Two words for you:

Lennie Tristano

I hadn't really listened to Tristano much, though Lee Konitz has always been one of my favorites. But I don't buy the Martin Williams line that Tristano's approach was simply a jazz dead end. They are doing a Tristano marathon in WKCR in New York which I listen to constantly streamed over the web. It is a real revelation, not least because of this wonderful Lee Konitz solo they are playing right this second. I like Warne Marsh too.

Don't forget that Miles put Konitz on The Birth of the Cool sessions. Hard bop and cool, West Coast jazz are complementary. It might be easy to set them against each other, hot vs. cool, black vs. White, East vs. West, but I don't necessarily see it like that. There are important cross currents. Plus it's the music I love the most. Bird comes out of Pres in his rhythmic approach, clearly. All the White tenor players of the 50s also come out of Lester Young. Lee Konitz has his own original and unmistakable sound that ultimately derives from the same sources. I could see Clifford Brown as a "cool" player complementary to Konitz.

It's clear that Lester was influenced by the "sweeter" sounds of some White players of the 20s and 30s. He loved fairly conventinal crooner of the period. That shows in his repetoire too. And look at Miles and Clifford, the two greatest interpreters of "ballads" of this period.