Miles Davis

Miles Davis played a crucial and inevitably controversial role in every major development in jazz since the mid-'40s, and no other jazz musician has had so profound an effect on rock. Miles Davis was the most widely recognized jazz musician of his era, an outspoken social critic and an arbiter of style - in attitude and fashion - as well as music.

Davis was raised in an upper-middle-class black home in an integrated East St. Louis neighborhood. His father was a dentist; his mother, a onetime music teacher. In 1941 he began playing semiprofessionally with St. Louis jazz bands. Four years later, his father sent him to study at New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Immediately upon arriving in New York City, Davis sought out alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, whom he had met the year before in St. Louis. He became Parker’s roommate and protégé, playing in his quintet on the 1945 Savoy sessions, the definitive recordings of the bebop movement. He dropped out of Juilliard and played with Benny Carter, Billy Eckstine, Charles Mingus, and Oscar Pettiford as well as with Parker.

As a trumpeter Davis was far from virtuosic, but he more than made up for his technical limitations by emphasizing his strengths: his ear for ensemble sound, unique phrasing, and a distinctive haunted tone. He started moving away from speedy bop and toward something more introspective. His direction was defined by his collaboration with Gil Evans on the Birth of the Cool sessions in 1949 and early ’50, playing with a nine-piece band that included Max Roach, John Lewis, Lee Konitz, and Gerry Mulligan using meticulous arrangements by Evans, Mulligan, Lewis, Davis, and Johnny Carisi.

By 1949 Davis had become a heroin addict. He continued to perform and record over the next four years, but his addiction kept his career in low gear until he cleaned up in 1954. The following year, he formed a group with drummer Philly Joe Jones, bassist Paul Chambers, pianist Red Garland and, in his first major exposure, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. The Miles Davis Quintet quickly established itself as the premier jazz group of the decade.

Between 1958 and 1963 the personnel in Davis’ groups - quintets, sextets, and small orchestras - shifted constantly and included pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, saxophonists Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Stitt, and Hank Mobley, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. Continuing the experiments begun with Birth of the Cool, Davis’ work moved toward greater complexity - as on his orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans (Miles Ahead, 1957; Porgy and Bess, 1958; Sketches of Spain, 1959; Quiet Nights, 1962) - and greater simplicity, as on Kind of Blue (1959), where he dispensed with chords as the basis for improvisation in favor of modal scales and tone centers.

In 1963 Davis formed a quintet with bassist Ron Carter, pianist Herbie Hancock [see entry], drummer Tony Williams [see entry], and saxophonist George Coleman, who was replaced by Wayne Shorter in 1965. This group stayed together until 1968. In that time, it exerted as much influence on the jazz of the ’60s as the first Davis quintet had on the jazz of the ’50s. Davis and his sidemen - especially Shorter - wrote a body of original material for the quintet.

In 1968 Davis began the process that eventually brought him to a fusion of jazz and rock. With Miles in the Sky, the quintet introduced electric instruments (piano, bass, and George Benson’s guitar on one piece) and the steady beat of rock drumming to their sound. With Filles de Kilimanjaro, on which Chick Corea [see entry] substituted on some tracks for Hancock, and Dave Holland replaced Carter, the rock influence became more pronounced. In a Silent Way featured three keyboardists - Hancock, Corea, and composer Joe Zawinul, on electric pianos and organs - and guitarist John McLaughlin [see Mahavishnu Orchestra entry] in addition to Williams, Shorter, Holland, and Davis. For his next recording sessions he put together what he called “the best damn rock & roll band in the world” - Shorter, McLaughlin, Holland, Corea, and Zawinul, plus organist Larry Young, bassist Harvey Brooks, bass clarinetist Bennie Maupin, and percussionists Jack DeJohnette, Lenny White, Don Alias, and Jim Riley - and, with no rehearsals and virtually no instructions, let them jam. The result was the historic Bitches Brew, a two-LP set that sold over 400,000 copies.

