Birth of "cool"

[medjuck]

The LA Times this morning reprinted an article from the Baltimore Sun about the use of the word "cool". I couldn't get past the 3rd paragraph:

"What is the reason for "cool's" longevity? That's an easy question for Keith Covington, jazz expert and owner of the New Haven Lounge in Baltimore. As long as Miles Davis' classic 1949 work, "Birth of the Cool," remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, "cool" will stay cool, he says. "

News to me.

[JSngry]

Lester Young generally gets credit for the word.

And doesn;t he mean "Kind Of Cool"?

[ghost of miles]

Hard to believe that BIRTH OF THE COOL, great as it is, is the bestselling jazz album of alltime. Wouldn't it be KIND OF BLUE or TIME OUT? Or--blahhh--one of the Kenny G releases, if count such things we must?

[Chuck Nessa]

Source is a paper in Baltimore - too close to DC to be reliable! Just read Weezie's posts.

[Lazaro Vega]

I'm too much of a newbie to know Weezie...but the sales numbers and a report on the on-going sales of Kind of Blue were in Ashley Kahn's book about the session. Huge.

[Adam]

The LA Times this morning reprinted an article from the Baltimore Sun about the use of the word "cool". I couldn't get past the 3rd paragraph:

"What is the reason for "cool's" longevity? That's an easy question for Keith Covington, jazz expert and owner of the New Haven Lounge in Baltimore. As long as Miles Davis' classic 1949 work, "Birth of the Cool," remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, "cool" will stay cool, he says. "

News to me.

I read it as well, and was going to raise the same question. I think he is just plain wrong when it comes to the Birth of the Cool.

[BruceH]

I'd say the word "cool" in the non-temperature sense was probably kept alive for the majority of Americans in the 1970's by the Fonz.

Aaayyyyy.

[mikeweil]

Lester Young generally gets credit for the word.

Not only that, he was the incarnation of coolness! The inventor of being cool. The opening scene of "Jammin' the Blues" where you realize it is his hat you've been viewing from the top only after he lifts his head, and the way he sits on his stool and plays his saxophone - that's as cool as can be! And the contrast to "hot" Illinois Jacquet, after he played his coolly swinging solo ...

[mikeweil]

Lemme quote from Clarece Major's "Juba to Jive - A Dictionary of African-American Slang":

COOL: "gone out" (Mandingo); fast (Mandingo).

The number of expression going back to African languages, especially Mandingo and Wolof, is amazing:

Jive

Hip or Hep

Dig

Okay

Jazz

and countless others ...