Did Miles Davis recognise you from The Birth of the Cool sessions?
No. No, he didn’t. He never recognised me from one session to the next, which is understandable. He was always so intently focused on the music. A very driven man.
And I imagine Kind of Blue was a different experience to Birth of Cool.
I found it deeply exasperating to be honest.
Why is that?
Well, the gathered artistes only ever performed every selection once. Except for one piece… Bossanova etchings?
Flamenco Sketches?
Thank you. Except for Flamenco Sketches, they gave each composition a single airing before moving brusquely on. Miles sat the group down and provided some brief instruction while they nodded their comprehension and then they were off. Start to finish. Bang. Just like that. I remember thinking “That was wonderful. That was among the very best things I’ve ever heard. I’m very keen to hear them try that again” but they never did. They just moved on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve attended in recording sessions listening to the most frightful racket being played over and over again because the bass player loses tempo, or the guitarist forgets a chord, or the drummer can’t recall what the sticks in his hand are for, and on this occasion when I could have listened to several repetitions, they did the whole thing in one go.
And were you aware of how original modal jazz was?
Come again?
Modal Jazz. This is the first Modal Jazz album. It’s an innovation in Jazz music.
Yes, I’d heard that somewhere. I know that people have raved about how innovative it was but you know I’m a simple soul and I wouldn’t know Modal jazz from modal-less jazz. As far as I knew Mr Davis blew into one end of his trumpet and nice music emerged and that’s as much as I ever felt I needed to know. I have no idea where modals were actually added to the proceedings. I have no idea whether they actually added lots of modals to this particular recording or whether previous recordings required a lot of effort to be de-modaled. For all I know all jazz had been played in the past with modals just infusing themselves naturally into the proceedings only to removed by the producer after the event in a long afternoon of de-modaling. I even wonder if any modals ever slipped through in the past and how anyone noticed?
I’m not sure that’s how it works.
Do you understand what modal jazz is?
No.
Well, then it will have to remain a mystery to us both. It could very well be exactly how modal jazz functions*
* It isn’t.
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