- 11 years ago
Documentary/Music - 1959 - B&W - 59 Min.
1959 was the seismic year jazz broke away from complex bebop music to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express. It was also a pivotal year for America: the nation was finding its groove, enjoying undreamt-of freedom and wealth social, racial and upheavals were just around the corner and jazz was ahead of the curve.
Stars: Miles Davis, The Dave Brubeck Quartet
1959 was the seismic year jazz broke away from complex bebop music to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express. It was also a pivotal year for America: the nation was finding its groove, enjoying undreamt-of freedom and wealth social, racial and upheavals were just around the corner and jazz was ahead of the curve.
Stars: Miles Davis, The Dave Brubeck Quartet
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00In 1959, four major jazz albums were made that changed music forever.
00:10Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, Dave Brubeck's Time Out, Charles Mingus, Mingus Arm, and
00:19Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come.
00:231959 was a very important jazz year for me and my own development and the evolution of
00:30jazz up until now and beyond.
00:35It was a year that saw the biggest selling jazz album and single of all time.
00:45Time Out was going where I envisioned jazz should go.
00:49I said, boy, this is fine, this is going to work.
00:56Jazz was pushed to new heights of innovation, beauty, and groove.
01:05You know, the things would swing, yeah, it'd lift you right out of your seat.
01:12It was the end of the Eisenhower era, 2.5 children, and the white picket fence.
01:18In 1959, jazz is reaching white America in a big way.
01:30Jazz musicians didn't really join the civil rights movement.
01:34The civil rights movement actually joined them.
01:40And with Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, 1959 saw the birth of a whole new
01:46free jazz movement.
01:48When you talk about somebody speaking through their instrument, like actually hear it as a
01:55human, that's Ornette.
01:59He changed everything.
02:011959 was a phenomenon.
02:03It was on another level.
02:07That's all you can say.
02:17Miles, where are you going to work now?
02:21Right here.
02:22Okay, because if you move back, we don't get you.
02:25When I play though, I'm going to raise my horn a little bit.
02:27Okay, just you four guys in this, right, Miles?
02:30Fine.
02:31Ready?
02:32Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is the biggest-selling jazz album ever made, shifting over 5 million
02:50copies.
02:51It regularly tops best jazz album polls, as well as featuring high in lists of the greatest
02:57albums of any category.
03:00Kind of Blue continues to convert more people to jazz than any other recording, all this
03:0650 years after it was released.
03:09Yeah.
03:10Let's hear a little bit of it.
03:13Right.
03:14Okay.
03:19When they walked into the studio, they did not see this as their ultimate statement.
03:25They did not see this as the birth of a classic.
03:28It was a session that was scheduled for that day.
03:31After Cannonball, you play again, and then we'll come in and end it.
03:34They go over by the piano, and he's giving them instructions about the tunes we're going
03:40to play, you know?
03:41So, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of music.
03:43I didn't have any music at all.
03:45You know, just a piece of manuscript paper with some chord scribble on it.
03:49Miles tells me, make this sound like it's floating.
03:54Here we go.
03:56No title.
04:01Start again, please.
04:03Sorry.
04:04We got to watch it because the noise is all the way through this.
04:07This is so quiet.
04:08First time I did it, the engineer said, the drums are making like a surface noise, so
04:12Miles hollered back at him and says, oh, that's part of it.
04:17All that goes with it.
04:18What?
04:19All that goes with it.
04:21All right.
04:23Amazingly, Miles and his band spent a total of just seven hours recording Kind of Blue,
04:29all but one of the tracks, our first takes.
04:34Any time they completed a tune, that's what they were going to stick with.
04:38You know, it really is propelled by the idea that first thought is best thought.
04:44Try again, Irvin.
04:54We would be hard pressed to find any album opener that can compare to the opening of So What.
05:02This misty, unclear idea of where is the music going?
05:07Where are we?
05:10The intro for So What was totally improvised, had no time reference, no beat yet.
05:24And it's the piano and the bass sort of having this little conversation, and out of this
05:30musical cloud comes the riff, the grand riff, the one that says, So What.
05:40And then just when the energy is sort of like getting to the point where it needs to be
05:46kicked up a notch, Jimmy Cobb comes in with this incredible cymbal crash.
05:51When we got to the bridge, I was like, you know what?
05:54I'm going to be here.
05:56I'm going to be here.
05:58I'm going to be here.
