Timelessly Hip

Finally rolled around to the first of several Miles Davis cd's on the shelf which will be considered in due course. Working chronologically, the first one up for consideration is Birth Of The Cool. I was a bit surprised to be reminded quite how old a recording this now is, not that far shy of sixty years ago. This is put into context though by a quote in the booklet notes "In jazz as in other musics, some things are of their time, some ahead of it, while others simply know no time at all". The implication being that the music performed by the nonet here is timeless. I wouldn't entirely disagree but I think that elements of it are also a reaction against bebop towards a more formal and arranged kind of chamber jazz. As player and composer, Gerry Mulligan is at least as important as Miles on these sessions. Would it be fanciful to speculate that the mixed race make up of the band moved the music away from a strict blues based riffing style ? Interestingly, I expressed slight disappointment in the Monk disk I posted about recently because of the shortness of tracks and lack of extended blowing. Birth Of The Cool is from roughly the same period and also doesn't have any tracks longer than three and a half minutes but the same feeling of something missing isn't there.