Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

I doubt that _Birth of the Cool_ is the "best-selling jazz album of
all time".  I'd've thought another Miles Davis album, _Kind of Blue_
(1958), might be, and some references on the Web suggest that this is so.
In both cases it might just be that they're historically important album
recordings that happen to still be in print.  _Kind of Blue_ *is* the most
influential jazz album ever recorded, certainly.

Anyway, the use of "cool" in the _Birth of the Cool_ title (imposed
retroactively in the mid-'50s) was a specific reference to the ephemeral
early '50s jazz style called "cool jazz" rather than a general use of
slang "cool".

The article quotes something called the Online Etymology Dictionary as
saying that cool meaning "fashionable" is "said to have been popularized
in jazz circles by tenor saxophonist Lester Young".  Oy! This almost
certainly represents a misunderstanding either by the article writer or
whoever's responsible for that Online Etymology Dictionary, which seems to
be yet another dubious-value shoddy-scholarship sort of online resource
(NTTAWWT). Lester "Pres" Young, one of the most important swing-era
musicians, popularized, in a musician sense, the "cool" style of playing
saxophone (minimal vibrato, emotionally restrained), which was later taken
up in particular in the '50s by two saxophonists closely associated with
the "cool jazz" style, Stan Getz and Lee Konitz (Konitz's playing was so
"cool" that it was said to approximate a sine wave).  I guess it's
possible that Pres was the first to link the slang use of "cool" to this
style of playing saxophone, but where's the evidence?

Somehow "cool" went from meaning "admirably nonchalant" (a meaning it
still has) to also meaning "admirably hip".  I don't know when that
occurred, but I would guess that it post-dates (though probably resulting
from) the use of "cool" in jazz during the 1940s.  IOW, when Pres was
playing saxophone in the 1930s and 1940s, "cool" *wasn't* used to mean
"fashionable".

The OED seems to get this right (except that they fail to acknowledge the
post-1974 importance of Fonzie [hi Jesse!]).  For "Applied to jazz music:
restrained or relaxed in style", their first reference is Charlie (Bird)
Parker's recording of a tune called "Cool Blues" in 1947 (so it's nice to
see that the OED uses titles of recordings).  For "Hence, characteristic
of those who favor 'cool' music; relaxed; unemotional; also used loosely
as a general term of approval", their earliest cite is 1948 (referring to
bebop people using "Cool" as an expression of approval).  I'd quarrel
with that definition -- at least originally it was "characteristic of
those who *play* 'cool' music", since this was first and foremost a
reference to a style of musical performance, and not to a style of
*listener*.

I'm familiar with the tune "Cool Blues".  The melody is simpler,
less angular and show-offy than typical bebop originals, including other
blues tunes by Bird; that could be the reason he picked that title.
Ira Gitler says that a faster-tempo recording of it was released under
the title "Hot Blues".