06:00I'm going to be in the middle.
06:02I'm going to be here.
06:04I'm going to be here.
06:06with this incredible cymbal crash.
06:09When we got to the place where the solos were supposed to start, I hit the cymbal and I
06:15thought I had overplayed it for the room.
06:18I thought I had hit it too hard.
06:20But bang, it hits.
06:27You know, you can't plan on stuff like that happening.
06:32As soon as the solo kicks off, so simple, almost like a whispered confession by someone
06:41very intimate to you.
07:06When Miles did Kind of Blue, it opened up a whole new direction in jazz, a more introspective,
07:14a new way of thinking about the creation of jazz and the creation of jazz compositions.
07:25Part of Kind of Blue's enormous influence on music is the legacy of the band members.
07:31Many of them went on to become leaders in their own right, like saxophone virtuoso John
07:36Coltrane.
07:44But Kind of Blue is defined by Miles' incredibly hip trumpet sound.
07:57He had this sound that was kind of like a haunting kind of voice.
08:07It was really individual, very unique, very special.
08:12The way he plays, sometimes it makes you feel life so deeply that you can almost cry, you
08:21know.
08:23It didn't really sound like a trumpet anymore.
08:49Miles' trumpet technique on Kind of Blue was something he'd painstakingly developed
08:53since he first hit the scene in the late 1940s.
08:58Back then, the music had been changing.
09:06In the 1940s, if you were a player, if you were an instrumentalist who was really starting
09:11to, you know, try and make the move, bebop was the music.
09:26Bebop was a fast and frenetic style of jazz.
09:29It reflected jazz musicians' desire to be accepted as virtuoso artists, masters of their
09:36instruments.
09:38Bebop's greatest exponent was Charlie Parker.
09:51Miles Davis is a very precocious musical youngster.
09:55What he really wants to learn is bebop.
09:57And where he's going to learn it is on 52nd Street and up in Minton's, up in Harlem, playing
10:04with the bebop leader of that time, Charlie Parker.
10:22Aged only 18, Miles became a member of Charlie Parker's band.
10:34As Miles traded solos with his hero, he was learning about bebop from the source.
10:52Miles is not going to be a sideband for long.
10:56Miles, like many of the other musicians of that day, were trying to deal with the language
11:01of bebop.
11:02Where do we take bebop?
11:06Miles said, the music has become cluttered.
11:15Part of his genius as a musician was that he edited what he heard Charlie Parker play.
11:21So if Charlie Francis used 10 notes to make a certain kind of a statement, Miles Davis
11:28might figure out how to use three.
11:34Miles used what they call the harmonic bond.
11:38You get this note that nobody expects to hit, and it has a great, greater power than just
11:44running up to the notice another kind of a way.
11:52There's a connection, a connective, between these four artists, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck,
11:57and Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman, in that they're all dealing with bebop, and
12:03the continuation of bebop.
12:06Where do we take this language?
12:07What do we do with it?
12:21Another direction jazz took in 1959 was the rhythmic experimentation of pianist Dave Brubeck's
12:28Time Out.
12:31A highly unusual record, each track is in a different tempo and time signature.
12:43The single, Take Five, is in 5-4 time, and built around a drum solo.
12:52Yet it rose up the pop charts, becoming the best-selling jazz 45 ever released.
13:02Brubeck had spent years building the lineup of his quartet that would go on to record
13:07Time Out.
13:11I put together, gradually, this dream group, because some bass players and some drummers
13:19didn't want to play in different time signatures, didn't want to follow where it went.
13:28But Take Five drummer Joe Morello was originally unhappy coming into a band dominated by Brubeck
13:35and saxophonist Paul Desmond.
13:38On the marquee, on any kind of sign, it would say the Dave Brubeck Quartet featuring Paul
13:43Desmond.
13:44And the other guys were nothing.
13:45You could have been zilch, you know?
13:47I said, Joe, I'll feature you.
13:51So the first night he joined, I gave him a drum solo.
14:07I did the drum solo, and the place went wild, and the people just stood up and clapped and
14:22all this nonsense.
14:23Paul Desmond, in the middle of the solo, he just walks off the stand and runs in the dressing
14:30room.
14:31And Paul said, either he goes or I go.
14:36And I said, Paul, he's not going.
14:39Which was a shock, you know?
14:41See, he was a star in the group, not Dave, it was Paul.
