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MILES DAVIS 1926 - 1991
Throughout
a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played the trumpet
in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic style, often employing a
stemless harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. But
if his approach to his instrument was constant, his approach to jazz was
dazzlingly protean. To examine his career is to examine the history of
jazz from the
 mid-'40s
to the early '90s, since he was in the thick of almost every important
innovation and stylistic development in the music during that period,
and he often led the way in those changes, both with his own
performances and recordings and by choosing sidemen and collaborators
who forged the new directions. It can even be argued that jazz stopped
evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward.
Davis was the son of a dental surgeon, Dr. Miles Dewey Davis, Jr., and a
music teacher, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, and thus grew up in the black
middle class of East St. Louis after the family moved there shortly
after his birth. He became interested in music during his childhood and
by the age of 12 had begun taking trumpet lessons. While still in high
school, he started to get jobs playing in local bars and at 16 was
playing gigs out of town on weekends. At 17, he joined Eddie Randle's
Blue Devils, a territory band based in St. Louis. He enjoyed a personal
apotheosis in 1944, just after graduating from high school, when he saw
and was allowed to sit in with Billy Eckstine's big band, which was
playing in St. Louis. The band featured trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and
saxophonist Charlie Parker, the architects of the emerging bebop style
of jazz, which was characterized by fast, inventive soloing and dynamic
rhythm variations.
It is striking that Davis fell so completely under Gillespie and
Parker's spell, since his own slower and less flashy style never really
compared with theirs. But bebop was the new sound of the day, and the
young trumpeter was bound to follow it. He did so by leaving the Midwest
to attend the Institute of Musical Art in New York City (since renamed
Juilliard) in September 1944. Shortly after his arrival in Manhattan, he
was playing in clubs with Parker, and by 1945 he had abandoned his
academic studies for a full-time career as a jazz musician, initially
joining Benny Carter's band and making his first recordings as a
sideman. He played with Eckstine in 1946-1947 and was a member of
Parker's group in 1947-1948, making his recording debut as a leader on a
1947 session that featured Parker, pianist John Lewis, bassist Nelson
Boyd, and drummer Max Roach. This was an isolated date, however, and
Davis spent most of his time playing and recording behind Parker. But in
the summer of 1948 he organized a nine-piece band with an unusual horn
section. In addition to himself, it featured an alto saxophone, a
baritone saxophone, a trombone, a French horn, and a tuba. This nonet,
employing arrangements by Gil Evans and others, played for two weeks at
the Royal Roost in New York in September. Earning a contract with
Capitol Records, the band went into the studio in January 1949 for the
first of three sessions, which produced 12 tracks that attracted little
attention at first. The band's relaxed sound, however, affected the
musicians who played it, among them Kai Winding, Lee Konitz, Gerry
Mulligan, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny Clarke, and it had a
profound influence on the development of the cool jazz style on the West
Coast. In February 1957, Capitol finally issued the tracks together on
an LP called Birth of the Cool.
Davis, meanwhile, had moved on to co-leading a band with pianist Tadd
Dameron in 1949, and the group took him out of the country for an
appearance at the Paris Jazz Festival in May. But the trumpeter's
progress was impeded by an addiction to heroin that plagued him in the
early '50s. His performances and recordings became more haphazard, but
in January 1951 he began a long series of recordings for the Prestige
label that became his main recording outlet for the next several years.
He managed to kick his habit by the middle of the decade, and he made a
strong impression playing "'Round Midnight" at the Newport
Jazz Festival in July 1955, a performance that led major label Columbia
Records to sign him. The prestigious contract
allowed
him to put together a permanent band, and he organized a quintet
featuring saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul
Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones that began recording his Columbia
debut, Round About Midnight, in October. As it happened, however, he had
a remaining five albums on his Prestige contract, and over the next year
he was forced to alternate his Columbia sessions with sessions for
Prestige to fulfil this previous commitment. The latter resulted in the
Prestige albums The New Miles Davis Quintet, Cookin', Workin', Relaxin',
and Steamin', making Davis' first quintet one of his better-documented
outfits.
