Birth Of The Cool

I like Kind Of Blue better, but I dig this one. Also, fuck Israel, free Palestine

My brain isn't developed enough to understand the music but its fun and cool to listen to

Alright, I had my doubts, but now I’m willing to believe that there was legitimately never anything cool before this album was released.

This is a compilation of tracks recorded and released almost a decade before this record, so it shouldn’t really be on the list? Pedantic admin complaints aside, this is a wonderful collection of short, tight songs (they were all singles hence prior hence the length!) which, whilst nowhere near as exciting as post-heroin Miles records, is still a great listen and I reckon you can hear the roots of Sketches of Spain/Porgy and Bess/Miles Ahead (my fave era of Miles) here, especially in the slower tracks like ‘Moon Dreams’. Of course, I could be speaking nonsense, because despite immersing myself in a lot of jazz over the last few years, it is an endless ocean as deep as it is wide and I don’t think I’ll ever feel qualified to actually say anything of meaning about any of this. (But at least I enjoy it more now!)

Maybe someday I will find my gateway jazz album.

Not as good as KOB but he’s still the goat

Man, this one is universal. Doesn't matter how you feel about jazz.

Good stuff. Nothing that, to me, in 2026, sounds hugely groundbreaking or anything, but just some solid cool jazz.

O God, I am scared but not mad. Things are changing. Jazz is the only genre anymore that doesn't give me a headache. Zach, is this nature's way of converting me? These boys are absolutely INTERTWINED.

For gods sake just do your tuning up before the recording starts....

As jazz goes, pretty good

Very listenable for a Jazz album, I would recommend to everyone

I like it ... but it is basically one big song ... I had it on during work and I didn't even notice when the songs changed. Maybe that's the point? Everything is just a part of the same song. It is the birth of the cool though, they got that right.

Cant believe Cool is already 70! He doesn’t look a day over 60.

Iy's really good. I love Miles's solos and that even with ho much he knows his own are great, he still gives room for other people to solo. I don't really how it's the same drum beat for almost if not all of the songs. Still tuff tho Best song: all (all of them were equally good) Worst song: none 8/10

Full on slaps, to be honest.

I’m no real jazz historian, so I’m sure there’s context and build to this that I don’t truly understand (having Duke Ellington come up a week ago with some classic big band bebop has helped though), but ultimately the thing with good music is it’ll still stand on its own legs to new ears without all that knowledge. And this, this is some really damn good music. The idea of these still-bebop-y styled compositions but moved to a more mellow and cool sound is really engaging for me and remains pretty approachable, and the band are incredibly skilled and on point through all of this. Theres also something to be said for the compilation nature here, where every track (having been a 78 single) is about 3 minutes long so you can get a really nice spread of ideas in this new playground they’re trying to construct. It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise it would be so good and I’d enjoy it, but it’s still pleasant to click with it so much nonetheless.

I dont usually listen to jazz but it was ok overall. There wasnt a song that was standing out for me and sometimes the music gave me scooby doo vibes, which i liked

Best jazz album so far in my journey

C'est du Miles Davis, donc c'est bien.

I don't like jazz, but I liked this more than most. The toot toots seemed a little less random. 2 stars.

Nothing stands out + fuck Israel

Good music is transcendent. This album is not really my style of music at all and probably not something that I would event have gone out looking for. But my on my, this record was fantastic.

You know what, this is some cool jazz. 3.5/5

Back to back Miles Davis. Another solid 4.

Just didn’t connect with this one

OK

Good for jazz I guess, but not for me.

Day 67 (So glad this meme died) This sounds EXACTLY like the type of shit I'd be hearing in Tom & Jerry back in the day. Not complaining. Fav track: Deception

10/14/2026 honestly, jazz is just hard to review as it is more of a vibey feeling experience, it's fun though. you sometimes get frantic pieces that make you feel like you're a character in a black and white cartoon jumping around. other times you get a typical city soundtrack feel to it. i don't necessarily hate any of it, but i also wouldn't go out of my way to re-listen to it. Notable Tracks: - Move - Jeru

I see Miles Davis, I give him 5 stars. It’s simple.

I mean what can I said it's good, smooth, cool jazz. Favorite Song: Godchild Score: 86/100

Very cool. Great background music to get an activity done. Vibing hard.

그냥 재즈

moon dreams made me levitate oh my rouge is also peak i like this (subtract the track name being israel) solid probs listen while im reading or studying lit

I love miles davis Favourite tracks: moon dreams, jeru, rouge

jazz ahh jazz

I like jazz a lot and I don’t think I’ll ever understand it

I feel like I'm supposed to like it. It was good but did not make me pay attention to it

This was cool and really enjoyed listening but there have been better jazz albums in here

For some reason Miles does it in a way that other jazz albums on this list don't. It's just... better. Really enjoy all 4 of his albums on here. This is more standard-y than his later experimental work but I love it. Standouts: Move, Jeru, Godchild, Budo

Cool to the bones

This must be so great if you like jazz (I don't) 😭

Not my normal preference but this was an easy listening voyage into a rarely experienced world for me. Cool is a good summary.

