Bop Loves Pop To Death

Bop Loves Pop to Death Among the Killer Filler, for an Hour and Then Some
Miles Davis's Birdland 1951

by Don Allred
December 13th, 2004 7:00 PM Issue 50

Miles Davis
Birdland 1951
Blue Note

On Miles Davis's Birdland 1951, bop loves pop to death, squeezing the
peachy-but-preachy "Get Happy" (via chord surgery, circular breathing, and speed)
into "Out of the Blue" 's Paradise Now, as Miles's trumpet, J.J. Johnson's
trombone, Kenny Drew and Billy Taylor's pianos, Tommy Potter and Charles Mingus's
basses, and Sonny Rollins, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, and Big Nick Nicholas's tenor saxes
hot-wire and drive their Jackson Pollock scroller coaster around and around Art
Blakey's spotlit cymbal. (Miles and Art co-motorvate two otherwise different
lineups.) Birdland's (remastered yet) raw, live broadcasts are 67-plus New
York minutes of uncut 1951: new discoveries and ex-bootlegs, jumping turnstiles
between '40s ur-bop, later '50s hard bop, and '00s ears. Pieces o' woik in true
progress.
Including (among 10 tracks total) two versions of "Half Nelson," and three of
"Move"—killer filler, especially when the third "Move" moves out of the
second, and Sonny's ax splits into those of Lockjaw and Big Nick. Secretly I
associate Lockjaw and Big Nick's names and agile brawn with r&b (not as "smart" as
jazz). So mine is tainted love. But clean cool you will dig this too.

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