Miles Davis , (1926 - 1991)
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926, Alton, Illinois - September 28, 1991, Santa Monica, California) is a composer and American jazz trumpeter.



Miles Davis was at the forefront of many developments in jazz and was particularly distinguished by its ability to discover and to surround himself with talent. His playing is characterized by a great musical sensitivity and fragility that comes up to the sound. It marked the history of jazz and music of the twentieth century. Many great names in jazz for years 1950 to 1980 worked with him.

The various formations of Miles Davis were as laboratories in which to have proved the talent of new generations and new horizons of modern music; These include Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley and Bill Evans in the 1950s. From 1960 to the 1980s are called his sidemen Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Tony Williams, Joe Zawinul, Dave Liebman and Kenny Garrett, is with them that is moving towards " fusion "of rock and jazz, which remains one of the pioneers. The discovery of the music of Jimi Hendrix will be crucial in this development but also the shock of the Newport Festival in 1969, purely jazz festival programmed to rock this year. Number of musicians who pass through his training from 1960 to 1968 then form groups of iconic jazz-rock fusion: including Weather Report, hosted by Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever Chick Corea and the different groups of Herbie Hancock.

Miles Davis is one of the few jazzmen, and one of the first black to have been known and accepted by middle America, even winning the trophy for the best-dressed man of the year's monthly GQ during the 1960s . Like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis is this curious phenomenon, a superstar of jazz. Unlike his illustrious elder who had sought integration into mainstream culture dominated by the white population, the musical career of Miles Davis was accompanied by a political stance in favor of the black cause, and his struggle against racism, carried out with the anger of a man standing in the shady character known. In 1985, he participated in the album Sun City against apartheid at the initiative of Steven Van Zandt.

In France, recording the music for the film Lift to the Scaffold (1957) that made him famous. His last album, Doo-Bop, released in 1992, gives vent to the rap influences.





On May 25, 1926, Miles Dewey Davis II, dentist, and his wife give birth to Henry Cléotaramani Miles Dewey Davis III, Alton (Illinois), on the banks of the Mississippi. The child, the second of the couple grew up in a family environment and relatively easy music: his mother played piano and violin, and his maternal grandmother was professor of organ in Arkansas [1].

The following year, the youth's family moved to Miles moved to East St. Louis, Illinois, where his father opened a dental practice, and where the boy has a passion for sports - baseball, football, basketball ball, swimming and boxing in particular - but also for music: he followed with passion the radio program Jazz Rhythms Harlem [1]. At the age of nine or ten years, a friend of his father, Dr. John Eubanks, offered him a trumpet, which he soon began to play [1].

In 1939, college student at Crispus Attucks Junior High, he took lessons with jazz trumpeter Elwood Buchanan, another friend of his father, a professor at Lincoln High, where Miles is studying soon, and with the Head of the Orchestra Saint Louis Symphony [1]. He also played in the school band, he is the youngest component.

After meeting with trumpeter Clark Terry, jazz local figure, who has a profound influence on him, Miles turned professional in 1944, by joining the American Federation of Musicians [1]. Assiduously frequented the clubs of the city, despite his young age which allowed him access theory, he began playing in public as soon as possible, gaining a reputation regionally, while continuing to attend high school.

In 1942 at the age of 16, he met Irene Birth, his first real girlfriend, whom he had three children. Irene challenges him to call Eddie Randle to be engaging in R & B band, the Blue Devils. Following a hearing, he was hired as a trumpeter, but is also entrusted with many chores, such as organizing rehearsals, gaining a solid knowledge of the profession [1]. The orchestra played between St. Louis and East St. Louis (Missouri) of Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman, giving Miles a chance to haunt the jam sessions with his new friend next to Clark Terry, "making beef "with famous musicians like Roy Eldridge, Kenny Dorham, Benny Carter and especially Lester Young [1], idol of the saxophone and Miles model.

In 1944, when as a young graduate of Lincoln High and in great demand by orchestras in the region, Miles is reluctant to follow the career, his first born daughter, Cheryl. At the same time, his parents divorce and his relationship with his mother deteriorated.



In June 1944, at 18, after returning disappointed in his brief involvement with a group of New Orleans, the Six Brown Cats Adam Lambert, where he left the Blue Devils (the other bands the region can not afford the eighty dollars a week he demanded [1]), Miles Davis wavers between joining the faculty of dental surgery, or follow Terry Clark in the orchestra of the U.S. Navy [1 ].

