had to take it someplace and the place he knew he had to take it was new york city

00:15:13.960 he had to get there somehow the way he got there i think maybe this is how he convinced his parents to get him

00:15:19.580 there as he was a student at the famous juilliard school of music he got this juilliard which is very about

00:15:27.220 formal music development how did he go from there to becoming this jazz musician that we know today

00:15:34.160 that just added all these innovations to jazz miles his father was very traditionalist and he wanted to

00:15:40.460 his son to succeed in a traditional way maybe even become a classical musician and so miles came up with

00:15:49.120 this great strategy the strategy was let me go to new york and enroll at juilliard and i will develop

00:15:56.880 myself and become an educated musician well there was a there was a certain amount of deception in

00:16:04.300 the strategy what miles really wanted was to get to new york city and to hook up with to connect with

00:16:11.140 dizzy and bird he had met dizzy gillespie and charlie parker in st louis miles's hometown when bird and

00:16:19.020 dis came through playing with a band and he wanted to get back with them get to new york so he enrolls at

00:16:26.640 juilliard he goes to new york city in 1944 he's 18 years old and after a couple of months at juilliard

00:16:33.360 everybody around him is white all the other students are white all the teachers are white and there was

00:16:38.640 one day in particular in a classroom when a woman was teaching a class started talking holding forth

00:16:45.380 about the blues and saying that black people sang and played the blues because they picked cotton and 0.88

00:16:51.740 they were miserable and they were downtrodden and they had been slaves and miles finally couldn't

00:16:58.500 stand it anymore and he stood up and he said listen i play the blues i'm not downtrodden i don't play the

00:17:04.840 blues because i'm downtrodden and this stuff is all ridiculous miles felt that he was learning from 0.86

00:17:10.540 white people about white music and to a certain extent those lessons meant something to him he was

00:17:16.240 studying the great modernists like stravinsky and shostakovich and rachmaninoff but juilliard turned

00:17:24.380 him off and he got together with uh with dizzy and bird as quickly as possible and very quickly got hired

00:17:33.580 by charlie parker to join his band an incredible thing here is this young kid out of the midwest who

00:17:39.880 everybody thought couldn't play that well but bird heard something in miles and hires him and before

00:17:47.020 long miles is playing great well going back to this idea of the ambition of these men miles davis he was

00:17:54.400 super ambitious and the way he got with charlie bird like he had to go look for him he was constantly

00:17:58.620 he was on the prowl he was hitting the pavement trying to get in touch with charlie bird parker which

00:18:04.160 just reminds me now when you when a lot of young men are young they're willing to just go and just

00:18:08.240 relentlessly pursue pursue pursue pursue until they get what they want that's exactly right i mean

00:18:13.760 there was no no internet no google no google maps in those days i mean charlie parker who was a major

00:18:22.160 heroin addict and a major hedonist was at large in manhattan uh doing heroin drinking having sex with

00:18:32.000 many many many many women all over the place there one night here another night sleeping wherever he 0.95

00:18:38.760 felt like it so he wasn't that easy to track down and miles searched all over midtown searched the

00:18:45.280 street went up to harlem searched all over harlem couldn't find bird then one night uh he's he's

00:18:51.400 standing outside a jazz club and he hears a voice in back of him he said hey miles you've been looking

00:18:57.360 for me and it was bird did miles davis drop out of juilliard he dropped out of juilliard after uh

00:19:04.680 yeah really after one year that was it for miles and and formal education but but he really did keep

00:19:12.660 on educating himself and he took some of the lessons from juilliard again listening to these great

00:19:18.240 modernists of western classical music and the new harmonies uh they were bringing to the music

00:19:24.920 miles thought a lot about that listened to a lot of it so no more formal education but for miles from

00:19:32.220 then on it was the education of the bandstand how did his father take him dropping well listen another

00:19:40.780 thing happened which was that after world war ii miles went to europe went to france to play jazz and

00:19:48.640 found there a welcome that he had never found in the united states found white people who weren't 0.56

