Cool

I want to talk to you about the Prez.  No, not Mr. Barack Obama, I mean Lester Young.  The President of cool jazz. And the president of cool, period.  Not only was his music and playing style influential, his style of being was influential.  It was Lester Young who gave Billie Holiday her nickname "Lady Day."  You know how people refer to money as bread?  He may not have been the first to use that expression, but he was the one to make it popular.  When offered a gig, his response would be: "How does the bread smell?"

Lester Young was a saxophonist, primarily tenor, who played with many of the big name big bands of the 1940s and 1950s, including the Fletcher Henderson and Count Basie Orchestras.  He was hired into Henderson's band to replace Coleman Hawkins, another tenor great, and the result was a collision of styles.  Hawk played strongly, fiercely, and hot.  Young's style was more "cool", which, if you think about it enough, becomes a contradiction in terms.  Jazz, as an art form, is a "hot" style of music.  Rambunctious, unpredictable, bouncing all over the place.  The "cool" style is more relaxed, still "hot" in the sense of ideas and integrity (and it isn't parlor music, a decidedly non-hot kind of music), but not in an in-your-face kind of way. 

All of this comes to mind because I'm reading an interesting book about the "cool."  The Birth and Death of the Cool by Ted Gioia begins with a discussion that deals with anything but jazz music.  He points out to the reader that cool was a way to create a lifestyle for oneself, which people in the Depression era didn't have the luxury to do.  To be cool is to not care too much, but in a highly calculated way.  Gioia argues that Bix Beiderbecke was the first truly cool jazzman.  Not in the musical sense, but in the way he carried himself.  Bix spent his short life in pursuit of his craft, while simultaneously doing everything in his power to sabotage his success.  Bix never learned to read music very well, which became a handicap during his stint with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and he didn't really bother to learn how to properly play his cornet.  But, still, he went after music like nothing else.  Witness accounts tell us how he wouldn't let the other band members "have any fun" because he wanted to experiment with chords and different sounds for the section.

So how does Bix bring us back to Lester Young?  One of Young's biggest influences was the saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, who often played with Bix.  "Tram" as he was called, played a C-melody sax, which puts the instrument between an alto and a tenor.  The C-melody lacks the power of a tenor, but still produces a heavier tone than the alto.  I'm not certain whether it was the horn or the man playing the horn that influenced Young more.  Maybe both.  But the influence was strong and Young's style was in direct opposition to what the Basie band was accustomed to.  But even after repeated attempts to have him listen to recordings of Hawk in the hopes that he would soak up some of the older player's style, he refused to change the way he played.  And it worked for him.  He became a leading soloist and highly regarded player in his time and since.  That's really cool.