Who invented modal Jazz?

Question

Can anyone be said to have done so? Or was it just a movement that emerged from the various people playing at the time? I believe that Kind of Blue was the first album to popularize it but can Miles actually be said to have invented modal Jazz? Surely other contemporary musicians were doing similar things.

Wikipedia is not very clear on this. It states

Originating in the late 1950s and 1960s, modal jazz is epitomized by Miles Davis's "Milestones" (1958), Kind of Blue (1959), and John Coltrane's classic quartet from 1960–64.

And then goes on to say

Mercer Ellington has stated that Juan Tizol invented the melody to "Caravan" in 1936 as a result of his days studying music in Puerto Rico, where they couldn't afford much sheet music so the teacher would turn the music upside down after they had learned to play it right-side up.

So, if Caravan is indeed the first modal jazz piece, should Juan Tizol be credited with inventing it? Or should it be Russel? Or everyone who was playing at the time or what?

Answer 1

All modal jazz means is that the harmony is deliberately static so that the players can stretch out against it as well as with it in a more elastic fashion. It's not really something you could even say was "invented". While "Kind of Blue", put it on the map, there are boat loads of tunes preceding that album that are modal in at least sections. "Dark Eyes" is another early example that is very modal. The practice preceded the term and the movement.

Answer 2

There's no specific name as to who exactly invented modal jazz but the elements of modal play have always been there in jazz. Jazz borrows a lot of influences from different traditions including classical music and it is from this classical music that history shows the extensive use of modes around the 19th century - but make no mistake, "modal theory" has always been there, even the legendary Saint Yared from the ancient Ethiopian church in Africa utilized his "own" modes.

Coming back to jazz, a modal approach can be heard in many recordings from the 1940s like Benny Goodman's "Sing, sing, sing". Elements of modal jazz can also be heard in earlier jazz solos when musicians wanted to create linear/horizontal melody lines as opposed to vertical lines. I would like to believe that "modal jazz" is a word that was coined and popularized by critics to describe the type of jazz that the musicians of the 1950s were mostly playing; Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Cannonball Adderley, etc not that modal jazz was invented by any single person.

We should also be cognizant of the fact that most of the music originated from the human voice (singing, humming, clapping, tapping, etc) long before musical instruments were created, hence modes have always been there since the days of the caveman and the cavewoman.