In May 1957, just three months after Capitol released the Birth of the
Cool LP, Davis again teamed with arranger Gil Evans for his second
Columbia LP, Miles Ahead. Playing flugelhorn, Davis fronted a big band
on music that extended the Birth of the Cool concept and even had
classical overtones. Released in 1958, the album was later inducted into
the Grammy Hall of Fame, intended to honour recordings made before the
Grammy Awards were instituted in 1959. In December 1957, Davis returned
to Paris, where he improvised the background music for the film
L'Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud (Escalator to the Gallows). Jazz Track, an
album containing this music, earned him a 1960 Grammy nomination for
Best Jazz Performance, Solo or Small Group. He added saxophonist
Cannonball Adderley to his group, creating the Miles Davis Sextet, which
recorded the album Milestones in April 1958. Shortly after this
recording, Bill Evans replaced Red Garland on piano and Jimmy Cobb took
over for Philly Joe Jones on drums. In July, Davis again collaborated
with Gil Evans and an orchestra on an album of music from Porgy and Bess.
Back in the sextet, Davis began to experiment with modal playing, basing
his improvisations on scales rather than chord changes. This led to his
next band recording, Kind of Blue, in March and April 1959, an album
that became a landmark in modern jazz and the most popular disc of
Davis' career, eventually selling over two million copies, a phenomenal
success for a jazz record. In sessions held in November 1959 and March
1960, Davis again followed his pattern of alternating band releases and
collaborations with Gil Evans, recording Sketches of Spain, containing
traditional Spanish music and original compositions in that style. The
album earned Davis and Evans Grammy nominations in 1960 for Best Jazz
Performance, Large Group, and Best Jazz Composition, More Than 5
minutes; they won in the latter category.
By the time Davis returned to the studio to make his next band album in
March 1961, Adderley had departed, Wynton Kelly had replaced Bill Evans
at the piano, and John Coltrane had left to begin his successful solo
career, being replaced by saxophonist Hank Mobley (following the brief
tenure of Sonny Stitt). Nevertheless, Coltrane guested on a couple of
tracks of the album, called Someday My Prince Will Come. The record made
the pop charts in March 1962, but it was preceded into the bestseller
lists by the Davis quintet's next recording, the two-LP set Miles Davis
in Person (Friday & Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, San
Francisco), recorded in April. The following month, Davis recorded
another live show, as he and his band were joined by an orchestra led by
Gil Evans at Carnegie Hall in May. The resulting Miles Davis at Carnegie
Hall
 was
his third LP to reach the pop charts, and it earned Davis and Evans a
1962 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Large Group,
Instrumental.
Davis and Evans teamed up again in 1962 for what became their final
collaboration, Quiet Nights. The album was not issued until 1964, when
it reached the charts and earned a Grammy nomination for Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group or Soloist with Large
Group. In 1996, Columbia Records released a six-CD box set, Miles Davis
& Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings that won the
Grammy for Best Historical Album. Quiet Nights was preceded into the
marketplace by Davis' next band effort, Seven Steps to Heaven, recorded
in the spring of 1963 with an entirely new line-up consisting of
saxophonist George Coleman, pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Ron Carter,
and drummer Frank Butler. During the sessions, Feldman was replaced by
Herbie Hancock and Butler by Tony Williams. The album found Davis making
a transition to his next great group, of which Carter, Hancock, and
Williams would be members. It was another pop chart entry that earned
1963 Grammy nominations for both Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a
Soloist or Small Group and Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large
Group. The quintet followed with two live albums, Miles Davis in Europe,
recorded in July 1963, which made the pop charts and earned a 1964
Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small
Group or Soloist with Small Group, and My Funny Valentine, recorded in
February 1964 and released in 1965, when it reached the pop charts.