I just really enjoyed the whole atmosphere of this record. So relaxing to listen! I wish I knew more about Jazz and Im looking forward to listening the other Miles Davis records on this list.

It’s hard for me to be discerning with jazz. I don’t really know what is considered good or not. The free form of it all didn’t bother me as much on this, probably because of the shorter song length.

Great album. What a legend.

I wish I was this cool.

Probably the first thing one can say about Birth of the Cool is that it is not an album in the traditional sense and so really shouldn’t be in this book, although I’m glad it is. My understanding as a very casual and uneducated jazz listener is that in the ’30s and ’40s there was this popular, dance-oriented swing-style jazz that was perfect for slow dancing and dinner parties and general audiences but that was often very lame. Then younger, hipper jazz guys came along who wanted to freak out the squares and created Bebop, which was basically the punk rock of jazz. It took jazz in all kinds of more complicated directions harmonically and rhythmically, and it wasn’t made to be danced to so much as listened to intentionally. Bebop didn’t kill off swing-style jazz amongst general audiences, but it became the dominant style amongst real jazz fans, critics and tastemakers, and Miles Davis made a name for himself playing alongside some of its greatest practitioners. But then Miles and others started to envision what might come next. He worked with arranger Gil Evans and a small group of like-minded musicians to develop a style of jazz that retained some of Bebop’s harmonic sophistication while becoming quieter, more spacious, more arranged and, for lack of a better term, cooler. This was not really a return to the old swing music—which had never really gone away—so much as an attempt to figure out what jazz musicians could do after Bebop without simply making Bebop faster and more complicated. It incorporated swing, but also classical music and parts of a variety of styles of music that had never been put together in quite that way before. Miles Davis’s nonet recorded twelve songs in this vein for Capitol in 1949 and 1950, and the resulting 78s didn’t sell particularly well, but critics and musicians heard them. It was like the famous quote about the Velvet Underground from Brian Eno, where only five thousand people ever bought the album, but every single one of them started a band. The recordings compiled on Birth of the Cool became enormously influential on the musicians who developed cool jazz, particularly the West Coast sound of the early ’50s. Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck and a bunch of other people took those ideas in their own directions. Eventually Capitol gathered Miles’s ’49/’50 recordings together, and in 1957 released them as Birth of the Cool, by which point the musical ideas Miles and his collaborators had been working on years earlier had become a recognized style that had found an audience. Which brings us back to the problem with this being on a list of “albums.” It wasn’t really an album at all when the music was recorded, and the songs had already been released individually and on other compilations before they were collected under this title. This is a collection of singles that were turned into a compilation because they were recognized years later as having been foundational to a new style that had become popular. The title makes it sound like Miles sat down one day in 1949 and said, “I think I will invent a new style of music called Cool Jazz,” when in reality he was one of several musicians trying to figure out where jazz could go after Bebop. Compiling his singles into a compilation and slapping the title “Birth of the Cool” on it was clever marketing and not completely inaccurate, but it is a little too on the nose for my taste. One thing that is so interesting about the origins of this “album” is that this pattern was repeated multiple times by Miles Davis. This was just one of the times when he proved himself incredibly good at figuring out where music was going before everyone else did. Miles Davis repeatedly entered an existing musical language, figured out where he thought it could go next, realized that vision, and then moved on to something else before everybody else had finished copying what he had been doing years before. Cool jazz had its time when it was fresh and innovative and then it was done badly enough times by enough hacks that eventually young newcomers had to come along and kill it off and make something of their own, which is more or less what happens to every new musical style. And I think that pattern can get in the way of appreciating these songs. When you hear something done badly a billion times, it can be hard to appreciate when it’s being done the best it’s ever been done in all of human history. It is kind of crazy that the preceding sentence could apply to any number of styles that Miles Davis either worked in or invented during his career. I love Getz and Baker and Brubeck and cool jazz generally when it’s done well, but Miles brought something to it that no one else did. He embodies the style perfectly—possibly because everyone else copied him for a decade—but there’s something extra present in his best work that I can’t really identify that sets it apart. What a singular talent. We as a species are lucky to have had Miles Davis in our midst for a time and Birth of the Cool is a compilation that everyone should hear, even if it isn’t really an “album.”

Nice.

Swings hard with the medium size band. You can hear all the melodic elements that are later present with the smaller group where they'll be given the space to stretch. It's kept tight here adn makes each tune very approachable. Great album.

Album jazz classique

No es lo mio

nice solid jazz stuff. those cats were cooking.

