Birth of the Cool

The music grew out of informal gatherings at Gil Evans's apartment in New York. The nonet played a two-week engagement at the Royal Roost in September 1948, and Pete Rugolo, in the audience, signed the group to Capitol. Davis wanted a small band that could reproduce the harmonies of Claude Thornhill's orchestra. Recording took about a year and a half, with changes of personnel, and there was no rehearsal between the second and third sessions. The tracks were first issued as 78 rpm singles and collected on an album in 1957.

Count Basie said of the Royal Roost band that those slow things sounded strange and good. Winthrop Sargeant of the New Yorker decided it was not really jazz but found it charming and exciting. Down Beat said in 1957 that it had deeply influenced one important direction of modern chamber jazz. The album reached ten on the US jazz albums chart and three on the British jazz and blues chart, and it is in the Grammy Hall of Fame. John Carisi's Israel became a standard.

Pitchfork, reviewing a 2019 vinyl reissue, noted that Symphony Sid had introduced the band at the Royal Roost as Impressions in Modern Music, and that the name Birth of the Cool only arrived with the 1957 compilation. The Royal Roost broadcasts of 4 and 18 September 1948 were first sanctioned for release on a 1998 two-CD set. Nate Chinen singled out Lee Konitz's alto solo on Israel and the unhurried phrasing of Davis on Move. Davis wrote in his autobiography that the music came from black musical roots, and that he would hire a player as good as Konitz every time.