MILES DAVIS

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991- died at age 65) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz and fusion. Many well-known jazz musicians made their names as members of Davis’ ensembles, including John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Tony Williams, George Coleman, J.J. Johnson, Keith Jarrett and Kenny Garrett.

On January 16, 2002, his album Kind of Blue, released in 1959, received its third platinum certification from the RIAA, signifying sales of 3 million copies. Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Miles Davis was born on May 26, 1926, to a relatively affluent family in Alton, Illinois. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist. In 1927, the family moved to East St. Louis. They also owned a substantial ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.

Davis’ mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted her son to learn the piano; she was a capable blues pianist but kept this fact hidden from her son. His musical studies began at 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Davis later suggested that his father’s instrument choice was made largely to irk his wife, who disliked the instrument’s sound. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato, and Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. Buchanan was said to slap Davis’ knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato. Miiles Davis once remarked on the importance of this signature sound, saying, “I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much baseline bass. Just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything.” Clark Terry was another important early influence and friend.

By the age of 16, Davis was a member of the music society and working professionally when not at school. At 17, he spent a year playing in bandleader Eddie Randle’s band, Blue Devils.  In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band visited East St. Louis. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were members of the band, and Davis was taken on as third trumpet for a couple of weeks because Buddy Anderson was out sick. In the fall of 1944, following graduation from high school, Miles moved to New York City to study at the Juilliard School of Music.  He began playing professionally in many jazz combos, performing in several 52nd Street clubs with Coleman Hawkins and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. In 1945, he entered for the first time in a recording studio as a member of the group of Herbie Fields. Around 1945, Dizzy Gillespie parted ways with Parker, who hired Davis as Gillespie’s replacement in his quintet. 

A contract with Capitol Records granted several recording sessions between January 1949 and April 1950. This material was released in an album whose title – Birth of the Cool – became the namesake of the so called “cool jazz” movement which developed at the same time and partly shared the musical direction championed by Davis’ group. 

With Prestige Records, Davis published many records with several different combos. The most important Prestige recordings of this period (Dig, Blue Haze, Bags’ Groove, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants and Walkin’) originated mostly from recording sessions in 1951 and 1954. Also of importance are the five Blue Note recordings, collected in the Miles Davis Volume 1 album.

With this activity, Davis took a center stage position in what is known as the hard bop genre. Hard bop distanced itself from bebop using slower tempos and a less radical approach to harmony and melody, often adopting popular tunes and standards from the American Songbook as starting points for the improvisation. It also distanced itself from cool jazz by virtue of a harder beat and of a constant reference to the blues both traditional form and in the form made popular by rhythm and blues. 

Back in New York in 1955, Davis recruited the players for a formation that became famous as the “First Quintet”. The quintet featured Davis at the trumpet, John Coltrane at the tenor saxophone, Red Garland at the piano, Paul Chambers at the bass, and Philly Joe Jones at the drums. With the new formation came also a new recording contract. The quintet made his debut on record with the – extremely well received – Columbia album ‘Round About Midnight

In March and April 1959, Davis recorded what is widely considered his magnum opus, Kind of Blue. According to the RIAA, Kind of Blue is the best-selling jazz album of all time, having been certified as quadruple platinum (4 million copies sold).

In 1969, Davis recorded the double LP Bitches Brew, which became a huge seller, hitting gold status by 1976. This album and In a Silent Way were among the first fusions of jazz and rock that were commercially successful, building on the groundwork laid by Charles Lloyd, Larry Coryell, and many others who pioneered a genre that would become known simply as “Jazz-rock fusion.” 

Both Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way feature “extended” (more than 20 minutes each) compositions that were never actually “played straight through” by the musicians in the studio. Instead, Davis and producer Teo Macero selected musical motifs of various lengths from recorded extended improvisations and edited them together into a musical whole which only exists in the recorded version. Bitches Brew made use of such electronic effects as multi-tracking, tape loops and other editing techniques. Both records, especially Bitches Brew, proved to be huge sellers.

By the time of Live-Evil in December 1970, Davis’ ensemble had transformed into a much more funk-oriented group. Davis began experimenting with wah-wah effects on his horn. 

In 1970, Davis contributed extensively to the soundtrack of a documentary about the African-American boxer heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. The resulting album, 1971’s A Tribute to Jack Johnson. As Davis stated in his autobiography, he wanted to make music for the young African-American audience. On the Corner (1972) blended funk elements with the traditional jazz styles he had played his entire career.  In 1979, he placed in the yearly Top 10 trumpeter poll of Down Beat magazine. 

Having first taken part in the Artists United Against Apartheid recording, Davis signed with Warner Brothers records. The resulting record, Tutu (1986), would be his first to use modern studio tools — programmed synthesizers, samples and drum loops — to create an entirely new setting for Davis’ playing. Ecstatically reviewed on its release, the album would frequently be described as the modern counterpart of Sketches of Spain and won a Grammy in 1987.His last recordings, both released posthumously, were the hip hop-influenced studio album Doo-Bop and Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux, a collaboration with Quincy Jones for the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival in which Davis performed the repertoire from his 1940s and 1950s recordings for the first time in decades. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990.