So, I was sitting here thinking about Miles Davis and started listening to his music again. So, I decided to post a lil something about him. So let me know what y all think
Widely considered one of the most influential jazz 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's ensembles, including John Coltrane. Miles Davis is considered one of the greatest visionaries and most important figures in jazz history. Throughout a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played his trumpet in such a unique lyrical and melodic style, often employing a harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. Even though his approach to his horn was constant, his approach to jazz and music was strikingly always in a state of flux. If you were to examine his extraordinary career, you would also have to examine the history of jazz from the mid-'40s to the early '90s. He was influential in almost every important innovation and stylistic development and change in the music during that period. He often led the way in those changes, both with his own performances and recordings and by choosing sidemen and collaborators who forged new directions. It can even be argued that jazz stopped evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward.
Miles Davis III was born into a fairly well-to-do family in Alton, Illinois on May 26, 1926. Very soon after, his family moved to East St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis was a dentist. Davis's mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, originally wanted her son to learn how to play the piano. She was a fairly decent blues pianist but kept this skill hidden from her son. He began his musical studies began at 13. His father bought him a trumpet and had arranged for lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Miles later suggested that the choice of the trumpet by his father was made largely to irk his wife, who greatly disliked the instrument's sound. Going against the teachings of the times, Buchanan stressed the importance of not depending vibrato, and Davis would eventually carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. It was said that Buchanan would occasionally slap Davis's knuckles every time he started using too much vibrato. Davis once spoke on the importance of this signature sound, stating, "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, but just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything." By the age of 16, Davis was a standing member of the local music society and working professionally when not at school. At 17, he spent a year playing with bandleader Eddie Randle's band, known then as the Blue Devils. During this time, he was encouraged to join Tiny Bradshaw’s band by Sonny Stitt. In the end, Davis's mother insisted that he finish his final year of high school. In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band visited East St. Louis. Jazz icons Dizzy Gillespe and Charlie Parker were than members of the band, and Davis was taken on as the third trumpet for a couple of weeks because Buddy Anderson was out sick with the flu. He quickly rose through the ranks and became a local phenom on the jazz scene and toured locally with Billy Eckstine's band while he was in high school.
In the fall of 1944, following graduation from high school, Miles moved to New York City to study trumpet performance at the Juilliard School of Music. Upon his arrival in New York, Davis spent the majority of his first weeks in the city trying to get in contact with Charlie Parker. He did this despite being advised against doing so by several people he met, including the famous saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. Having finally succeeded in locating his idol, Davis became part of a slew of musicians that centered on the jam sessions that were kept nightly in two of Harlem's most prestigious night clubs, Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's. This group included many of the future protagonists of the coming bebop revolution, young musicians such as Fats Navarro, Freddie Webster, and J.J. Johnson. Noted jazzmen such as Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke were also regular players of these sessions. In that same time period, he dropped out of Juilliard. In his autobiography, he openly criticized the Juilliard classes for centering too much on the classical European and what he called "white" repertoire. He also did partly acknowledge that the Juilliard period contributed to the theoretical background that he would rely greatly upon in later years.
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. This was the first of many recordings to which he participated in the following years, most of the time as a sideman. He didn’t get his chance to lead his own group in a recording until 1946, this was with an occasional group called '"Miles Davis Sextet plus Earl Coleman and Ann Hathaway"', one of the only and rare occasions in which Davis, who was already a member of the Charlie Parker quintet, can be heard accompanying singers. Around 1945, Dizzy Gillespie parted ways with Charlie Parker. This became Miles Davis big break because he was hired as the replacement in Parker’s quintet, which also featured Max Roach on the drums, Al Haig at the piano, and Curley Russell as bass player. With Parker's quintet, Davis recorded more often; on one of the more famous takes of Parker's signature song, "Now's the Time", he plays a very melodic solo. This is significant because the unbop-like quality acts as a precursor to the following "cool jazz" period. The group also toured all over the United States. During a tour in Los Angeles, Parker had a nervous breakdown that landed him in the Camarillo State Mental Hospital for several months. This left Davis by himself and stranded in Los Angeles. He roomed and collaborated with Charles Mingus, before getting another job with Billy Eckstine on a California tour that brought him back to New York. In 1948, Parker returned from Los Angeles, and Davis joined his group again, resuming recording and public performances as a member of the combo.
In the summer of 1948, Davis formed a round table of musicians that included the renowned jazz artists Gerry Mulligan, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Clarke, and Lee Konitz, as well as players on French horn and tuba, instruments rarely heard in a jazz context. Mulligan, Gil Evans, and pianist John Lewis did the majority of the band's arrangements, which juxtaposed the definite flexible, improvisatory nature of bebop with a tremendously thickened textured orchestral sound. The group was short-lived but during its brief history recorded a dozen tracks that were originally released as singles (1949–50). These recordings changed the course of modern jazz and paved the way for the West Coast styles of the 1950s. These different “progressive” movements help diversify the jazz game. The tracks were later collected in the album Birth of the Cool (1957). This was one of the pivotal albums and recordings of the times. It wasn’t accepted but it fully put cool jazz on the map as a formal genre of jazz that had a major following.
