Birth of the Cool: Jazz in Film

Whether you can credit Miles Davis breakthrough album or not, the Fifties saw a great number of directors turn to jazz to underscore their movies. Miles’ classic album represented a shift away from Bebop, which dominated the 40s, and into a more refined era of jazz music, which stressed compositional strength. The recording sessions date to 1949-50, although the album didn’t appear until 1957. Already by this point, you saw the advent of Third Stream Jazz, which drew its inspiration from classical...