Miles Dewey Davis III was born on 26 May 1926 in Alton (Illinois, U.S.). He died on 28 September 1991 in Santa Monica (California, U.S.). He grew up affluent; his mother was a violinist and his father a dentist.
Davis has been attracted to blues, big bands and gospel from an early age. At nine, he became his first trumpet. Elwood Buchanan taught him to play on it. Davis later spoke of it as the “biggest influence on my life”. Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato, against the fashion of the time, which he continued all his life.
1940s
At the age of 15, Davis goes to high school and joins a marching band, led by his music teacher Buchanan. He also plays in small ensembles. He eagerly studies music theory and learns to read scores.
Under pressure from his mother, who felt he should finish school first, he turned down the offer to join the Tiny Bradshaw band. Shortly afterwards, he plays as a substitute in the Billie Eckstine Band, in which Art Blakey, Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker also play. After this experience, Davis decides to move to New York “where the action is”. He is admitted to the Juilliard School of Music but does not finish his education to pursue music full-time. He plays in several bands, including the Charlie Parker quintet. Here he regularly plays with Gillespie and Mingus. In one of the songs ‘Now’s the Time’, he plays a solo that anticipates what would become ‘cool jazz’.
Recordings during this period include ‘Half Nelson‘ (1947) and ‘Sippin’ at Bells‘ (1947).
In August 1948, Davis, along with Mulligan, Roach, Lewis and others, form a nine-member band (nonet), seeking a musical alternative to bebop. Eventually, nine songs were recorded and released as singles. It was not until 1957 that these were compiled into the album ‘Birth of the Cool’, which has a previously unprecedented orchestral timbre.
1950s
After returning from a stay in Paris, Davis became depressed and he found himself out of work. He was not yet 24 and became addicted to heroin, which did not help his playing. He eventually got to grips with his addiction and recorded two albums: ‘Miles Davis Quartet’ (1953) and ‘Miles Davis Volume 2′ (1956). More albums followed and they portray his transition from cool jazz to hard bop. Hard bop is more focused on harmony and melody and regularly uses popular songs as a starting point for improvisation. ‘Walkin” is the first album representative of this genre. You can see a recording from this album here:
Miles’ performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955, along with Monk and Mulligan, brought back public interest in his work. The Miles Davis Quintet, which now included John Coltrane, released four albums in the second half of the 1950s, recorded in two marathon sessions in 1956. ‘Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet’ (1957), ‘Relaxin’ with the Miles DDavis Quintet1958), ‘Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet’(1960) and ‘Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet‘. Watch a recording of ‘When I fall in Love’ from the latter album
Davis travelled to Paris several times, including recording the soundtrack to ‘Ascenseur pour l’échafaud‘ (1958, with director Louis Malle).
Tired of all performances and travel, Davis was ready for a new project. He aspires to a job at a university to combine his theoretical knowledge and his skills as a performer. But it becomes a project with Canadian-American composer, pianist and arranger Gil Evans. Between 1957 and 1962, the two make five albums that differ greatly from Davis’s oeuvre up to that point.
On Miles Ahead (1957), Davis plays on flugelhorn “The Maids of Cadiz” by Léo Delibes, the first time Davis recorded ‘classical music’. You can listen to a recording of this song played by Gil Evans’ big band here (2018).
Porgy and Bess (1959), one of the albums made with Gil Evans, contains arrangements of pieces from George Gershwin’s opera. Sketches of Spain (1960) features music by Joaquín Rodrigo and Manuel de Falla and compositions by Evans. The album was a great success; it sold more than 120,000 copies in the US alone. On this album, you can listen to, among others, Davis’s version of the Concerto d ‘Aranjuez.
The duo’s last album is Quiet Nights (1963), a collection of bossa nova songs that, incidentally, was released against Davis’ and Evans’ wishes.
The box set Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings (1996) won the 1997 Grammy Award for ‘Best Historical Album’ and ‘Best Album Notes’. It is gift with which to please many a music lover.
In March 1959, Davis released ”Kind of Blue” which is often called his best album and one of the best albums in the history of jazz. By 2019, it had sold a total of 5 million copies. Songs include: ‘Freddy Freeloader’, ‘So What’ and ‘All Blues”. The latter song is played here by the Frankfurt Radio Big Band in 2020.