It was then that Billy Eckstine Big Band is playing at a club in St Louis. This group like no other attempts to match the size big band bebop revolution that shakes the middle of the Jazz since the early 1940s. It brings together the two most famous artists and musicians of the genre, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker. At the beginning of the concert, luck: Gillespie Davis has found the room to ask him to join them on stage to replace a defective trumpet [2]! Amazed by this musical encounter, Miles took a crucial decision: he will join the group in New York.

With financial assistance from his father, he enrolled in September 1944 at the famous Juilliard School of Music in New York, whose teaching the boring pretty quickly. But its real purpose lies elsewhere: he begins to attend assiduously in the Minton's 118th Street, the birthplace of legendary Bebop, in search of Parker and Gillespie. That's when he meets the trumpeters Fats Navarro and Freddie Webster, who become his friends and musical associates. Having finally got hold of Gillespie and Parker (who, broke as always, moved squarely at Miles! [2]), he learns the intricacies of bebop, musical style particularly complex and difficult. In addition, Parker, aka Bird, the other legends of this style, including the pianist Thelonious Monk.

While studying at the Julliard School, where he learned the piano and learns to contemporary composers like Prokofiev, Miles became a regular jam sessions at night in New York. It supports in particular the great singer Billie Holiday in the band of saxophonist Coleman Hawkins [2]. About that time, he confided later: "I could learn more in one night at Minton's in two years of study at the Julliard School. "[2]

Things are starting to move for the young trumpet player: he won his first official engagement in early 1945, along with tenor saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. April 24, he made his first studio recording, burning first four songs with the singer accompanying quintet Rubberlegs ("Rubber Legs") Williams under the direction of saxophonist Herbie Fields. These whimsical pieces of blues, centered on the song, do not give him the opportunity to show his talent, but it's a start [2].

In October, he finally joined Charlie Parker's quintet, as a replacement for Dizzy Gillespie, who left the group. November 26, the band recorded, Gillespie is back ... the piano. On March 28, 1946, Miles recorded again, with Parker at the height of its success, the classic Moose The Mooch, Yardbird Suite, Ornithology and A Night In Tunisia. The sound gentle and quiet of his game, the vehemence of opposition to Charlie Parker, also far away Gillespie's style, he first tried to imitate before giving up [2]. This difference will attract some negative reviews, but Davis promptly impose its own style. Esquire magazine declared the "New Star of the Jazz Trumpet." May 8, Miles composed and recorded his first personal composition, Donna Lee, who draws the attention of renowned arranger Gil Evans. there will be three years in the Parker group, learning a lot and burning several legendary songs, but being equally acquainted with the habits of the saxophonist and his entourage, foremost among them the drugs, mainly heroin, which wreaks havoc in the "boppers". Miles comes in first to avoid falling into drug addiction, but supports more harm it causes erratic behavior with his colleagues [2].

In the autumn of 1946, Charlie Parker, exhausted, was hospitalized for seven months in Camarillo. Without the group, particularly Miles Davis played with Charles Mingus, before joining again Billy Eckstine's band for a tour. In spring 1947, the group is dissolved, and Miles was again without work after years of resistance he plunges into cocaine and heroin [3]. For several weeks he played in the big band of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and then joined a re-established.

Celebrated by the prestigious jazz magazine readership in their annual referendums, participating in recordings with legendary musicians the most famous of Bebop, Davis in 1948, however, is a frustrated man, eager to create music of its own.



In the summer of 1948, Miles Davis, in collaboration with arranger Gil Evans, whom he met several years earlier, decided to put its project rises from the principles of Bebop to create nothing less than a new form of Jazz. Based in New York, he founded a new group, intermediate between the big band and small groups Bebop. It will be a nonet (nine musicians), so each section will, in the minds of its creators, imitating one of the registers of the human voice [4]: ​​the rhythm section includes bass, drums and piano, played by the Former drummer Charlie Parker, Max Roach. In terms of brass, found in more than Davis's trumpet and [saxophone] Gerry Mulligan trombone, French horn, baritone saxophone and tuba.

September 18, 1948, the nonet occurs for the first time in public, providing the first part of the show Count Basie at the Royal Roost in New York under the title "Miles Davis Nonet, arrangement of Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans and John Lewis ". An unusual name that betrays the desire to create music based largely on the arrangements. Playing music with rich orchestration, arrangements and cared for the relatively slow break radically with the urgency of the Bebop, the group is particularly noticed by the artistic director of the disks Capitol Records, Pete Rugolo, who is very interested in [4] .

