Birth of the Cool really was a game-changer in the jazz world.
So I’m told. I have to confess that I had no prior experience of jazz in any form so I had no way of confirming the statement. I assumed it was a typical representation of the genre. It was certainly a “game-changer” to use your expression, in my life and one for which I’m eternally grateful.
In what way?
Well, it affirmed a few “home truths” as it were. I’d been cleaning studios for several weeks before the Birth of the Cool sessions and I honestly believed it was merely something appease my immediate creditors until my rightful destiny as a member of the wealthy English Upper class came to fruition. I somehow assumed I’d be strolling down the street one day, minding my own business when a Merchant Banking career would just fall into my lap. I would bump into one of my old Oxford chums like Squiffy Baxter-Barmley or Beefy Reemington-Tipple and they’d say “Blethington-Smythe! Just the chap I was looking for. It so happens my family has a merchant bank lying around and we need someone to run it. How soon can you take the reins?” Birth of the Cool made me realise that was never going to occur and that deep down I was actually jolly glad about it too.
Why is that?
Well my father was a merchant banker and he put in long hours and sat fretting most nights about this and that and eventually hurled himself out of the window of a tall building when the whole thing went belly up. He made a lot of money for a while but had a horrible time doing it. Cleaning studios didn’t make a chap a large quantity of ready cash but goodness it was a stress-free lifestyle. I wandered about performing what is best described as “light domestic duties” while the greatest musicians in the world performed wonderful music around me. I knew nothing of jazz as I say, but the sort of thing Miles Davis and his chums were producing was an extremely pleasant compliment to one’s gainful employment. At the end of the day I would retire to my modest, but more than adequate, apartment, without a care in the world. I’d don the smoking jacket and read some Balzac with a glass of port and not a single cloud on my personal horizon.
It does sound like an enviable lifestyle.
Well to you it may, but there was no chance I was ever going to make my mother see it that way. I could never lie to my mother so I had to crinkle the truth somewhat. I said I was employed by a large American company who exported around the world, which was technically true. I just neglected to mention the fact that one’s duties included picking up cigarette butts dropped by black men, she wouldn’t have been pleased if she’d known that. Not pleased at all.
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