In the three years following Brew’s release, Davis amassed a rock star–level following and performed in packed concert halls in America, Europe, and Japan. As his sidemen (who in the early ’70s included pianist Keith Jarrett and percussionists Billy Cobham and Airto Moreira) ventured out on their own, in such bands as Weather Report [see entry] and the Mahavishnu Orchestra [see entry], jazz-rock fusion became one of the dominant new forms.

A car crash that broke both his legs in 1972 put a temporary stop to Davis’ activity and marked the beginning of his growing reclusiveness. The recordings he made between 1972 and 1975 advanced the ideas presented on Bitches Brew, extracting the percussive qualities of tuned instruments, making greater use of electronics and high-powered amplification, and deemphasizing solos in favor of ensemble funk. His sidemen in the mid-’70s included bassist Michael Henderson, guitarists Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, drummers Al Foster and Mtume, and saxophonists Sonny Fortune and Dave Liebman. Agharta, recorded live in Japan in 1975, was his last album of new material for five years. He spent much of that time recuperating from a hip ailment. With the encouragement of his new wife, actress Cicely Tyson, he reemerged in 1981 with a new album and concert appearances. While many old supporters were disappointed by his newly acquired pop clichés (including some vocals), The Man With the Horn was his most popular release since Bitches Brew and marked his return to live concerts. We Want Miles was a live set; Star People reenlisted Gil Evans as arranger along with Davis’ ’80s sextet: Mike Stern or John Scofield on guitar, Marcus Miller or Tom Barney on electric bass, Bill Evans on saxophone, Al Foster on drums, and Mino Cinelu on percussion.

Davis’ music took increasingly commercial turns; he recorded material by Cyndi Lauper and the rock band Scritti Politti (Davis guested on the group’s Provision), later experimenting with hip-hop and go go rhythms. Critics generally lambasted the lukewarm funk of Davis’ new music, but the trumpeter had reached new heights of popularity, his concerts selling out all over the world and his recordings even making dents in the pop charts. Davis continued to surround himself with young musicians; among them, saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Bob Berg, and keyboardist Joey DeFrancesco.

Tutu, Davis’ first recording for Warner Bros. after ending his 30-year tenure with Columbia, was a purely studio-created project with Davis’ horn the only “live” instrument. Aura (recorded in 1985) had Davis in front of Danish arranger Palle Mikkelborg’s big band for pieces that harkened back to the protofusion experiments of the late ’60s.

In 1985 Davis contributed to the antiapartheid Sun City recording, and the next year he and his band appeared at the televised Amnesty International Concert at Giants Stadium. Davis devoted increasing time to visual art - his paintings were exhibited in galleries and a book devoted to them was published. In 1988 Davis’ marriage to Tyson ended, and Gil Evans, his close friend and musical associate, died; the long-rumored adaptation of Tosca that the two had been discussing for years never came to fruition.

Davis’ quest for increased public recognition led him to TV and film. He appeared on Miami Vice, made commercials for a New York jazz radio station, and had a featured role in the 1990 film Dingo. Davis also worked on the soundtracks for Siesta, The Hot Spot, and Scrooged (in which he played a street musician). In 1989 Davis’ controversial autobiography (cowritten with poet Quincy Troupe) was published. While detailing Davis’ drug problem and romantic involvements, the book was noticeably skimpy in its praise for important Davis collaborators. In 1990 Davis received the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

In failing health, Davis began to look backward for the first time in his career. The summer before his death Davis participated in a career retrospective - something he had always studiously avoided - held at La Villette in Paris. Joining Davis and his current band were important Davis-associated instrumentalists including Jackie McLean, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter. Shortly after that concert, Davis performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival with a big band led by Quincy Jones, re-creating the legendary Davis–Gil Evans collaborations.

Davis died in September 1991, reportedly suffering from pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke. The posthumously released Doo-Bop, a jazz/hip-hop collaborative project with rapper Easy Mo Bee, proved that Davis continued experimenting to the end.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)