After a setback due to the strike of 1948 records, in which Miles refuses to join the group no less than Duke Ellington, the studio finally nonet from early 1949 in New York for a series of three sessions that will change the face of the Jazz. In fifteen months and with many different musicians, the band recorded a dozen songs whose titles Godchild, Move, Budo, Jeru, Boplicity and Israel. Six of them come out in 78 rounds, with the remainder until the 1950s and the famous album The Birth of the Cool, released long after the fact, to see the day [4].

The Cool Jazz was born, but it is not an immediate revolution: the nonet is quickly dissolved, and this new music will take several years to establish itself among jazz musicians and the public.

In 1949, Miles Davis made his first trip abroad, taking part on May 8 at the Festival International de Jazz in Paris, Salle Pleyel. Co-leading a band with pianist Tadd Dameron, he met the Parisian intellectual and artistic elite of the time: Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian, Pablo Picasso and especially Juliette Greco. For the trumpet player is a revelation. France is in effect at the time a country far less racist than the United States, especially in the middle he attended in Paris. He first sensation, as he said in his autobiography "to be treated like a human being" [4]. Fell in love with Juliette Greco, he hesitates to marry him, which would be unthinkable in his native country (at that time, the unions "mixed" between blacks and whites are still simply illegal in many U.S. states). Not wanting to impose a life in the United States as the wife of a Black American, and not wanting to abandon his career in France, he gave up and returned to New York in late May



But back to the United States, the separation from Juliette Greco and the Parisian artistic milieu weighs on him [5], and he responds by plunging into heroin, developing a real addiction. The drug has a devastating effect on him, leaving his wife and children in an apartment in Queens, he moved into a hotel of 48th Street in New York and began a parallel career Pimp, by working more prostitutes to fund its daily injections heroin [6]. His house seized by a credit company, he toured with other drugs known, especially in the reformed band of Billy Eckstine, and finds himself in jail in Los Angeles, following a police raid.

The following year, Davis continues to record with many artists very sides, such as Charlie Parker, singer Billie Holiday, Jackie McLean, Philly Joe Jones and Sonny Rollins. He also met a young saxophonist, John Coltrane, with whom he played briefly in the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. But despite the energetic intervention of his father, who brought him back to his home in East St. Louis and will even have him arrested by the police, he can not get drugs. It is the encounter in 1953 with the dancer Frances Taylor, who will become his second wife, who convinced him to detoxify [7].

After a hard fight against his addiction to heroin, in his father's farm, it emerged in February 1954 and brings a new sextet counts including drummer Kenny Clarke and pianist Horace Silver. Together they lay the foundations for a new style, which became after Bebop Cool and the "third wave" of modern jazz: the Hard Bop [7]. Cool reaction against the Jazz that he himself launched, this new more aggressive style (without reaching the summits of Bebop) is harmonically simple as Bebop. It is particularly influenced by Rhythm and blues, but also a technological novelty, the disc turns 33, which allows pieces much longer and developed [7] Several pieces founders of Hard Bop will emerge on the album Walkin ': Walkin 'the title track, but also Airegin (an anagram of Nigeria), Oleo Doxy and composed by Rollins.

The same year the new format comes out on the Birth of the Cool album, a compilation of songs recorded by the nonet pioneer of Cool Jazz. Becoming in the minds of listeners and critics a landmark in the history of modern jazz, the disc gives a significant boost to the career revival of Miles. At Christmas 1954, he directed with Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Percy Heath and a Horace Silver session considered essential for developing his own style as for the future of Hard Bop [7]

At the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, the interpretation of Miles Davis' Round About Midnight, a theme of Thelonious Monk, is greeted by a standing ovation coupled with a huge critical acclaim: the career of trumpeter, seriously jeopardized by its drug problems, is finally relaunched.



In 1955, several months after the death of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis founded the group in question has as its "first great quintet," with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones to battery [8].

With this group, Miles will explore his musical ideas of the day, based notably on the approach of pianist Ahmad Jamal, he began to express at the beginning of the year with the album Miles Davis Quartet. The quintet will also become the first symbol of the talent discoverer of Davis: all its members are or will become popular leaders, the most famous being John Coltrane, whose reputation will become equal to that of Miles [8].

