In certain places and times there have been those among us who have been so proficient in expressing their unique inner fires that even while pushing everything to the edge their delivery was possessed of a seamless grace amounting to elegance. The masters of cool in America were not restricted to any one idiom, medium or period, although the '50s and '60s seemed to be glory years, especially the '60s—John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, John Cale and the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Frank...