00:19:54.600 seeing him as a black man but just as another human being fell in love with this great singer juliet

00:20:01.620 greco but then had to come back to the states and back to being a second class citizen so depressed by

00:20:08.360 coming back to having to be a black man in in the america of of 90 the late 1940s that he fell into a

00:20:15.900 heroin addiction and uh miles and miles and miles went back home uh more than once more than twice

00:20:24.580 actually to try and kick heroin his father helped him with this and but eventually miles had to do it

00:20:30.940 himself miles his father was disappointed that he dropped out of juilliard at the same time miles his

00:20:39.180 father understood that his son was a great musician and a troubled young man he did his best to help

00:20:46.680 miles but again in the end miles had to do it himself going back to miles davis's heroin addiction

00:20:52.980 heroin is a character that keeps reoccurring reappearing in your your history what was going on why

00:20:59.880 was heroin such a heavily used drug amongst jazz musician during this time period before world war ii

00:21:07.420 the drugs of choice among jazz musicians had been two they had been marijuana and a lot of songs

00:21:15.540 about reefer in jazz prior to world war ii and alcohol of course and a lot of musicians suffered

00:21:22.820 from alcoholism and even died from alcoholism during world war ii and especially immediately thereafter

00:21:29.040 a lot of heroin came into the united states a lot of this had to do with organized crime suddenly there

00:21:35.800 were pushers pushing heroin on jazz musicians and then there was charlie parker and charlie parker was

00:21:44.000 the biggest heroin addict uh of of all of jazz music he was also a transcendent musical genius and this

00:21:53.760 awful myth arose that among musicians among young black and some white jazz musicians that if you wanted to

00:22:02.560 play like bird you had to do like bird in other words if you used heroin maybe you could achieve

00:22:10.200 that transcendent high of musicianship that charlie parker achieved and it was a myth it was this terrible

00:22:17.620 falsehood and a lot of a lot of guys died but uh heroin addiction became widespread in jazz uh right

00:22:27.100 after world war ii and stayed for about the next 15 years the way you described it the use i mean with

00:22:34.400 charlie bird he would sometimes just be like passed out on the stand and then it was his turn to do his

00:22:40.380 solo he'd just get up and just crank it out like nothing was wrong and then he was a phenomenon he was

00:22:45.320 an absolute absolute phenomenon he was a big strong guy he had the constitution of a horse

00:22:51.840 but even in the end charlie parker uh couldn't overcome heroin he didn't die of overdose but he

00:22:59.220 really died of overuse of heroin he died in 1955 at age 34 and when the coroner came uh to examine his

00:23:09.760 corpse he estimated charlie parker's age as the mid-50s 34 years old wow so with miles's heroin

00:23:17.900 addiction he goes from making it becoming part of charlie bird's band he becomes a success

00:23:22.940 then he starts heroin and goes to being totally unreliable nodding off on the stand when he was

00:23:29.500 playing when he did show up his hair would just clothes would just be a mess and that was a big

00:23:34.940 change because before that he took a lot of pride in his appearance and sometimes he just didn't even

00:23:39.540 show up to gigs i mean pretty much he basically almost flushed his career down the toilet but he did

00:23:45.620 finally go cold turkey on heroin though he did continue to use cocaine and alcohol throughout

00:23:51.420 his life and that was partly you know i think partly to deal with some of the pain he had because he

00:23:57.560 had a sickle cell anemia and he's also just really brooding throughout his life you know people called

00:24:02.560 him the prince of darkness but when he put heroin behind him he became a more reliable artist

00:24:08.460 we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:24:11.860 and now back to the show so when davis finally kicked heroin this is when he started making a lot

00:24:22.860 of the innovations to jazz that he's famous for during this time the 50s when he starts developing

00:24:28.160 what's been called cool jazz how would you describe cool jazz and then how did the jazz community

00:24:34.120 initially receive these innovations miles knew a guy named gill evans this brilliant arranger and