‘Kind of Blue’ departs from Davis’s earlier hardbop jazz style where improvisations are based on complex chord progressions. Instead, soloists improvise based on a predetermined ‘mode’, usually one or more of the seven classical scales, or a variation thereof. The aim of such a modal approach is to increase the freedom for soloists to shape an improvisation. Later, John Coltrane, among others, would also opt for this ‘modal approach’.
1960s
Miles continues to tour with his quintet during these years, which sees many personnel changes over the years. He also had to be hospitalised several times for hip fractures and a liver infection. His record sales dropped to a minimum. However, In the late 1960s he again record five new albums: ‘Miles smiles’ (1966), Sorcerer‘(1967), ‘Nefertiti‘(1967), ‘Miles in the sky’(1968) and ‘Filles de Kilimanjaro’(1968). During concerts, the band links songs together so that they flow into each other. Davis continued to do this until 1975.
In the last two albums, Davis switches partly to electric instruments, the beginning of his ‘fusion’ period. Rock influences are now increasingly audible. ‘In a silent way’ (1969) is considered the first fusion album, and it prompted a lot of comments from jazz critics. Here you can listen and watch ‘In a silent way’ from the album of the same name.
1970s
‘Bitches Brew’ (1970) is another bestseller. By 2003, it had sold one million copies. The songs that make up the album were compiled and edited from separate recordings with technical aids. Miles Davis starts performing with ‘Bitches Brew’ in the support acts of rock bands such as those of Steve Miller and Neil Young. He also performs to an audience of 600,000 at The Island of Wight Festival. Again, critics follow him with suspicion. You can watch and listen to part of Bitches Brew here.
Davis became influenced by the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen; critics spoke of ‘space music’. The album ‘On the corner’(1972) mixes this influence with funk. A series of albums with recordings of performances followed: ‘In concert’(1972), ‘Get up with it’(1974), Agharta (1974), Pangea (1976) and Dark Magnus (1977). Fans loved these albums; critics wiped the floor with them. They denounced Davis’s habit of playing with his back to the audience or looking at the ground during performances. He used alcohol, codeine and morphine to stay on his feet during these performances and had to be hospitalised repeatedly.
In 1975, Davis stops making music. In the following five years, he tries to put together a new band. Eventually, he managed to come back. He releases two new album ‘The man with too horn’(1981) and ‘We want Miles’ (1981), which earned him a Grammy Award for ‘Best Jazz Instrumental Performance By a Soloist’.
It was only after he suffers a stroke that he distanced himself from the use of alcohol and drugs for the rest of his life, started drawing and living a healthy life. He now also plays ‘cover’ versions of pop songs, such as Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’. He swapped his funk-based style for a more melodic one. He also collaborated with a slew of other artists, such as Zucchero Fornaciari in a version of Dune Moss.
1990s
In 1991, at the Montreux jazz festival, Davis plays for the first time songs from the albums Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, which he had recorded with the recently deceased Gil Evans in the late 1950s, with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones. You can listen and watch their entire performance here. Davis’s occasionally weak playing was because he was seriously ill at the time of the concert.
At a grand concert in Paris attended by many colleagues, he receives the order “Chevalier of the Legion of Honour” from the hands of the French minister of culture, who called him the “Picasso of Jazz”.
Back in the US, his latest album ‘Doo-Bop’ which would be released posthumously (1992), as well as Rubberband (2019). On 25 August, he performs publicly for the last time. A snippet of his last performance in Europe on 1 July 1991, the song ‘Human Nature’, can be seen here.
In September, Miles dies of a series of complications.
Miles Davis is widely hailed as a pioneer of 20th-century jazz and his influence on the development of rock. The Guardian places him among the best jazz musicians ever. Davis was at the forefront of many innovations: ‘cool jazz’, ‘hard bop’, ‘fusion’ with rock, soul, funk and hip-hop. As such, his work is a sustained critique of bebop. He stretched the boundaries of jazz far and, in doing so, also inspired many musicians.
A two-hour-long documentary, ‘The Miles Davis Story’ won an international Emmy Award.
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