Birth Of The Cool

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

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

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!)

Anazing

This was a nice listen, especially when I could concentrate on how the instruments interplayed rather than just having it as background music; I’ll definitely listen to it again. I liked how the smooth melodies suddenly shifted into discordance and then smoothly shifted back again. It was interesting later to read about the place of cool jazz in musical history; I can see how this evolved from bebop and big band, since sometimes it sounds like something from one of those genres but then shifts into something different.

Good shite. Pleasant shite. High 3

So cool!

9/10. Brilliant post-bop playing, and great arrangements for a big band. One of the many albums from Miles that spawned entirely new genres. Seminal compositions all around, especially Boplicity and Move.

Really didn't hit for me

It's Miles Davis. It's Birth of the Cool. Maybe it's not Kind of Blue or Round Midnight, but what is? Still super enjoyable.

I mean cmon.. it’s Miles Davis

Did not expect to like it as much as i did, a very warm and exciting album

Not as good as some of the other jazz on this list

I love Miles Davis

Майлз Форевер!!!

Jazzy

Enjoyed, but probably didn’t get the full effect mostly due to my minimal jazz knowledge. Still very enjoyable. 3/5

birth of the drool amirite

Fire 4,0/5

El creador del cool jazz al parecer. Es loco que en su momento no era considerado realmente jazz, que fuese raro pero interesante. Es lo que esperaría de un album de jazz. Está entretenido, pienso revisitarlo mientras estudio o leo capaz.

Very good offering by Miles Davis, but it’s not on the same level for me as Kind of Blue. 4/5 Move: 4 Jeru: 4 Moon Dreams: 3 Venus de Milo: 4 Budo: 4 Deception: 4 Godchild: 4 Boplicity: 4 Rocker: 5 Israel: 4 Rouge: 4

El creador del cool jazz al parecer. Es loco que en su momento no era considerado realmente jazz, que fuese raro pero interesante. Es lo que esperaría de un album de jazz. Está entretenido, pienso revisitarlo mientras estudio o leo capaz.

El creador del cool jazz al parecer. Es loco que en su momento no era considerado realmente jazz, que fuese raro pero interesante. Es lo que esperaría de un album de jazz. Está entretenido, pienso revisitarlo mientras estudio o leo capaz.

Buen álbum, tranquilo, lindo para meter algún momento de lectura durante el día. Un poco soso por momentos, pero en general bastante decente, la última canción levanta bastante el resto. (3.5/5)

Es un conjunto de canciones que no es lo que uno puede llegar a esperar de grabaciones de jazz de los años 40s o 50s, este propone nuevos instrumentos, nuevos ritmos, mas calmos y mas melódicos para el jazz instrumental, lo que constituyen 11 de los 12 tracks, por ultimo, se mantiene la nueva propuesta, pero se le agregan vocales al estilo Broadway, que a mi opinion lo hacen superior al resto. (3,5★/5★)

I don't listen to this type of jazz much, but it's nice. Not that knowledgeable yet to have a favorite.

Increible no haber escuchado antes a Miles David. O quizas si pero sin prestarle atencion. Y como el a muchos otros que estoy dejando estar

Первый джазовый альбом, прослушанный мной не только в рамках этого проекта, но и в принципе первый прослушанный мной целиком джазовый альбом. Впечатление очень зависит от обстановки, в машине чуть не уснул под него, а в напряжённый момент на работе он очень помог успокоиться.

Nice! Don't feel I have much more to contribute x

Honestly I really enjoyed this one, like way more that I thought I would! I do like Jazz, but I've never fully gotten into a whole jazz album without any singing. However this one had me enthralled from the get go and each song was a fun listen! I will absolutely be picking this up when I get the chance!

Cool jazzy vibes. Great to work too

Not my jam.

Pretty good. Definitely above average, even though it's not my favourite Miles Davis album More upbeat than I was expecting

Like this but theres no sing song

its not for me but it isnt bad

tényleg kúl volt

Amúgy kellemes volt. Jó, hogy létezik a műfaj.

:( nem tudom élvezni

A cool szuletese, de nekem kicsit ez hatterzene marad. Kellemes hatterzene. Illetve tudom az egesz albumformatum meg nem jott itt igazan letre, de ez egy compilation 1949-50-es felvetelekkel, nem tudom mennyire van ennek helye a listan. Az utolso szamban levo enek nekem inkabb elvesz. 6/10 Fav: elegge egymasba folytak nekem, nehez barmit kiemelni, legyen Jeru

I feel like I'm meant to like this but just didn't really connect with it. Lovely background music but nothing drawing me in to actually listen to it more deeply.

Yes!

I had no idea until today that this was a compilation album, but that does explain why it sounds so different to Kind of Blue, released just two years later. I’ve tended to mark down albums that shouldn’t be here, other compilations or soundtracks, but this is such a rewarding listen and so different to my usual that I really want to show it some love.

A classic and extremely formative for me. I haven't listened to it in a long long time and forgot how bebop it is.... but how foundational it was to the writing that was about to emerge.

8,5/10

Miles Davis is the only person who can title their album "Birth of the Cool" because he is the coolest dude on the planet. This rocks. Best Song: Jeru Rating: 8/10 Stars: 4

Jazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wonderful

The Birth Of The Cool was exactly that, cool. I enjoyed this, though I generally enjoy a lot of the jazz albums on here. The playing is tight and together, great to hear such talent. Love that stuff like this is included on the list.

botc is like one long soundtrack of what’s it like to live in the city, ‘boplicity’, ‘moon dreams’ and ‘godchild’ were particularly magical to me. pure feel good jazz, what’s there to say more. free palestine

always pleasant but not much more for me.

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.

Certainly cool. Highly impressive jazz. Just not too dynamic. Felt like great background jazz, but not nearly as interesting as Davis’ later feats.

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.

It's Miles Davis. It's Jazz. It's what you would expect. I mean if I would base this purely on whether I like this sort of music or not, it would probably be more of a 2/5, but I have to recognize at least a little bit that this is good.

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

On en redemande !

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 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.