I’m not sure if I’d know like a five star jazz album, but I liked this one, it was a quick, tight collection of 3-4ish minute pieces. I appreciate the it didn’t have the repetitive self-indulgent nature of some other jazz works.

As promised: cool! Feels nostalgic for me, like something my dad listened to. Evokes a certain moodiness that I quite enjoy.

(8.3)

A genius, Miles Davis. "Move" and "Deception" were my favorites.

One of those albums I wish were three times longer.

Pretty good for heavy horn jazz

It might be a "victim of his own success" type of situation, because I know he has stuff that surpasses this.

Awesome compilation. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more Miles Davis on here, but kinda funny that I’ve seen this twice on this site now. Really hope Bitches Brew is somewhere in this collection.

Miles at his peak! Not my fav go-to Miles so it has to be a 4.

Good jazz, just not the kind that I listen to. Lost a lot of momentum after Venus de Milo, it just ended up being background noise.

3-4 Sterne Verfüge leider über zu wenig Wissen um dies richtig zu beurteilen. Es ist schwer, da Jazz für mich immer in den Hintergrund rückt wenn man etwas anderes dabei tut. Aber alleine im Hintergrund fühle ich mich beschwingter die Dinge zu tun. Ich hätte gern mal zu dieser Zeit solche Musikakte live miterlebt.

i can't do this

Classic

I don't know why this happens but when I listen to this type of music all I can think about is it being in movie. My brain can't move past that to enjoy it more.

I wish I was cool enough to get really into this. Maybe it's the style/era, but it felt like it was the background for a goofy montage in a 1950s comedy. I liked it well enough, but it didn't get me excited.

Loved this album! It was so refreshing a listen!

I quite enjoy the little padded brush drum thing they do in jazz. It's like there are palm trees swaying to the rhythm. I probably should give this higher cuz it was super influential at the time but I lack the context. However I did enjoy it for what it is.

It's becoming a common thread among the jazz albums on this list, the significance of them just goes over my head. Fortunately, this doesn't prevent me from enjoying them at some level.

Pretty cool

I get the context and he sounds amazing... but this was kinda boring. Not my cup of tea

very fun to study with, great jazz music

I enjoyed this, but I don't know anything about jazz. Kind of all runs together. Great sounds though.

Big band jazz, semi-relatable.

i like jazz

i like jazz

Good old Miles. Always good to listen to.

It is essential listening. Easily a perfect record and one of the most "important" recordings of all time. Miles changed the face of jazz with this record and everyone should listen to it. Then listen to it again. And again.

Its still jazz but it not too bad

Very good album for a Friday morning. Not as intense as other Davis albums I’ve heard before, but it’s still cool.

This album documents the birth of the cool. We’re not sure who the mother is, but Davis is definitely the father.

There's really not much that I can say about the Prince of Darkness that hasn't been said millions of times. This album definitely deserves to be on this list; it just flows so beautifully and there isn't a bad song on it. By shifting away from the frantic pace of bebop, Davis teamed up with arrangers like Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan to give birth to the cool jazz subgenre, using a nine-piece band to craft a smooth, beautifully structured sound. 8/10

By now I know: all the Miles Davis is getting 5’s. 5 Boolean: True

Giving 1s to known abusers. Otherwise album is lovely.

Much of Jazz is like the language the Sims use - I can recognise it but it doesn't mean anything to me. Is this good jazz? I really don't know. All I know is it didn't make me sit up and take interest at any point and became just the backing track to my day. 2*

This genuinely reminded me to take my ADHD medication, make of that what you will

This is a bit before my favorite era. This came out in 57 but the material was originally recorded in 1949 and 50. I really start getting into Miles closer to his Columbia... And all of my favorite albums of his are on that label. I do like this a good bit. My knowledge of jazz is not the best, but I can tell he's stretching the bounds of the swing and be-bop sounds of the time. This album though seem to mainly point his beginning of his journey to cool and modal jazz. And also for Capitol to capitalize on Davis' growing fame Great collection but not totally my favorite era of his (8.1) ★★★★

A bit too much bebop influences for my liking here. 3.5 stars

Maybe I'm an uncultured Philistine, but I like this a lot better than Miles' later experimental work. Not being a huge jazz guy, this is easier for me to understand what people like about jazz. It's digestible and I feel like some cool dude from the 1950s while listening to it. 4 stars.

A cool album. As Abed from Community might say, a “cool cool cool” album.

Awesome !

nice for working 4/5

Enjoyed, not the right person to rate jazz as I am not too knowledgeable.

Loved this

Непогано, рідно слухаю джаз, але це справді добра музика

I mean, how can you knock jazz? Loved this project. It's a solid, cohesive, and structured project from Miles Davis done very well by the greatest jazz musician of all time. This isn't close to Miles' best record but that testament goes to show how great this record really is.

Enjoyed this more than the previous Miles Davis record we got, helped by the much shorter song length, but still left me fairly cold. Rating: 2.5