14:45Well, he felt that way anyway.
14:48He didn't talk to me for about five minutes, you know?
14:58Okay, now we've got to work on the ending.
15:00Did I play too many things for you?
15:02No.
15:04I sat in the crossfire between these two wonderful players, keeping everything going and giving
15:12in or not giving in.
15:18And that quartet just started making real headway.
15:23By the time they signed to Columbia Records in the mid-50s, the Dave Brubeck Quartet were
15:37one of America's top jazz bands.
15:40His music was easily acceptable to the average person.
15:44It was not too complicated, and the group was quite appealing, because here you had
15:52four all-American young boys to watch as well as to listen to.
15:58Dave was quite easy to sell to middle America, because he looked like middle America.
16:02He talked like middle America.
16:04He was a nice guy that you're glad your daughter is going out with.
16:22As Brubeck's success widened, parts of the jazz community accused him of being not only
16:32a sellout, but effectively a racist who diluted black music for mass consumption.
16:43Jazz came out of black America.
16:45I mean, later, of course, white America catches up, and it always does.
16:52But there definitely was a resentment amongst black musicians regarding Dave Brubeck.
17:03In the 50s, the people who actually got successful from cool jazz were primarily white musicians.
17:10See, he had broken into another audience that nobody really had.
17:15That's when people started getting mad at him.
17:19The thing about Dave is kind of strange for a guy who's light years away from a racist, right?
17:27Who's light years away from a commercial guy.
17:31Who doesn't make recordings with any intention of pandering to the public, right?
17:36But the public likes him.
17:38Brubeck himself was more concerned with fine-tuning the rhythm section of his quartet
17:43and tackling his ideas about where jazz should be headed.
17:49And then Eugene Wright joined us.
17:53And finally, I had this dream group.
17:59But the addition of bassist Eugene Wright didn't pass unnoticed
18:03when they toured universities in the southern states of America.
18:09We were playing in a university, and they said,
18:13you can't go on stage with an African-American.
18:18And I said, well, why not?
18:20And they said, well, you can't go on stage with an African-American.
18:25And I said, well, then we're not going on stage.
18:28And then the students were stamping on the floor up above the dressing room.
18:35And the louder and wilder it got,
18:39the more concerned the president of the college was getting.
18:43So he told me, you can go on,
18:47but you have to put your bass player way in the back
18:52where they won't be too noticeable.
18:59When we walked on stage, the audience just went wild.
19:05They were so happy.
19:08The second tune, I told Eugene, your microphone's broke.
19:13Come out here and play your solo and use my speaker's mic in front of the band.
19:20Eugene didn't know how I was plotting all this.
19:24He came out, and we tore that place up.
19:27Oh, it was so wonderful.
19:34The classic lineup of the Dave Brubeck Quartet
19:37that would go on to record Time Out was now in place.
19:50Dave Brubeck Quartet
20:09Bass player and composer Charles Mingus
20:12saw the question of how to take jazz forward in a different way.
20:17Mingus had risen through the ranks,
20:19playing in the bands of jazz legends like Louis Armstrong,
20:23Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker.
20:26But for the notoriously opinionated and hot-tempered Mingus,
20:30jazz wasn't a calendar history of styles
20:33so much as an ever-present now.
20:41Charles Mingus had a very strong sense that there was no past,
20:47there was no present, there was no future.
20:49All of the time was alive at the same moment.
20:59He was a great, great thinker about music.
21:02He didn't buy anything about that, you know,
21:06a style lasted from 1920 to 1930.
21:09Mingus didn't buy that.
21:12His thing was that if it was good then, it's good now.
21:17He wanted the freedom to play in, to write in,
21:21to encourage his musicians to know how to improvise in every style.
21:37In 1959, Mingus recorded and released Mingus Ah Um.
21:42It was one of four albums he made that year,
21:45which is not unusual in this prolific artist's long career.
21:49But Mingus Ah Um was a tightly focused masterwork.
22:05The title of the album sounds like a stutter
22:08before Wally's getting himself together to make his grand statement.
22:12You know, what's that about?
22:16What's really, really devastating about Ah Um is the consistency.
22:21Tune by tune by tune.
22:23I mean, it's Mingus at his best.
22:26Mingus was digging deep into that roots thing
22:29with that incredible opening track.
22:31Better get it in your soul.
22:33It's like a gospel choir.
