#junior collins

[jazzplusplus]

1948 - Miles Davis Nonet (Birth of the Cool band) - Royal Roost - New York

Miles Davis (tp), Lee Konitz (as), Gerry Mulligan (bs), Mike Zwerin (vtb), Junior Collins (fh), Bill Barber (tu), John Lewis (p), Al McKibbon (b), Max Roach (dr), Kenny "Pancho" Hagood (voc)

[onejazztrackaday]

Jeru – Miles Davis

It’s a long weekend here in NSW, so this post is a little later than usual for a Monday morning. I spent Saturday and Sunday working around the house, and listening to the inaugural Jazz 100 from ABC Jazz, which asked listeners to vote for their favourite jazz artist of all time.

While these popular vote rankings will always spark debate and cause some degree of incredulity or indignation, I am very pleased to see the artist rightly taking the number one position is, (and could surely be none other than?), Miles Davis.

Miles was nothing if not an innovator. Perpetually restless, he was always trying new sounds and pushing the boundaries of what others called jazz. I heard someone on the weekend broadcast say they were not aware of Miles ever referring to his music as “jazz”, only as his music.

So I thought this week I would bring you just a small taste of the many sounds of Miles Davis.

One of the benefits of releasing a compilation album of even just a few years after the recording sessions is the benefit of hindsight. You get to see the significance or otherwise of where those sessions sit within a bigger picture. Such is the case in my opinion with The Birth of the Cool.

Davis’ restlessness was evident when after coming to New York to study music, he dropped out after he met the Bird, Charlie Parker. Davis followed Parker everywhere: he roomed with him, learned from him, discovered heroin with him, and eventually replaced Dizzy Gillespie in Parker's band. For a brief period, Miles Davis was a key name in Bebop which had dethroned swing in places where jazz was “happening”.

But the Bird and Dizzy’s bebop was urgent and intense. It featured flat-out tempos, note-packed solos, abrupt beginnings and stops that arrested your attention as if the music had blown a fuse. Davis preferred music with more space, implication and patience, in part because his early trumpet-playing technique, was less secure at high speeds without the Gillespie or Parker’s range, and partly because it gave him more opportunity to explore.

So at the age of 22, Davis joined with other young musical experimenters for rehearsals at the New York basement apartment of Canadian jazz pianist and arranger, Gil Evans. Evans had been collaborating with Claude Thornhill who led a classically textured 18 piece orchestra, but Davis thought that too big a sound for experimentation and favoured half that size, forming a nonet. 

Pushing the traditional jazz instrumentation they explored the nervous energy of bebop with a lineup featuring French horns, oboes and flutes, placing jazz improvisation against slow-shifting and ambiguous harmonies that could gradually change like light and shade in a room.

As with many things, it’s as much what you leave out as what you put in. The omission of tenor saxophone was unusual, which at the time was a core part of ensembles of every size. Instead, Jerry Mulligan recalls, 

We picked instruments [with matching timbres]… and one of each. We had a high section with a trumpet and the alto, we had a middle section with the trombone and the French horn, and a low section with the baritone and tuba. So we had those… basic colours to work with.

Jeru is a Jerry Mulligan tune, which demonstrates one of the hallmarks of this nonet’s exploration – the use of a unison sound and rich harmony throughout the horns. 

Davis said,

I wanted the instruments to sound like human voices singing ... and they did.

The Birth of the Cool was recorded over three sessions in 1949 and 1950, and the album released as a collection in 1957. Jeru was laid down in the first session on January 21, 1949. The personnel for this session were 

Miles Davis – trumpet

Kai Winding – trombone

Junior Collins – French horn

Bill Barber – tuba

Lee Konitz – alto saxophone

Gerry Mulligan – baritone saxophone

Al Haig – piano

Joe Shulman – bass

Max Roach – drums

These recording sessions were incredibly important, and as the hindsight of 1957 allowed, they laid the foundations for a movement in jazz that was yet to blossom, and Miles would be the one to give it its most famous and full expression.

– Bozzie 🎷

[reek34jazz]

Left to right: Junior Collins, Bill Barber, Kai Winding, Max Roach (hidden), Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Al Haig, Lee Konitz and Joe Shulman at the January 21, 1949 session.

[cflprime]

Junior Collins, Hamilton Tiger-Cats

[gottahavesoul]

Miles Davis - Moon Dreams

[nephilimlegacy]

[fashionsfault]