    "So there was now Trane on sax, Philly Joe on drums, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and me on trumpet. And faster than I could imagine the music we did together has become incredible. It was so good that it gave me chills, and the public. Damn, it soon became scary, so I pinch myself to make sure I was there. Shortly after Trane and me we are set to play together, the critic Whitney Balliett wrote that Coltrane had "a sharply non planing showcasing Davis, as a rough frame for a beautiful stone." Very quickly, Trane has become much more than that. He himself turned into a diamond. I knew, as all who heard him. "
        - Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, The Autobiography p. 209 (1989)

Engaged on Columbia Records at the time the largest record company in the United States, Miles Davis has a publicity effort uncommon in jazz, including his former label effort Prestige Records opportunity to record four albums, Cookin ', Relaxin', Steamin 'and Workin'. Miles Davis had to meet its contractual obligations to Prestige [8].

In 1956 the band released the album 'Round About Midnight, which was a great success and gives Davis a picture and a new material comfort: Dressed in luxurious costumes, mysterious nose wearing sunglasses and driving Italian sports cars, the trumpet is a particular figure in the world of Jazz [8]. It was also at this time that an incident at the origin of part of the myth of the musician as he recovers from surgery to remove nodules on her vocal cords, Davis rails against an organizer concerts dishonest, damaging his throat finally recovering. This voice ravaged remains the symbol of a man who refuses to be pushed around, including the powerful. Refusing life very difficult for jazz musicians, he obtained for his group and himself a significant increase in fees and a standard three sets per night instead of the four that are always the norm [8].

But despite the success, the atmosphere within the group is sometimes tense, especially between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Davis supporting evil drug saxophonist. In April 1957, after coming to blows, trumpeter returns Coltrane group. The latter is then invited by Thelonius Monk to join his orchestra. Freeing himself from his addiction through a personal cure, Coltrane spent several months in training before returning Monk Miles Davis [9].



In the late 1950s, Miles Davis continues his musical evolution, feeding on several parallel commitments to his career as band leader: participation in the project end of 1956 the Jazz and Classical Music Society of Gunther Schuller, to bring together jazz and Classical Music in a "third movement" (Third Stream) and the composition of the soundtrack of Elevator to the Gallows Louis Malle with Jeanne Moreau in 1957. The group, which includes Kenny Clarke and French musicians Barney Wilen (tenor saxophone), Rene Urtreger (piano) and Pierre Michelot (bass) improvised music in front of a screen projecting scenes from the film loop, based on very limited information Miles. These pieces very visual, with only very few agreements, will remain a milestone in the career of Davis, the symbol of his new style [10].

In 1958, Miles Davis Milestones records, becomes his quintet sextet with the appearance of Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone. This album introduced the first elements of modal music, especially the title track. A few days later, he participated, led by Cannonball Adderley, the superb album Somethin 'Else is one of his few sessions as a sideman. The album includes a beautiful version of Autumn Leaves (Autumn Leaves). Meanwhile, he continues to work with Gil Evans and creates orchestral albums that will experience a huge critical and commercial success: Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958) and Sketches of Spain (1959-1960).

In 1959, Miles Davis signs with his masterpiece Kind of Blue, an album of improvised around frames he composed. There are changes in formations from the sextet of Milestones. The pianist Bill Evans, better able to follow the guidance of modal leader, replaces Jimmy Cobb and Red Garland takes the chair drummer Philly Joe Jones. Pianist Wynton Kelly was invited on the bluesy title of the album Freddie Freeloader, further proof that nothing has been left to chance for the realization of this album. The latter is considered the masterpiece of modal jazz and one of the best - and most popular! - Jazz records ever recorded. Jimmy Cobb said that this disc "had been made in heaven."



In March 1960, Miles toured Europe with Coltrane, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers the faithful on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. They give such a memorable concert at the Olympia in Paris on 21 when Coltrane was booed by much of the public angry (!) By his bold explorations. It was at Baltimore in April, as Coltrane officiating for the last time the group of Miles Davis that he finally leaves.

Miles returned to Europe and the Olympia in October, with saxophonist Sonny Stitt parkérien. The game is more aggressive Miles and also closer to an orthodox hard bop. The melodious Hank Mobley held the difficult role of replacing Trane from 1961 when the pianist Wynton Kelly Group. You can hear a few tracks on the album Someday My Prince Will Come and live discs Miles Davis In Person: Friday Night & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk.