22:35It's like a Pentecostal performance on a Wednesday night prayer meeting.
22:43But the incredible magic of it is not just the influences.
22:48It's how Mingus works it all together
22:51and makes it into its own new thing.
23:13Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
23:15Remember, no applause and keep it down.
23:17Your drinks, ice and your glasses, and don't rain the cash register.
23:21You got it covered? All right.
23:42He had these enormous hands,
23:45and that made it possible for him to do certain things technically
23:50that just other bass players couldn't do.
23:52In fact, he was one of the greatest bassists in jazz.
23:55Well, he was one of the greatest players of the bass period.
24:02I can hear him now.
24:05He's powerful.
24:07Powerful. He used to shut up when he played.
24:13Wow.
24:18Charlie Mingus was a big man
24:21with a big talent and a big temper.
24:25And people bugged him in the audience for some reason.
24:29Someone did. He got very angry, took his bass,
24:32and he smashed it through the light up there and broke it.
24:36The light's still there, the Mingus light.
24:39That's what it's become.
24:43He ripped the front door off once,
24:47and some little gal this big dragged it home, as I recall.
25:00They say a lot of musicians never played better in their life
25:04than when they played with Mingus because he was so demanding,
25:07and he used everything.
25:09He used anger, he used insults, he used flattery,
25:13whatever he could use, he would fire musicians
25:16and hire them back, you know, 20 minutes later.
25:19Nothing was out of bounds.
25:24He wanted you to understand his, play his music
25:28and be yourself in it.
25:30So often on a nightclub stand he would stop and say to somebody,
25:34you're just, you're not playing yourself, you're playing notes.
25:38Mingus was playing in this little club on West 4th Street,
25:41and I went into the club.
25:43There was an argument on the bandstand, they weren't even playing,
25:46and I heard Mingus like yelling at somebody,
25:48and it turned out to be the piano player.
25:51Mingus put his arm inside the piano,
25:54and he grabbed the strings and pulled them out
25:59with one fist.
26:02I said, man, it's time for me to get out of here.
26:05I'd never seen anything like that in my life.
26:09Well, I'm going to shoot it.
26:11gunshot
26:15A gun.
26:17People are always telling me stories I don't want to hear
26:21about moments of Charles' volatility or things that took place,
26:25and didn't take place, they did.
26:27And Charles created scenes, he was called Jez's angry man,
26:31and he had plenty to be angry about.
26:34There was a lot to confront in those days for a man
26:38of his sensitivity and his sensibility and his talent,
26:42and unrecognized in many places
26:46merely because he had the wrong skin color.
26:49He wasn't dark enough and he wasn't light enough.
26:52He said, well, he called himself a mongrel or a mutt.
26:57music
27:05Like many jazz artists,
27:07Mingus was an extraordinary player and improviser.
27:10But with Mingus A'am, he began to assume his position
27:14as one of jazz's greatest composers.
27:17I love Self-Portrait in Three Colors,
27:20a little through composed piece without any solos,
27:23a little gem, beautiful, this multifaceted composition.
27:42Charles once said that he was, through his music,
27:47trying to express who he was, and he said the reason
27:50it was difficult is because he was changing all the time.
27:54But through his music, you hear every, you hear the fear,
27:58you hear the spirituality, the tenderness, the passion.
28:02Everything that he was comes out in his music.
28:13In 1959, Ornette Coleman made his spectacular musical statement
28:18in one quantum leap with the audaciously titled
28:22The Shape of Jazz to Come.
28:29But before he formed his quartet, Coleman, based in Los Angeles,
28:34had trouble finding anyone who was interested
28:37in his wildly unorthodox music.
28:49I went over to this club by MacArthur Park on Wilshire
28:54called The Hague, and Jerry Mulligan was playing there.
28:58They started their first set, and after they began to play,
29:03a guy came in and asked if he could sit in.
29:07He got up on the bandstand and proceeded to take out his horn,
29:12and the horn was white, it was plastic, you know.
29:17I'd never seen a plastic horn before, you know.
29:21This guy started to play, it was like, you know,
29:25the heavens opened up for me because I saw
29:28and I heard something that I'd been feeling.
29:38To me, they were playing as if the music was written.
29:43When they were improvising, it sounds like,
29:46oh, they have already learned that, you know.
29:49So I said, I don't want to play like that,
29:52I want to play directly from something that inspired me.
29:55And they said, what are you doing?
