Miles Dewey Davis III came of age at a moment when jazz was moving fast, literally and culturally. Bebop had exploded in New York in the 1940s, led by musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, who took the swing language of the big-band era and pushed it into something sharper, quicker, more harmonically daring.
At an early age Miles was already a serious young musician. He had studied trumpet, played professionally in his hometown of St. Louis, and in 1944 had already crossed paths with the Billy Eckstine band, which included bebop innovators Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. That encounter helped convince him that New York was where the future of jazz was happening.
Miles arrived in New York in 1944 to study at Juilliard. The National Endowment for the Arts describes Juilliard as his “convenient passport to New York,” because his real goal was to get close to the bebop scene and Charlie Parker. The real classroom was 52nd Street and by 1945, he was playing alongside Charlie Parker. Bebop prized speed and though Miles could play that language, his genius was often found in what he left out.
Where some players filled every space, Miles made space the point. His trumpet sound was lean and searching with restraint. Out of late-night sessions with Gil Evans and other forward-thinking musicians came Birth of the Cool, and a new form of jazz was born and moving jazz forward.
By the late 1950s, he had assembled one of the most important bands in American music: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Wynton Kelly all helped shape the sound world that became Kind of Blue. Released in 1959, it became not only Miles Davis’s most famous album but one of the most widely loved jazz recordings of all time.
This kind of jazz was built on scales and tone that gave musicians more room to breathe, and modal jazz opened a different kind of freedom. It allowed a soloist to explore mood, melody, and silence. It became a living language that reflected in cultural changes.
In the 1960s Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams stretched rhythm, form, and improvisation into something more open and unpredictable. By the end of that decade, Miles turned towards electric instruments, rock rhythms, funk, and studio experimentation. With In a Silent Way and then Bitches Brew, Miles helped lead the way into electric jazz and fusion.
Today, influence lives in jazz musicians lives in hip-hop, R&B, neo-soul, electronic music, and modern pop artists who borrow from jazz in an unpredictable way. That is the remarkable legacy of Miles.
The Downbeat will present 100 Miles: The Life & Legacy of Miles Davis with Justin Varnes and the Jazz Legacy Project on August 21st and 22nd. This special evening will pair live music, storytelling, and an intimate listening-room experience with a prix fixe dinner for $75 per person.
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