The Cool World [Original Score] album cover
The Cool World [Original Score]

Dizzy Gillespie

1964
Philips

Shirley Clarke’s 1963 documentary-style drama about Harlem teen gang life remains an elusive watch, in part because producer Frederick Wiseman kept it out of home video circulation for so long — and maybe if it hadn’t been, far more people might know just what a remarkable soundtrack Dizzy Gillespie brought to life for it. The score for The Cool World was written and arranged by Mal Waldron on the road to recovering from a 1963 breakdown caused by a heroin overdose, and it’s rolling thunder right from the start: Dizzy’s trumpet playing in the opening theme captures an off-the-cuff power that embodies cool in the absence of calm, pushing the boundaries of bluesy hard bop until they buckle. But it’s the way the music navigates the film’s need to reconcile a lot of emotional arcs that carries the album beyond that first impression. There’s power-struggle ambition and pained determination in “Duke’s Awakening,” alongside the hopeful hood-mentorship aspirations conveyed by the cheerfully freewheeling “Enter, Priest.” There are desperate escapes both literal (the sprint-paced “Duke on the Run,” featuring astonishing, unpredictably agile solos from Gillespie, tenor sax player James Moody, and pianist Kenny Barron) and figurative (the deliberately disjointed swings from somber reflections and bristling running-in-place outbursts of “Duke’s Fantasy”). There’s the sorrow of loneliness (“Bonnie’s Blues”) and the diverting escape from that loneliness, however temporary (“Coney Island”). And in the end, there are consequences — “Duke’s Last Soliloquy” concludes the original LP with all the gravity of a prison sentence. Waldron’s deeply reflective compositions and the Gillespie quintet’s embodiment of their personal pain tell their own remarkable story, all while soundtracking another one in desperate need of being reintroduced into the world.

Nate Patrin

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