Miles Davis
The Jazz Magician (The Bus 1.7)
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (1.38) 15 AUGUST 2022
The Stop
Miles Dewey Davis III (1926-1991) was ‘arguably the most influential jazz musician in the post-World War II period.’ For over 40 years, he made music that ‘grew from an uncanny talent to hear the future and a headstrong desire to play it.’ Starting from the rich jazz scene of his youth, he came to ‘intuit new worlds of sound and challenge’ for the duration of his career. Rather than relax into a comfortable style as he aged, Davis forged ahead’ and reshaped the ‘course of modern improvisational music more than a half-dozen times.’1
Born into a comfortable middle-class family in East St Louis, Missouri, Davis grew up surrounded by music. Over his mother’s objections,2 his father gave him his first trumpet at the age of 12. His first professional music job was at 15, and when he was 17 Dizzy Gillespie3 and Charlie Parker4 asked him to join them onstage when one of their bandmates was sick. In the autumn of 1944 he accepted a scholarship to attend the Julliard School5 in New York. He immersed himself in the city’s jazz scene, playing Harlem nightclubs with Parker and in 1945 - with his father’s permission - dropped out of Julliard to become a full-time jazz musician as a member of the Charlie Parker Quintet.
In 1949, Davis formed a nine-piece band to incorporate unusual instruments6 and recorded a series of singles now ‘considered a significant contribution to modern jazz.’7 A heroin addiction led to a difficult period in which his performances were ‘haphazard,’ but he nonetheless recorded several albums that ‘rank among his best.’8 He kicked his addiction in 1954 and his performance of 'Round Midnight’ at the Newport Jazz Festival later that year earned him a recording contract with Columbia Records. Davis then ‘embarked on a two-decade period during which he was considered the most innovative musician in jazz.’ With the support of Columbia, he created a permanent band and recorded several albums, including his final album of the decade - Kind of Blue (1959). Considered one of the ‘greatest jazz albums ever recorded,’ Kind of Blue is also the ‘largest-selling jazz album of all time.’
Davis shifted gears in 1964, assembling a new band of younger players and recording mostly original songs. His playing also changed as he began ‘increasing the spacing of notes to create more suspense in the music.’ In 1968 he changed direction again, experimenting with electronic music and releasing In a Silent Way (1969), considered the ‘seminal album of the jazz fusion movement.’9 Davis’s ‘transformation’ - characterised by deepening the ‘electronic elements and rock rhythms’ in his music - was completed with the release of the highly influential Bitches Brew (1970) - a ‘cacophonous kaleidoscope of layered sounds, rhythms, and textures.’10
An automobile accident in 1972 and a subsequent addiction to alcohol and cocaine led Davis into a five-year semi-retirement, but he recovered and reinvented himself yet again in the 1980s. Though he concentrated on jazz-rock, he also ‘dabbled in a variety of musical styles.’ He won Grammys for the albums We Want Miles (1982), Tutu (1986) and Aura (1989) and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. Three months after performing a retrospective of his earlier work with Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Miles Davis - ‘one of the four most important and influential musicians in jazz history11… [and] the music’s most eclectic practitioner’ - died of pneumonia and respiratory failure.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to an article from Inigo in which cookery writer Nigel Slater explains how he transformed his garden from an ‘arid lawn’ to a secluded oasis in the middle of North London: ‘It’s secret. A place to hide. A place for solitude.’ It’s a very pleasant read with great accompanying photos.
A Growing Concern: Nigel Slater on finding quietude in chaos
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is T. C. Boyle’s Budding Prospects (1984). Dedicated to his ‘horticultural friends,’ Boyle’s comic novel tells the story of a guy with no discernible future who’s persuaded by a friend to take part in a ‘summer camp’ - and grow industrial quantities of marijuana. Needless to say, things don’t work out the way they were intended. It’s a fun read - and one of my favourite Boyle novels.
From the back: All Felix Nasmyth and friends have to do is harvest a crop of Cannabis sativa … and half a million tax-free dollars will be theirs. But they haven’t reckoned on nosy Northern California-style neighbours, torrential rain, demands of the flesh, and Felix’s improbable new love, a wayward sculptress on whose behalf he undertakes a one-man vendetta against a drug-busting state trooper named Jerpbak. As their deal escalates through crises into nightmare, their dreams of easy money get nipped in the bud.
The Sounds
I’ve chosen five of my favourite Miles Davis tracks that hopefully give a flavour of his music’s evolution: ‘If I Were a Bell’ (1958), ‘Blue in Green’ (1959), ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’ (1970), ‘Tutu’(1986) and ‘White’ (1989). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is a quotation from the French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault:12
'Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions - to define, classify, control and regulate people.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed a brief diversion from your regular journey!
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Until the next stop …
I’ve been a fan of Miles Davis for years - ever since picking up a couple of CDs in the early 1990s on a whim. He’s a large topic for the confines of a single Stop, so I’d encourage you to check out more about him at the sources I’ve cited. Or just listen to his music. Sources for this Stop include: Miles Davis, Miles Davis, Miles Davis (Britannica) and Miles Davis.
She wanted him to play the violin. Things might have turned out very differently.
Known at the time as the Institute of Musical Art.
If not actually unusual instruments - I mean, there wasn’t a theramin - they were certainly unusual for jazz: French horn, tuba, trombone and alto and baritone saxophones.
The singles were later collected and released as The Birth of the Cool (1957).
Including The New Sound (1951), Blue Period (1953), Miles Davis Quartet (1954) and Miles Davis Quintet (1954)
Purists consider it to be his last true jazz album, believing his work afterwards veered too far away from the definition of jazz. Whatever that is.
Bitches Brew quickly became a best-seller, and Davis became the first jazz musician to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. More importantly, it’s also a phenomenal, mind-bending album.
The other three are Louis Armstrong (Louis Armstrong (Britannica), Duke Ellington (Duke Ellington and the aforementioned Charlie Parker.
Miles Davis was a part of the soundtrack of my youth. My dad loved jazz, and had friends way back in the day who would sneak him into the best jazz clubs (back when things were still segregated). I grew up immersed in jazz music. I still love it.
I was fortunate enough to have seen Miles live twice; once in the seventies (not so great), and once in 1981 (amazing). I believe that Kind of Blue is the greatest album ever recorded of any kind of music. Did I mention that I love the music of Miles Davis?