Miles Remained Miles Forever
By Nikhil Krishnan
He was not a virtuoso trumpeter like Louis Armstrong. He was not a colorful composer like Duke Ellington. He was not an innovative jazz pioneer like Charlie Parker. Miles was Miles! Whatever he did was considered beautiful. Till the last split second of his life, Miles Davis performed, and everyone had true faith in his genius.
Miles Davis was born in Alton, Illinois, to a relatively musical family. Though his mother wanted him to learn the piano, his father forced him into learning the trumpet at the age of 13. At this point of time, he would meet several trumpet teachers, who would eventually influence his perception of music in general. At the age of 17, Davis would get an opportunity to see the legendary Charlie Parker perform at Illinois, which led his profound love for Jazz to evolve. After graduating from high school, Miles Davis attended the prestigious Julliard School of Music but eventually dropped out because of their tremendous “focus on only European and ‘white’ cultural music”. However, he did credit the institution later on for having contributed a principal music theory base that he would use for a large portion of his career. Meanwhile, he performed at several 52nd Clubs, where he eventually got to meet and perform with his hero, Charlie Parker.
After performing with Charlie Parker and many other local be-bop players as a sideman, Miles Davis experienced severe tension from being in such groups and later quit to make it big on his own. He soon met the Canadian composer and arranger, Gill Evans, and impressed him with his independence in composing original pieces and interpreting others’ works. Gill Evans helped Davis get a recording contract with the Capitol Records. Davis released the promising The Birth of Cool, making a fair end to the post be-bop period and an innovative inauguration of the ‘Cool Jazz’ movement. Though it was very well received by the critics, it was a commercial failure. This encouraged Davis to continuously experiment with combining and utilizing everything he had ever learned from classical and jazz music, producing a series of broad and artful body of works.
He really hit the ground running when he was signed to Columbia Records, eventually releasing a series of brilliant records such as Miles Ahead, Milestones, Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud, Sketches of Spain, the electric rock groove influenced Bitches Brew, and of course, the magnum opus, Kind of Blue. These albums have had their own influence and have been great in their own right. In fact, Kind of Blue remains to be the biggest selling jazz disc of all time. The popular Progressive Rock band Pink Floyd claimed that Kind of Blue had a huge influence on their gigantic album, The Dark Side of the Moon.
In his late years, Miles Davis focused more on performing live than recording new studio material. He had his own distinct stage persona and performed many of his own and other modern pop/rock songs. Miles Davis unfortunately suffered a stroke and a respiratory failure on September 28, 1991, marking an end to a legend’s long career and era.
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