Birth of the Cool: History and Key Facts

Birth of the Cool is a compilation album by the American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis. It was released in February or March 1957 on Capitol Records. It compiles twelve tracks recorded by Davis's nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950.

Featuring unusual instrumentation and several notable musicians, the music consisted of innovative arrangements influenced by Afro-American music and classical music techniques, and marked a major development in post-bebop jazz. As the title suggests, these recordings are considered seminal in the history of cool jazz. Most of them were originally released in the 10-inch 78-rpm format and are all approximately three minutes long.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Birth of the Cool by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.