00:24:41.680 conductor from canada who miles met on the street on 52nd street and in gill evans he found a

00:24:49.820 kind of a musical co-equal a guy who loved the same kind of jazz and the same kind of modern western

00:24:58.040 classical that miles loved and miles loved this guy and they formed this very tight bond of friendship

00:25:05.340 and musical friendship and miles and gill evans started to create this music together gill evans was

00:25:14.560 arranging this music a lot of people were writing arrangements were writing songs for for a new kind

00:25:22.200 of jazz that involved a lot of a lot of musicians sometimes as many as eight or nine or ten or more

00:25:30.400 orchestras but charts written arrangements and a kind of jazz that was something similar to what

00:25:38.620 came to be known as third stream it was almost a marriage of western classical and jazz written down

00:25:45.240 on charts and the initial recordings that would later come to be called the birth of the cool were done

00:25:54.780 by miles in conjunction with gill evans and were received early on there's no other word but but to say coolly

00:26:03.900 they were not met with warm affection by jazz musicians or by the public the records didn't sell at first

00:26:12.080 they weren't even called the birth of the cool at first and in particular dizzy gillespie was kind of scathing

00:26:18.540 about this new arranged classical sounding jazz he said that jazz was really meant to make you sweat 0.88

00:26:26.220 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 0.71

00:26:32.480 this music didn't make you sweat in your balls dizzy wanted a music that was improvised and not written down

00:26:38.420 on charts or if it was written down on charts something that really had the power to as he said earlier to

00:26:45.040 to make your back crack to to be a strong groove these were not strong grooves they were smoother

00:26:50.580 they were cooler and so it was a different branch of jazz and it was an important branch of jazz

00:26:55.880 but not received warmly at first did it eventually get warmly received it eventually became called the

00:27:04.480 birth of the cool and cool jazz and it was much admired by west coast musicians jerry mulligan

00:27:12.720 chet baker went out to the west coast uh became west coast jazz and uh which became uh very very

00:27:20.800 popular dave brubeck out there cool jazz achieved its own success during the 1950s and especially after

00:27:29.720 the fading of bebop which really happened with the death of charlie parker in 1955

00:27:34.260 how did miles davis handle the cool reception to his innovation like you know dizzy gillespie and these

00:27:41.980 all the other guys like he admired them when he was a young man how do you feel like oh i got this

00:27:47.000 new thing and everyone's like this is not good well he was playing both sides of the street he was

00:27:52.000 playing the cool jazz and he was playing his own his own quintet and sextet jazz coming up with these

00:27:57.920 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 0.96

00:28:55.840 innovating both ways and when you ask what his reaction was miles never particularly gave a shit 0.87

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 0.57

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 0.50

00:49:16.760 recorded bitches brew which was another huge success for columbia records and for miles davis 0.99

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 1.00

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

00:54:03.280 available in full on spotify check it out

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 artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives and while you're there sign up for

00:54:20.720 our newsletter we got a daily option and a weekly option they're both free it's the best way to stay

00:54:25.360 on top of what's going on at aom and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate it if you take one

00:54:29.360 minute to get your view up a podcast or spotify it helps out a lot and if you've done that already

00:54:33.280 thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think we get

00:54:36.800 something out of it as always thank you for continued support until next time's brett mckay

00:54:41.120 remind you to listen to the awim podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:54:59.360 ko

00:55:00.320 thank you

00:55:01.280 among theいる

00:55:04.240 is

00:55:04.480 tell me

00:55:06.080 оки

00:55:07.040 Us 3000

00:55:08.480 we are

00:55:09.680 they are

00:55:11.680 we are

00:55:12.400 these are

00:55:13.200 they are

00:55:14.320 Al two 0.96

00:55:15.200 we are

00:55:17.600 we are

00:55:19.440 For

00:55:21.100 we are

00:55:21.600 to

The Art of Manliness - March 13, 2024

The 3 Musical Geniuses Behind the Most Popular Jazz Album of All Time

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript