1955 is a good year, a year I would choose, probably the best year to be on the West Coast: all that Cool Jazz going down on Contemporary and Pacific Jazz record labels. The Bird was still alive, only just. Heroin was still the insiders nod and a wink, not yet the 40 pound monkey on the back that it would be exposed as by the end of the year with Preminger's 'The Man With The Golden Arm'. Great West Coast musicians on the soundtrack too: Shorty Rogers and the Giants with Shelly Manne.  The original exponents, the epitamy of the cool.

Califronia musicians were already in Brooks and JPress suits, many worked as studio musicians in the day and at weekends ventured out to the Hermosa beach or LA clubs to jam, score and dig the sounds. 

The proportions were spot on: classical in fact. No pretensions, no need for phallic blowing of the horn, understated and I say it again, cool. The East Coast tailoring found its perfect partner in the West Coast sound. Later by the 70's it had all gone terribly wrong, excessive collars and style subordinated to the commerical needs of fashion. The art of the classic, timelessness and been lost. Like the music.  Maybe it was too much cocaine.

Now, the East Coast finest years were 1958/59, perhaps even 1960. But I still favor 1955, the West Coast, even though I would be purchasing my clothes from the East Coast, Ivy tailors. Of course, there would be a few Hawiian shirts in the there as well.

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