By September 1964, the final member of the classic Miles Davis Quintet
of the 1960s was in place with the addition of saxophonist Wayne Shorter
to the team of Davis, Carter, Hancock, and Williams. While continuing to
play standards in concert, this unit embarked on a series of albums of
original compositions contributed by the band members, starting in
January 1965 with E.S.P., followed by Miles Smiles (1967 Grammy
nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or
Soloist with Small Group [7 or Fewer]), Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in
the Sky (1968 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance
by a Small Group or Soloist with Small Group), and Filles de Kilimanjaro.
By the time of Miles in the Sky, the group had begun to turn to electric
instruments, presaging Davis' next stylistic turn. By the final sessions
for Filles de Kilimanjaro in September 1968, Hancock had been replaced
by Chick Corea and Carter by Dave Holland. But Hancock, along with
pianist Joe Zawinul and guitarist John McLaughlin, participated on
Davis' next album, In a Silent Way (1969), which returned the trumpeter
to the pop charts for the first time in four years and earned him
another small-group jazz performance Grammy nomination.
With his next album, Bitches Brew, Davis turned more overtly to a
jazz-rock style. Though certainly not conventional rock music, Davis'
electrified sound attracted a young, non-jazz audience while putting off
traditional jazz fans. Bitches Brew, released in March 1970, reached the
pop Top 40 and became Davis' first album to be certified gold. It also
earned a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Arrangement and won the
Grammy for large-group jazz performance. He followed it with such
similar efforts as Miles Davis at Fillmore East (1971
Grammy nomination for Best Jazz
Performance by a Group), A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On the
Corner, and In Concert, all of which reached the pop charts. Meanwhile,
Davis' former sidemen became his disciples in a series of fusion groups:
Corea formed Return to Forever, Shorter and Zawinul led Weather Report,
and McLaughlin and former Davis drummer Billy Cobham organized the
Mahavishu Orchestra.
Starting in October 1972, when he broke his ankles in a car accident,
Davis became less active in the early 1970s, and in 1975 he gave up
recording entirely due to illness, undergoing surgery for hip
replacement later in the year. Five years passed before he returned to
action by recording The Man With the Horn in 1980 and going back to
touring in 1981. By now, he was an elder statesman of jazz, and his
innovations had been incorporated into the music, at least by those who
supported his eclectic approach. He was also a celebrity whose appeal
extended far beyond the basic jazz audience. He performed on the
worldwide jazz festival circuit and recorded a series of albums that
made the pop charts, including We Want Miles (1982 Grammy Award for Best
Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist), Star People, Decoy, and
You're Under Arrest. In 1986, after 30 years with Columbia, he switched
to Warner Bros. Records and released Tutu, which won him his fourth
Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance. Aura, an album he had
recorded in 1984, was released by Columbia in 1989 and brought him his
fifth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist (on a
Jazz Recording).
Davis surprised jazz fans when, on July 8, 1991, he joined an orchestra
led by Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival to perform some of the
arrangements written for him in the late 1950s by Gil Evans; he had
never previously looked back at an aspect of his career. He died of
pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke within months. Doo-Bop, his
last studio album, appeared in 1992. It was collaboration with rapper
Easy Mo Bee, and it won a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues
Instrumental Performance, with the track "Fantasy" nominated
for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. Released in 1993, Miles & Quincy
Live at Montreux won Davis his seventh Grammy for Best Large Jazz
Ensemble Performance.
