WNYC At 90: Miles Davis And Stan Getz Play Birdland In 1950

WNYC was founded by the City of New York in 1924; Soundcheck celebrates the station's 90 years of broadcasting this week by listening back to some of its most important musical moments.

On Feb. 18, 1950, WNYC broadcast Miles Davis' remarkable performance at Birdland as part of its annual broadcast of the American Music Festival. The set marked an early collaboration with Stan Getz and other future all-stars of modern jazz: drummer Art Blakely, trombonist JJ Johnson, pianist Tadd Dameron, and bassist Gene Ramsey. WNYC's aircheck from this Birdland session represents the only surviving record of this early collaboration between "The Prince of Darkness" and "The Sound." Accompanying Davis and Getz on trombone is J.J. Johnson, Tadd Dameron on piano, bassist Gene Ramey and Art Blakey on drums.

Soundcheck host John Schaefer and Ashley Kahn -- music historian and author of the book Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece -- discuss where the American Music Festival recording stands in the young trumpeter's career, and the transition from big band music to bebop and cool jazz in the 1950's.

"They're basically two branches on the same tree, and the root is really the modernist sensibility that came from the seeds that had been sown in the 1940's, courtesy of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie,etc--these very gung-ho soloists," says Kahn.

One tune in particular, the band's straight-forward rendition of George Shearing's "Conception," foreshadowed the sound of Davis to come. Less than one month later, at another radio studio in New York, Davis recorded "Deception," which eventually landed on his 1957 landmark album, The Birth Of The Cool.