29:57I said, I'm improvising.
29:59They said, you ain't playing shit.
30:01You can't play like that.
30:03I said, play like what?
30:05The way you're playing.
30:07And all of a sudden, Jerry Mulligan asked him to stop.
30:11He stopped and got off the bandstand
30:14and went to the back door.
30:17So I rushed through the crowd trying to reach him,
30:20and by the time I got to the back door,
30:23he disappeared down the alley, he was gone.
30:26Blown away by Ornette's playing,
30:29Charlie Hayden soon tracked him down.
30:32I said, I heard you play the other night, man.
30:35You sounded so brilliant.
30:37He said, thank you.
30:39Not many people tell me that.
30:41And I said, man, I just wish that we could play music together sometime.
30:45And he said, well, what about now?
30:48And so we went to his apartment, that's how I met him,
30:52and we played and played and played,
30:55and we want to stay in there 3 or 4 days, I don't know.
30:59So that's when the quartet started.
31:04There are a bunch of young players,
31:06players who are just starting to break out,
31:08and whose minds and approaches are still flexible enough
31:11that Ornette can work with them.
31:29I never worried about chords, melodies, or keys.
31:33Only sound.
31:35And the thing about it, there's only 12 notes
31:39that's satisfying the whole world.
31:4212 notes that's satisfying the whole world.
31:45I said, oh, man.
31:47And then I realized that notes don't have a style.
31:51Either you make something out of it, or you don't.
31:58Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come
32:02didn't initially make the bold impression
32:05it has done in the years since 1959.
32:13First, I didn't know what to make of it.
32:15I didn't know which pocket to put it in,
32:17because I hadn't heard anything quite like that.
32:21It was a new, far-out approach.
32:29The Shape of Jazz to Come is definitely an audacious title.
32:34You know, it's putting yourself out there
32:37and saying, you know, this is where jazz is going.
32:42Lonely Woman has been a favorite song of mine and Wilner
32:48ever since I heard it when it first came out.
32:54It is one of the greatest compositions ever.
32:58I mean, combined with the way his chords sound,
33:03it's one of the greatest compositions ever.
33:07And combined with the way his quartet and Ornette played it,
33:13everything music could be.
33:16And not a day goes by where I'm not humming that.
33:25Da-da-da-do-da-da-da, do-da-da-do-da,
33:28ba-ba-do-da-ba-da, then don, da-da-da-da-da.
33:33It's not your standard jazz thing where this guy solos
33:37and this one solos and this one solos.
33:40This is a real composition that brings all of them together,
33:45and they're all such staggeringly great players.
34:03Born from oppression, jazz is, at its heart, political,
34:08and throughout his career, Charles Mingus often integrated
34:12his political beliefs with his music.
34:15Charles used his bandstand as a soapbox at all times.
34:19He spoke out about his beliefs, about racism,
34:22about the inequities in society and the record industry,
34:26whatever was on his mind.
34:28The most timely and influential track on Mingus' album,
34:33Fables of Faubus, was no exception.
34:36The track spoke of events that took place
34:39after the outlawing of segregation
34:42two years earlier, in 1957.
34:45President Eisenhower is signing the Civil Rights Bill.
34:49It was Monday morning, ten past eight.
34:52Kids going to school all over the world.
34:55It was Monday morning, ten past eight.
34:57Kids going to school all over the country,
34:59as the president signs.
35:01And in Little Rock, at ten past eight,
35:03Arkansas National Guardsmen, under orders of Governor Faubus,
35:06challenging the law of the land,
35:08preventing nine Negro youngsters
35:10from attending the Central High School in Little Rock.
35:13There was an attempt to integrate a high school
35:16in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the law,
35:19according to the Supreme Court of the United States.
35:22Governor Oralville Faubus, the governor of Arkansas,
35:26would not allow integration.
35:28Three, four, six, eight.
35:30We don't want to integrate.
35:32Three, four, six, eight.
35:34We don't want to integrate.
35:36trombone solo
36:07trombone solo
36:19Mingus was outraged by what he saw happening to people.
36:26And the irony of The Fables of Faubus
36:29is that it's kind of a comic tune.
36:37It has a theatrical quality.
36:39You're expecting this character that's going to be,
36:43well, not very fit for public display.
36:47And that's certainly the way that he felt
36:50about this white supremacist governor of Arkansas.
37:01Then came the Eisenhower-Faubus meeting.
