I was forty before I actually discovered "Birth of the Cool." What a wasted life. White jazz of the 1950s inspired by Lester Young and Miles Davis, who are in turn inspired by earlier white players. Jimmy Dorsey, even Bix Beiderbecke and Sinatra. Classical vibrato-less tone in middle register. Then we have Stanley Crouch to say that Miles is not black enough. Why did he have to record with Gil Evans, Bill Evans? Lee Konitz? For Crouch, "Sketches of Spain" and "Porgy and Bess" are mere elevator music. Of course, Crouch rejects the later Coltrane as well. All in order to exalt Wynton as the salvation of jazz. Wynton, bourgeois and radical in a strange combination of Crow Jim. Ron Carter, in an interview, is asked to compare Miles to Wynton. He replies, basically, that there is no comparison. They aren't even in the same league.

Miles' sense that words, explanation, diminish the purity of the music. His ballad playing is so pure you don't wan't to think of the tin pan alley lyrics that go with the song.

Ambivalence toward Brubeck. He doesn't swing, according to high-modernist jazz critics. Miles himself expressed that opinion. But there is something very close in Brubeck to Miles of the 50s. He backtracked by saying: "You swing, but your band doesn't." Actually Joe Morello, virtuoso drummer, had to keep the tempo. Brubeck himself was reputed to have bad time. Better than I will ever have.