Duke Ellington dubbed him the “Maharajah of the Keyboard” and Count Basie said he played “the best ivory box I’ve ever heard,” while Ray Charles simply called him “one motherfucking piano player!” Oscar Peterson, one of the all-time jazz greats, died at the age of 82 over the holidays, and we here at Kempt can’t help but be saddened by the passing of man who provided the soundtrack to some of our most memorable moments.

More on his 60-year career »

When the great Miles Davis was assembling his quintet in 1955 and chose a troubled young saxophonist named John Coltrane over more established and experienced players, many assumed the partnership wouldn’t last. While Davis was a reserved, dapper aesthete born to achievement, Coltrane was cut from coarser cloth but no less of a musical genius for that. Surely two such outsized talents were bound to clash, especially with the specter of Coltrane’s drug use looming overhead.

There were no pyrotechnics apart from the musical variety however, note Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington, authors of an illuminating book due out next week, Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever—because “Coltrane was too humble, and Miles was simply too cool.” And thank god for it, or they might never have gotten around to laying down Kind of Blue.

All That Jazz: The men and women of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. [A Continuous Lean]

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Monkey Business: The headline says it all: Monkey Eludes Net-Wielding Police at Tokyo Station. Well, almost all. [Reuters]

Hidden Treasures: Yet another accoutrement for surreptitious drinking. [Uncrate]

While suit-makers look increasingly towards the accountants and ad men of the 50s and 60s, it’s amazing to think they’re overlooking one of the best subcultures of the era. Forget the twenties: the fifties and sixties were the real jazz age.

Miles Davis speaks for himself, but a whole generation of icons stood along with him, ditching the porkpie hats and traditional chord structures in favor of a new kind of music and a new kind of style. Taschen did us a favor rounding up 500 pages worth of album covers for their appropriately named Jazz Covers. We can’t think of a better window into the age…other than the albums, that is.

See the covers»

Speaking of American classics, another one is coming up on its 50th anniversary. We’re talking about Kind of Blue, Miles Davis’ masterwork and the odds-on favorite for the greatest jazz album of all time. The album saw Davis working with arguably the best band of his career—including Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderly, and John Coltrane, for a start—exploring modal sketches to work out a new kind of downbeat jazz.

We’ve gushed about Miles Davis before, but fifty years down the line, it’s interesting to consider the album as a document of 1959. It was a bestseller on release, even though it cut against the grain of Eisenhower-era culture. The world of the gray flannel suit wasn’t available to Davis and his bandmates, and the new freedoms they were opening up were entirely musical, but they still looked more attractive than life in Connecticut. As mainstream America got less and less happy with the suburban dream, this was the sound of the underground.

For the decade or so before rock took off, jazz musicians were the epitome of subculture cool. (Not coincidentally, it was also the heyday of the porkpie hat.) Everyone knows Miles (even if we prefer his later phase), but AskMen’s recent roundup reminded us that his piano man was no slouch either.

The pianist in question is Bill Evans, the subject of a fair amount of recent obsession. The slicked-back hair and buttoned-up polo are both documents of the era, but our favorite part of this particular picture is the shades, which have since popped up on Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen more than a few times. With summer coming up, picking up a similar pair might not be a bad idea.

Piano lessons are optional.