Miles and I have a common interest in timbre, the pure sound of the music. And sound is the thing that’s most important to me of all the components of music. That’s what got us together and that’s what keeps us together, always. And Miles is a sound innovator, right? Nobody ever sounded like him before, so we were attracted to each other for that reason.
- Gil Evans, 1987
I heard Gil Evans’ arrangements long before I knew who he was. That first song I heard was Concierto De Aranjuez, the first track on Miles Davis’ 1960 release of Sketches Of Spain, arranged and conducted by Gil Evans. I heard it around the winter of 1984, while I was working my way from A to Z in the “Ground Zero” jazz record stacks. I remember hitting Chet Baker in the “B” section very early and this one still sticks in my mind, She Was Too Good For Me.
And then, I ran across this one in the “C” section, which I liked a lot. I had heard of Ray Charles, but discovered the distinctive sounds of Milt Jackson’s vibes and Kenny Burrell’s guitar.
But when I got to the “D” section, I found Kind Of Blue. I remember picking that one up because I liked the cool cover. I don’t think I had ever heard of Miles Davis. After listening to Kind Of Blue, I remember thinking, “Wow, I like this Jazz stuff a lot.” I bought that album and his newest release Star People as soon as I was able to get to a record store.
At the time I first saw the Sketches Of Spain album, I don’t think Gil Evans’ name on the cover even made any impact, if it registered at all. However, as I look back now, I have learned about the dramatic and somewhat unexpected impact Gil Evans had on Miles Davis’ music and on the development of his Birth Of The Cool sound, which distilled into a small group the unique sounds of the Claude Thornhill Orchestra - a band ahead of its time.
In the late 1940s, Thornhill’s band generated little interest in the general public. His orchestra lagged behind the popular Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw Orchestras, in part because Thornhill was not interested in creating a dance band. For example, listen to perhaps Thornhill’s most popular song, the 1941 Columbia version of Snowfall:
For all its static beauty, the song is not really danceable.
In 1941, Gil Evans joined the Claude Thornhill Orchestra until the war took him away. It was during his army duty that Gil Evans discovered the nascent bebop music, to which he was immediately attracted. After his discharge in 1946, he moved to New York and rejoined Thornhill’s band. It would be Gil Evans more adventurous use of Thornhill’s strange tuba and French horn instruments that helped keep Thornhill’s band more relevant in the public eye.
For a good taste of the Claude Thornhill Orchestra in September 1947, with Gil Evans as arranger, listen to this very interesting radio broadcast from the Hotel Pennsylvania, which is the same place Glenn Miller immortalized with his song “Pennsylvania 6-5000” – the phone number of the hotel.
Evans had settled into a basement flat behind a Chinese laundry at 14th West and 35th Street in midtown Manhattan, where the sounds of a more cool jazz began to percolate. It was here that he sparked up an unexpected and lasting friendship with bebopper Miles Davis. Evans wanted to extend the popular bebop sound into new orchestration for Thornhill’s repertoire and Davis was looking to slow down, or perhaps more figuratively, to cool down the hot and hectic jazz scene surrounding him in bebop crazed New York City.
Gil Evans had been looking for Davis’ permission to create a big band arrangement for his song Donna Lee. Davis recalls, “I told him he could do it if he got me a copy of Claude Thornhill’s arrangement of Robbin’s Nest.” It’s interesting that a young bebopper like Davis was interested in that cool sound of Thornhill orchestra. Davis goes on, “He got it for me, and after talking to each other for a while and testing each other out, we found out that I liked the way Gil wrote music and he liked the way I played. We heard sound in the same way.”
Here is Gil Evans’ arrangement of Davis’ Donna Lee from November of 1947:
This meeting sparked a relationship that would yield eleven songs recorded by Davis' nonet over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950. These songs would not be released by Columbia until 1957 under the title Birth Of The Cool. Davis’ nonet was really just a scaled-down version of the Thornhill orchestra in which Evans introduced the bebop sound.
Here’s one of Gil Evans’ arrangements from that album, Boplicity:
While this is certainly not my favorite album from a sound perspective, it clearly was an historically significant album. Unfortunately, Davis failed to capitalize right away on his innovations and it would be another seven years before Davis and Evans would join forces again. In the meantime, Gil Evans continued to work and record. I’d like to feature just a couple personal favorites from this period.
The first is from Helen Merrill’s Dream Of You, recorded in June 1956, with a killer band: Jimmy Cleveland on trombone, Art Farmer on trumpet, Hank Jones on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass, and Joe Morello on drums, to name a few. Here is People Will Say We’re In Love:
The second is from his work with the Teddy Charles Tentet, recorded on the Atlantic label in January 1956 in New York City. Here is You Go To My Head, with another strong band featuring Gigi Gryce on Alto saxophone, J. R. Montrose on tenor saxophone, and Mal Waldron on piano:
In 1957, Miles Davis signed a contract with Columbia Records. For his first release that same year, he chose to feature Gil Evans with a large ensemble. The album they recorded was Miles Ahead. It was the first of their three full-scale orchestral collaborations.
Here’s one more for the road. From Miles Ahead, listen to New Rhumba. I hear Kind Of Blue’s So What in that intro, for sure - listen to the bass.
In the spring of 1959, less than two years after the release of Miles Ahead, Miles Davis would record his masterpiece Kind Of Blue. From the 1940s cool sounds of Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra to the modal sounds of Miles Davis’ 1959 small bands, Jazz had come a long way. It had moved out of the hot and into the cool, where sounds just hang like a cloud….
Next week, On that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dip our paddles into the waters of another great, but lesser known, trumpet player, “the fabulous Blue Mitchell.”
If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey and would like to share this with someone you think might be interested in learning more about our great American art form: Jazz, just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page. Also, if you feel so inclined, become a subscriber to my journey by hitting the “Subscribe” button here:
Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.
Until then, keep on walking….