The early to mid 50s were a very erratic time for Davis, mostly due to his now infamous heroin addiction, and he was a disappointing performer during this time. By the middle of the decade due to pressure from family, friends, and fans he had cleaned up and formed his first quintet. This quintet was comprised of Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. This group became very popular and recorded several essential albums for the Prestige label. Works such as Cookin', Steamin', Workin', and Relaxin' were created during this time. When the quintet went different ways, Davis spent time collaborating again with arranger Gil Evans, resulting in great albums like Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain. He rounded out the decade out by recording one of the best known jazz albums of all time, Kind of Blue, with a sextet that was made of Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones.
In the 1960s Davis put together a second quintet, this time he taped the talents of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter. The music of this group was more complex, moving through post-bop modal experimentation and eventually into some of the group improvisation and open forms of free jazz. A large potrtion of Davis' fans were mystified and slightly confused by the group's music, but it was generally accepted by critics, other musicians, and eager music fans eager for new sounds. The group's output has recently been collected in the 6-disc set The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, 1965-'68. A two-night Chicago gig in late 1965 is captured on The Complete Live at The Plugged Nickel 1965, released in 1995. This was followed by a series of studio recordings such as Miles Smiles(1966), Sorcerer(1967), Nefertiti(1967), Miles in the Sky(1968) and Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968). The quintet's approach to improvisation came to be known as "time no changes" or "freebop," because they almost completely abandoned the standard chord-change-based approach of bebop for a modal approach. In 1967, the group began to play their live concerts in continuous sets, with each tune flowing into the next and only the melody indicating any sort of start and end point. Davis's bands would continue to perform in this way until his early retirement in 1975.
In 1970, Davis contributed extensively to the soundtrack of a documentary about the African-American boxer heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. Himself a devotee of boxing, Davis drew parallels between Johnson, whose career had been defined by the fruitless search for a musical “Great White Hope” to dethrone him, and Davis's own career, in which he felt the musical establishment of the time had prevented him from receiving the acclaim and rewards that were due him. The resulting album, 1971's A Tribute to Jack Johnson, contained two long pieces that featured musicians guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, Herbie Hancock on a Farfisa organ and drummer Billy Cobham. McLaughlin and Cobham went on to become founding members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1971. As the 1970s started to round into form, Miles realized that rock had quickly replaced jazz as the principle music of choice for the younger generation. In order not to get left behind, he decided to perform with an electronic band. This band consisted of electric guitar, electric bass, banks of electronic keyboards, and even an amplified trumpet. The sound was considered, dark, and dense. It led to the further alienation of some jazz fans and many critics as well. There was no denying the power of the music Davis was producing. When it was released 1970, Bitches Brew sold 400,000 copies, making it the best-selling jazz album of all time. This collection of Jazz greats included Chick Corea, Hancock, and John McLaughlin. Davis continued to perform and record throughout the 1970s. 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. The album was highlighted by the appearance of saxophonist Carlos Garnett. Critics were not kind to the album; in his autobiography, Davis stated that critics could not categorize it and complained that the album was not promoted by the "traditional" jazz radio stations.
Davis health started to deteriorate in and around 1975. He was troubled by osteoarthritis ,which led to a hip replacement operation in 1976, the sickle-cell anemia, depression, bursitis, ulcers and a renewed dependence on alcohol and drugs most notably cocaine, and his performances were routinely panned throughout late 1974 and early 1975. By the time the group reached Japan in February 1975, Davis was teetering on a physical breakdown and required massive amounts of vodka and narcotics to complete his engagements. After a Newport Jazz Festival performance at in New York on July 1, 1975, Davis withdrew almost completely from the public music scene for six years. As noted jazzman Gil Evans said, "His organism is tired. And after all the music he's contributed for 35 years, he needs a rest."
Miles Davis took an all-inclusive, constantly restless approach to jazz that had begun to fall out of favor by the time of his death, even as it earned him controversy during his lifetime. It was hard to recognize the bebop disciple of Charlie Parker turned into the flamboyantly dressed leader with the hair extensions. He was the man who seemed to keep one foot on a wah-wah pedal and one hand on an electric keyboard in his later years. One achievement that cannot go unrecognized is he did much to popularize jazz, reversing this trend away from commercial appeal that bebop began. And whatever the explorations, he retained an ability to play moving solos that made him beloved to audiences and demonstrated his affinity with tradition and prestige. At a time when jazz is moving inwards toward academia and repertory orchestras rather than moving forward, he is a reminder of the music's essential quality of boundless invention, using all available means. He will always be remember as one of the most transcending musician who was the measuring tape of change in his field.