It was also at this period that free jazz, a musical genre that Miles, who for once did not launch the movement strives to criticize a particularly caustic and noisy, while surrounding himself with little small, so much discretion, to (sometimes very) young people strongly influenced by this musical. If this is not the case of saxophonist George Coleman, it is not the same for its new rhythm composed by Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and the very young, barely 18 at the time, Tony Williams (drums). These musicians appear for the first time along with Miles on the album Seven Steps to Heaven (1963).

Miles and his band go on tour again in Europe in July 1963 and occur at the Lincoln Center in New York February 12, 1964. A concert to be released as two discs Four & More and My Funny Valentine. In July, the saxophonist Sam Rivers, very close to free jazz, replacing George Coleman. He will participate with the group a tour of Japan.

In September 1964, saxophonist, composer and arranger Wayne Shorter, who had officiated in the Jazz Messengers Art Blakey joins the group. Miles finally finds the saxophonist who will carry his music to new heights. He would later declare in Miles: The Autobiography: "Having Wayne overwhelmed me because I knew that with him, they would make great music. This happened very quickly. "Shorter and quickly takes the lead role in developing the music of the quintet. Herbie Hancock explained this transformation: "In the quintet, from the moment Wayne Shorter arrived, it was devoted to a work of color, agreements replacing phrases and especially the use of space, that is to say the placement of the notes that are played over what the other musicians played the quintet. "

Miles finds it difficult to adapt to the vivacity of these young musicians, but this risk-taking is not the first in the career of Miles and shows its ability to continually reinvent his style. He recounts his experiences with this group:

    "If I were the inspiration, represents wisdom and ensure homogeneity of the group, Tony was on fire, the creative spark, Wayne was the man of ideas, intellectual designer, Ron and Herbie were the anchors . I was the leader who had gathered everyone. They were young, but even if I taught them some things they taught me more on the new thing, the free (...) J learners something every night with this training, first because Tony Williams was a drummer progressive. The only member of one of my bands who told me one day: "Good Lord, Miles, why do not you work [your device]? "It must be said that in trying to hold the high to the youngster, I missed notes. He pushed to rework my instrument since I was exempted from this discipline without even realizing it (...) Every night, Herbie, Tony and Ron returned to their room and talked until the wee This morning they came to play. The next day they went up on stage and played differently. And me, night after night, I had to adapt ... "
        - Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, The Autobiography (1989)

Shortly after its inception, the quintet toured Europe. He recorded his first studio album ESP in January 1965. In December, the move to Chicago club the "Plugged Nickel" is recorded. While studio albums are made up solely of original compositions, the group uses the standard repertoire of Miles Davis (All of You, My Funny Valentine ...) in concert. At these concerts, the group means at its best. Shorter shows are all his qualities as a soloist and the rhythm section shines with its cohesion and prodigious inventiveness.

In October 1966, the band recorded what many consider his masterpiece, the album Miles Smiles. Follow in 1967, the Sorcerer and Nefertiti albums and in 1968, Miles In The Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro.



While rock and funk develop, Miles Davis will initiate the development of a new jazz style, merging the power of the late 1960s with jazz. This new style already sketched out the latest album of the quintet, asserts in a sensational with the albums In a Silent Way (1969) and especially Bitches Brew (1970). Miles surrounded by young musicians who will soon be the leaders of such jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin and UK Austrian-born keyboardist Joe Zawinul. The supply of electricity is accompanied by an even more open to improvisation. Giving musicians just sketches of themes, it offers them greater freedom in improvisation. These two albums are also the producer Teo Macero take center stage in the creative process. The songs are not recorded in one piece, the album is the result of a collage of excerpts taken from the studio. With these two albums, Miles Davis leads a revolution in the jazz world and meet a real popular success. Bitches Brew is sold over 500,000 copies.

Following the sessions Bitches Brew, Miles added to the group of sitars and tablas. The tracks from these sessions (Great Expectations, Lady Orange, Lonely Fire) will be published in 1974 in the album Big Fun. From 1970, the music of Miles is increasingly marked by the funk. For Miles Davis, funk, worn by James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone, is the new music of the black people on the other hand he says the Blues "sold to whites." The power shift is motivated by both artistic and commercial reasons [11].

For the recording of A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Miles thinks Buddy Miles, the drummer of the Band Of Gypsys Jimi Hendrix [5], but it does not come to the meeting. He was replaced by Billy Cobham, Michael Henderson, which forms with the rhythm section of the group whose sound is dominated by the guitar of John McLaughlin. Despite a disastrous promotion of Columbia, the disc (released February 24, 1971), however, is a classic jazz rock. "