Miles Davis took an all-inclusive, constantly restless approach to jazz
that had begun to fall out of favour by the time of his death, even as
it earned him controversy during his lifetime. It was hard to recognize
the bebop acolyte of Charlie Parker in the flamboyantly dressed leader
with the hair extensions who seemed to keep one foot on a wah-wah pedal
and one hand on an electric keyboard in his later years. But he did much
to popularize jazz, reversing the trend away from commercial appeal that
bebop began. And whatever the fripperies and explorations, he retained
an ability to play moving solos that endeared him to audiences and
demonstrated his affinity with tradition. At a time when jazz is
inclining 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. All Music Guide
DISCOGRAPHY
ALBUMS
The
Complete Savoy and Dial Sessions (1945-1951) (collects all of Charlie
Parker’s recordings with Savoy and Dial, including most of Miles Davis’
early work with Parker) First Miles (1945) Billie's Bounce (Charlie
Parker, leader) (Savoy) (1945) Yardbird in Lotus Land (Charlie Parker,
leader) (Spotlite) (1946) The Love Songs of Mr. B (Billy Eckstein,
leader) (1946) Bopping the Blues (Earl Coleman,Ann Baker, leaders)
(1946) Flying Home (Illinois Jacquet, leader) (1947) Cool Bird (Charlie
Parker, leader) (1947) The Band that Never Was (Charlie Parker, leader)
(Spotlite) (1948) Bird on 52nd Street (3 volumes) (Charlie Parker,
leader) (1948) Bird at the Royal Roost (Charlie Parker, leader) (1948)
The Real Birth of the Cool (Miles’ nonet live at the Royal Roost)
(1948) Cool Boppin' (1948) Birth of the Cool (1949 and 1950) Conception
(1951) Blue Period (1951) Dig (1951) Miles Davis and Horns (1951 and
1953) Miles Davis Volume 1 (Blue Note Records, 1952 and 1954) Miles
Davis Volume 2 (Blue Note Records, 1953) Blue Haze (1953 and 1954)
Collectors' Items (1953 and 1956) Walkin' (1954) Bags' Groove (1954)
Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (1954, with one track from 1956)
Musings of Miles (1955) Blue Moods (1955) Quintet / Sextet (1955, Miles
Davis and Milt Jackson) Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet (1955) Cookin'
with the Miles Davis Quintet (1956) Relaxin' with the Miles Davis
Quintet (1956) Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet (1956) Steamin' with
the Miles Davis Quintet (1956) [edit] Columbia, 1955-1975 Recordings for
Columbia Records, during what is generally considered to be the most
artistically and financially successful period of Davis's career. Again,
years shown are for the recordings, though albums were usually released
soon after recording. 'Round About Midnight (1955-1956) Miles Ahead
(1957) Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud (Fontana, 1957 - film soundtrack)
Somethin' Else (Blue Note Records, 1958 - Cannonball Adderley quintet)
Milestones (1958) Jazz Track (1958) Porgy and Bess (1958) 1958 Miles
(1958) Kind of Blue (1959) (RIAA: 4x Platinum) Sketches of Spain (1960)
(RIAA: Gold) Someday My Prince Will Come (1961) Quiet Nights (1962-1963)
Seven Steps to Heaven (1963) E.S.P (1965) Miles Smiles (1966) Sorcerer
(1967) Nefertiti (1967) Miles in the Sky (1968) Filles de Kilimanjaro
(1969 - Recorded in June & September 1968) In a Silent Way (1969)
Bitches Brew (1970 - Recorded in August 1969) (RIAA: Platinum) A Tribute
to Jack Johnson (1970) Live-Evil (1971 - Recorded in the Studio February
And June 1970 & Live in December 1970) On the Corner (1972) Big Fun
(1974 - previously unissued recordings from 1969-1972) Get Up with It
(1974 - previously unissued recordings from 1970-1974) Water Babies
(1976 - previously unissued recordings from 1967 & 1968) Circle in
the Round (1979 - previously unissued recordings from 1955-1970)
Directions (1981 - previously unissued recordings from 1960-1970) [edit]
1981-1991 After his five year retirement, Davis recorded initially for
Columbia, and from the end of 1985 (Tutu onwards) for Warner Bros.
Records. The Man With The Horn (1981) Star People (1983) Decoy (1984)
You're Under Arrest (1985) Tutu (1986) Music from Siesta (1987 - film
soundtrack) Amandla (1989) Aura (1989) Dingo (1991 - film soundtrack)
Doo-Bop (1992)
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