37:04Finally, Faubus withdrew the guardsmen,
37:06and the Negroes entered the hitherto forbidden white school.
37:10A riot started.
37:12Confronted with what he called anarchy,
37:14the president ordered United States soldiers into Little Rock.
37:18The regular army troops, paratroops,
37:20escorted the Negro children to and from school,
37:23gave them full protection from the threatening crowds.
37:26Charles wrote some smoking lyrics about this,
37:30and Columbia Records would not let Charles
37:34include these political words on the album.
37:37Tell me someone who's ridiculous,
37:39and then his drummer would respond, Governor Faubus.
37:42Charles would say, Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
37:45And Danny would say, 2-4-6-8, brainwash and teach you hate.
37:49No one in the planet
37:51May meet someone who's ridiculous, Danny.
37:55Governor Faubus!
37:58Oh, why are they so sick and ridiculous?
38:04You're brainwashed, you teach you hate.
38:07Fables of Faubus, even without the lyric,
38:10just the fact that he's using the name Faubus,
38:13is gonna have a very strong message
38:15to many of the people who are listening to that album in 1959.
38:20Fables of Faubus opened up a lot of the pent-up feelings
38:26that we all had as African-American musicians
38:29against racism in America, kind of set the stage
38:33for each of our own individual expression
38:36of that opposition to racism.
38:44Three words, yes, we can!
38:48Barack Obama may not know it,
38:53but jazz is one of the reasons he was elected president.
38:59And Charles Mingus and all of these musicians,
39:03they helped to create the atmosphere
39:06that led to people respecting a person
39:09beyond the distinctions of color.
39:15In the years leading up to Kind of Blue,
39:18Miles Davis had begun to make an impact
39:21with his own defiant demands for respect,
39:24both as a black man and as an artist.
39:28I remember seeing him in Los Angeles at a club.
39:32People who turned up were gamblers, pimps,
39:36drug dealers, hustling type guys,
39:39bragging about who got the most hoes
39:42and who got the prettiest hoes,
39:44and your hoes should be picked up by the dog catcher,
39:48you know, just all that kind of stuff.
39:54Now, when Miles Davis came on the bandstand though,
39:57they shut up.
39:59They didn't make any noise after he came out there.
40:02See, I'd never seen that before,
40:04because these are not the kind of people you can just shut up.
40:08They knew if they got loud and irritated him,
40:11he would turn around and leave,
40:13and that would be it, he wouldn't come back.
40:16Nobody was going to entreat him,
40:18oh, Miles, you won't get paid.
40:21I'm not broke.
40:23He'd always made his point that when I come in here,
40:28I have some kind of artistic goals I'm trying to accomplish,
40:32and they do not include you talking while we're playing.
40:38Miles struck me as somebody who would sell a lot of records
40:44because of his cruel, almost disdainful demeanor on stage,
40:50worked absolutely in his favor to become a talked-about artist.
40:57Columbia had a very powerful publicity department.
41:01They realized what we have to do
41:05is we have to create this image
41:07of the distant, remote jazz musician
41:11who's not available to everybody.
41:13We're going to sell them that.
41:19And of course, being remote and unavailable
41:23just made everyone dig Miles all the more.
41:27Miles was not just a musical pioneer.
41:30He was a pioneer as far as American culture in general.
41:34You know, he was an important black figure
41:37who made it within this American system.
41:41He's reaching white America in a big way.
41:51Brady Hubbard said when he was in the Village Vanguard,
41:55he noticed this repeatedly,
41:57that when Miles Davis would play a ballad
42:00and put the harmon mute in the bell of the horn
42:03and play in the lower register,
42:05he said every woman's legs in the club opened.
42:09And he said the first time he thought he was hallucinating,
42:13that it was not really happening.
42:15He said, they didn't even know they were doing it.
42:19He said they would all just open up.
42:28He was a dude, man, a dude, but beautiful.
42:33So sexy, if you really want to know the truth.
42:37He's got a very elegant, low-key sound.
42:41You know, women liked him a lot.
42:44Look at all the wives he had.
42:47While 1959 saw America beginning to find its groove,
42:53beneath this shiny surface lay deep fears
42:56brought about by the Cold War with Russia.
43:00As part of a program of cultural detente,
43:03the American government asked Dave Bubek
43:06to take jazz and its American values to the East.
