Miles Davis

Musician

• Born: May 26, 1926
• Birthplace: Alton, Illinois
• Died: September 28, 1991
• Place of death: Santa Monica, California

Jazz musician and artist

A jazz trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and painter, Davis played a vital role in the history of modern jazz. During a career that spanned more than fifty years, Davis developed an original, lyrical soloing style and emerged as a pioneering leader of several jazz idioms, including cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, jazz-rock, and jazz-funk fusion.

Areas of achievement: Art and photography; Music: bandleading; Music: composition; Music: funk; Music: jazz

Early Life

Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois, to an affluent, middle-class African American family. Davis’s father was a dental surgeon who moved his family to an all-white neighborhood in East St. Louis within a year of his son’s birth. Although Davis’s mother, Cleota Henry Davis, wanted him to learn how to play the violin or piano, his father gave him a trumpet on his thirteenth birthday. He began taking lessons with Elwood Buchanan, who encouraged Davis not to play his trumpet with vibrato. Davis also began to spend time with the trumpeter Clark Terry, who became one of his early mentors. Within two years, he was performing professionally with Eddie Randall’s Blue Devils.

In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band came to St. Louis to perform at the Club Riviera for two weeks. One of Eckstine’s trumpeters was sick, and Davis had the opportunity to substitute for him. The band included bebop innovators Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, who both left a profound impression on the young musician. In September, 1944, Davis moved to New York to attend the Juilliard School of Music with the additional motive of spending time with Parker. He spent a year at Juilliard and soon joined Parker in live appearances and recording sessions.

In 1948, Davis began his influential collaboration with the Canadian arranger Gil Evans. Their associations with Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis resulted in a series of nonet recordings for Capitol Records that became known as Birth of the Cool (1957). In 1949, Davis traveled to Paris with Tadd Dameron; when he returned, he became addicted to heroin for four years. In 1953, Davis returned to his father’s home in East St. Louis and quit heroin cold turkey. By the beginning of 1954, he was free of his addiction and focused on reigniting his career.

Life’s Work

In 1955, Davis appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival, where his remarkable soloing—particularly his improvisations on “’Round Midnight”—brought him widespread notoriety. The publicity allowed him to obtain sufficient engagements to establish the first of his great quintets, which featured bassist Paul Chambers, pianist Red Garland, drummer Philly Joe Jones, and saxophonist John Coltrane, who was eventually replaced by Sonny Rollins in 1956. He also met producer George Avakian, who persuaded him to sign a contract with Columbia Records. To rapidly fulfill his unfinished obligations to his previous label, Prestige, Davis assembled a quintet for several historically significant recordings that would be released in 1956 as Steamin’, Cookin’, Workin’, and Relaxin’. The albums include popular bebop songs, jazz standards, and pre-bop era songs. Each record was well received by musicians and fans. In 1957, the original quintet was dismantled by Davis as a result of personal issues among some of the band members.

In 1957, Davis revived his association with arranger Evans and recorded a series of albums. This time they assembled new works with Davis as the primary soloist, backed by a large band. Miles Ahead, recorded in 1957, showcases Davis on flugelhorn, an uncommon instrument in jazz at the time. Although Shorty Rogers and Clark Terry had played flugelhorn before 1957, Davis’s recordings provoked a new popularity for the instrument. In 1958, Davis recorded selections from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Sketches of Spain was recorded in November, 1959, and March, 1960, and features songs by contemporary Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel de Falla, and Evans.

In 1958, Davis turned his quintet into a sextet by adding Cannonball Adderley and recorded the landmark album Milestones for Columbia. Davis’s composition “Milestones” broke from the tradition of solo improvisation that relies on frequently changing chord progressions. Instead, it allowed for a modal approach to melodic improvisation in which the soloist uses one mode or scale as inspiration for solo development. The popularity of the new modal style increased with the release of Kind of Blue in 1959. Kind of Blue is one of the best selling and most influential recordings in jazz history and featured Adderley, Coltrane, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. Pianist Wynton Kelly also appears on “Freddie Freeloader.” Many of the compositions were modal, including the popular “So What.” After the release of this album, many jazz musicians began to use its song formats instead of popular or bebop song forms.

From 1959 to 1963, Davis used a rhythm section that consisted of Chambers, Kelly, and Cobb. Their work is featured on the albums Someday My Prince Will Come, Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall, Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, and Friday Night at the Blackhawk. Their relaxed, even swinging sound distinguished them from other groups of the time, and many modern musicians identified the rhythm section as one of the most sought-after in jazz. In 1963, Davis hired a new rhythm section that stayed together until 1968. The section included pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams. In 1964 tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter joined Davis and became the quintet’s primary composer. This ensemble is often considered to be Davis’s “second great quintet,” and it was one of the most significant and progressive ensembles in jazz during the 1960’s. Important recordings produced by this group include Miles Smiles, E.S.P., Nefertiti, and The Sorcerer.

In albums Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968), Davis began to seriously incorporate rock influences. He also began to experiment with open-ended compositions based on rock-oriented grooves, short melodic fragments, and driving bass patterns. In 1969, Davis recorded Bitches Brew, which became a best-selling album and a pioneering jazz-rock fusion recording. Many of the musicians who performed on this album would go on to lead the major pioneering jazz-rock fusion groups, including Weather Report, Tony Williams Lifetime, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Return to Forever. In the 1970’s, Davis turned from rock toward funk. Bassist Michael Henderson was a mainstay of these groups. In the 1980’s, Davis’s music became more influenced by popular music and commercial calculations. You’re Under Arrest (1985), Tutu (1986), and Music from Siesta (1988) were all recorded through layered overdubbing, similar to pop albums of the time. Toward the end of his life Davis appeared in two films: Scrooged (1988) with Bill Murray and Dingo (1991).

Davis died on September 28, 1991, of a stroke and respiratory failure in Santa Monica, California. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, with one of his trumpets.

Significance

Because of his musical innovations, profound influence, sustained leadership, and creativity from the 1940’s to the early 1990’s, Miles Davis occupies a position in jazz analogous to that of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker. He played a crucial role in every major development in jazz during his lifetime and became a major cultural icon, outspoken social critic, and painter. In 2009, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Davis’s landmark album Kind of Blue as a national treasure.

Bibliography

Alkyer, Frank, Ed Enright, and Jason Koransky, eds. The Miles Davis Reader. New York: Hal Leonard, 2007. Collection of interviews, reviews, and articles from DownBeat magazine on the music, life, and personality of Miles Davis.

Carner, Gary, ed. The Miles Davis Companion. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996. Examines the life and career of Davis through biographical essays, interviews, liner notes, and original reviews of his music.

Carr, Ian. Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007. Comprehensive biography of the life and music of Davis. Includes an extensive list of bibliographical references and extensive discography.

Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. In this controversial autobiography, Davis worked with the poet and journalist Troupe to create a no-holds-barred account of his life. Davis speaks very frankly and openly about his music, drug addiction, relationships with women, the racism that he encountered in the music business and America, and his associations with other jazz legends.

Kirchner, Bill, ed. A Miles Davis Reader. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. This book contains a collection of important and useful essays on Miles Davis. It offers perspectives on his life, personality, changing musical styles, the varied reactions to his music, and some of the controversies that surround him.

Tirro, Frank. The Birth of the Cool of Miles Davis and His Associates. Edited by Michael Budds. CMS Sourcebooks in American Music 5. Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon, 2009. Provides musical analysis of several works associated with Birth of the Cool.

Yudkin, Jeremy. Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post Bop. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. The author fuses biographical narratives of Davis with thoughtful analysis of transcribed musical examples to provide a penetrating look at the complexities of his music.