43:10Our government wanted to impress people
43:15that were right on the border of Russia
43:19about our culture.
43:21President Eisenhower wanted us to go
43:24along the perimeter of Russia.
43:27And we opened in Poland,
43:30then went to Turkey, Afghanistan,
43:34Pakistan, India, Iran, Iraq.
43:39We were going to represent our country,
43:42and we talked about how difficult it is
43:46to go and be the voice of freedom
43:49when you don't really have freedom yet
43:52because of the old, unwritten laws of segregation.
43:58A great thing jazz has done for our country,
44:03and here we're being sent out to do it for the world.
44:11The tour was to begin in Poland,
44:14but this meant traveling through East Germany.
44:17The tour was to begin in Poland,
44:20but this meant traveling through East Germany.
44:24East Berlin was not recognized by the United States,
44:29so they assigned Madame Gundelach
44:32that for some reason could go through the Brandenburg Gate.
44:38The whole scene was like a spy movie.
44:43She told me to get in the trunk of her car.
44:47I said, I won't get in the trunk of her car.
44:51I said, I won't get in the trunk of her car.
44:54I'll get in the back seat, and if I get questioned,
44:58I'm going to tell them the truth.
45:01But she got through.
45:08She brought us to a police station,
45:12and this man walked into the room
45:16and said, you are Mr. Kulu.
45:20And I said, no, I'm Mr. Brubeck.
45:23And he said, no, you're Kulu.
45:27Then he pulled out a Polish paper
45:32with a picture of me,
45:35and the caption said, Mr. Kulu.
45:38And I realized I was Mr. Kulu,
45:42and that was my name.
45:50Many of the ideas that we developed for Time Out
45:55came from touring in these countries
45:58like Blue Rondo a la Tertre.
46:01That's a Turkish folk beat.
46:04Da-ya-da-ya-da-ya-da-da-da-da-ya-da-ya.
46:07piano plays
46:10drums play
46:16And then it goes into a blues.
46:204-4-2...
46:33Brubeck returned to the U.S. with a complete vision
46:37of the Time Signature experiments for Time Out.
46:41piano plays
46:47applause
46:59For his album of cool rhythmic innovation,
47:03Brubeck decided that drummer Joe Morello
47:06was to be given a showcase.
47:09I heard Joe playing this beat backstage.
47:14clapping
47:17And I said, well, I have something in 5-4.
47:221-2-3-4-5...
47:25piano plays
47:32drums play
47:405-4, that's right up my alley, man, you know.
47:47It's just spontaneous.
47:49I was looking for more colors,
47:52different textures of sound.
47:55drums play
48:10applause
48:18I said, boy, this is fine, this is going to work.
48:23Time Out was going where I envisioned jazz should go.
48:30jazz plays
48:35Jazz history had been written in 4-4 time,
48:39and you get Dave Brubeck doing a whole album
48:43with the idea of using different time signatures.
48:49Columbia told me all these crazy time signatures,
48:54that'll never sell.
49:00But the disc jockeys started playing this.
49:04We had a big hit.
49:06The idea that jazz could actually make it
49:10onto pop radio in America in the late 50s,
49:14that was totally unheard of.
49:22What really works well with Time Out
49:25is that it provides an easy introduction
49:28for mainstream America to deal with new musical ideas.
49:46Toward the end of 1959,
49:48the Ornette Coleman Quartet came to New York
49:51for the very first time with the prophetically titled
49:55The Shape of Jazz to Come.
49:58They were all but unknown,
50:00but those who were hip to the scene
50:02were there to check out the band's New York debut
50:05at the Five Spot.
50:08We couldn't wait.
50:10Went down to the Five Spot and had a rehearsal one afternoon,
50:14and then we opened up.
50:16There were lines around the block.
50:18The place was packed with people, so it was quite a deal.
50:22The opening night, they had everybody, everybody was there.
50:26So he was kind of on auditory trial, so to speak.
50:32We couldn't wait to get to work and play
50:35because the music was so great and new and fresh.
50:38That's when The Shape of Jazz to Come
50:41is dropped on the New York jazz scene.
50:52That first night of Ornette's was a sophomore impact
50:58and unforgettable, unforgettable.
51:01I don't think I ever heard four musicians
51:04who gave me the impression of surrounding me.
51:08I was in the middle of it. Bang!
51:15We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous.
51:18We must get ready for it.
51:20Duck and cover.
51:22Attaboy, Tony. Act fast.
51:38Coleman spoke the paranoia that existed in the nuclear age.
51:46The reaction that many people had
51:49just to this idea that the entire world could be blown up.
52:06To play music with this urgency, this desperate urgency
52:12to make something new that's never been before
52:16as if you're on the front line
52:18and you're risking your life for every note you play.
52:23Well, I was there the opening night
52:26and I was really unprepared for the hostility.
52:31I was sitting next to Roy Eldridge
52:34and Roy was a warm, generous guy
52:37and he was listening to Ornette
52:39and he said, he's just jiving, man, that's not music.
52:42People were saying it was random, it was chaotic,
52:45it was this or that.
52:47There were people who became angry at the music
52:51and let it be known that they hated it.
53:00In New York, everything was under suspicion
53:04and I didn't know about being under suspicion,
53:07I just thought about picking up my horn,
53:10activating the idea that's going through my nervous system.
53:15This guy had extreme nerve.
53:18See, the things that Ornette would play,
53:22even today you actually cannot believe that he plays them,
53:26just the sheer audacity of it.
53:32In New York, Ornette Coleman playing his white plastic sax
53:36was considered pretty out there too.
53:41It looked kind of funny because people said,
53:44oh, what happened to the candy that was inside it when you bought it?
53:48You got a great sound out of this instrument, man,
53:51you wouldn't think it was plastic.
53:53We'd be playing and I'd say, oh my God,
53:55I hope this horn don't melt, man, this cat's playing.
53:58It was heavy stuff, you know.
54:07It's hard to understand a negative reaction to that.
54:12Something so fabulous,
54:15I mean, like, what would people object to in it?
54:19I can't even imagine it.
54:25He changed everything.
54:27He changed the way he played.
54:30He changed the way he played.
54:34He changed everything.
54:36He changed everything.
54:38The whole approach, the way of looking at it,
54:41the style of it, the sound.
54:43He influenced people that don't even know he influenced them,
54:47who I think they hated the music.
54:49You know, it gets into you, you can't help it.
54:52Maybe that's what upset them so much.
54:58I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody.
55:01I want to be as human as I can get, believe me.
55:05There's nothing I'm trying to hide,
55:07there's nothing I'm trying to climb above,
55:10there's nothing I'm trying to destroy.
55:17No one is going to suffer from what the human race does
55:21because it's not going to destroy itself.
55:23It's going to improve itself.
55:26Music is something that, to me,
55:30is nothing but the sound of your emotions.
55:35It's your heart, it's your feelings,
55:39it's your belief, it's your ability,
55:42and most of all, it's your love.
55:45And what's so beautiful about it, it's not destructive.
55:49It's always something that gets better.
55:56jazz music plays
56:041959 was a really important year in jazz
56:07because you had some of the greatest musicians in the world
56:11playing a response to what had been played,
56:15but was also a response to what could be played.
56:19The art was advanced in 1959.
56:22Another set of choices were provided for everybody.
56:30Miles Davis' Kind of Blue
56:32has become jazz's best-selling album,
56:35hugely influential from its 1959 release right up until today.
56:40Kind of Blue definitely changed music.
56:43It just kind of opened up the horizon for jazz expression.
56:53Miles would go on to influence the course of jazz many more times.
57:00Dave Brubeck still continues to follow his own groove,
57:04and Time Out remains a high point of jazz innovation.
57:08With Time Out, it finally happened
57:12the way we all dreamt of it.
57:15It stood the test of time, this one.
57:18Charles Mingus, a political as well as musical force,
57:23is now recognized as being among
57:26the 20th century's most important composers.
57:29Mingus' A Hum remains a prime work by this unpredictable genius.
57:34He was sharing his emotions about life.
57:38The message he always said to Seidman was play yourself,
57:42and you could extend this to all of us.
57:45Play yourself, be who you are.
57:48But the record that has most changed jazz in this last half century
57:53is Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come.
57:57It came out of nowhere and fired a starting gun on new forms of music.
58:02The LP still sounds radical.
58:07He's divisive even to this day.
58:10Being divisive is a defining element almost
58:13to Ornette Coleman's music.
58:16The legacy of The Shape of Jazz to Come
58:19will be to create no boundaries,
58:21to play new music as much as you can,
58:24not to be satisfied with the status quo.
58:27trombone solo
58:57music fades out
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