East St. Louis teen remade jazz repeatedly
Miles Dewey Davis III, born 26 May 1926, quit Juilliard for Manhattan clubs and kept reinventing jazz dialects. Cool, modal, and electric chapters each minted new sidemen. A five-year health break preceded 1980s pop-tinged returns before his 1991 death.
His mother taught music and played violin, his father was a dentist, and the family owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas before moving to East St. Louis in 1927. A family friend gave him his first trumpet in 1935, and teacher Elwood Buchanan, who rapped his knuckles whenever he leaned on vibrato, pushed him toward the clean, centred tone he kept for life. By twelve, he later wrote, music mattered more than anything else; he ran the Rhumboogie Orchestra as musical director while still in high school.
In July 1944 a sick trumpeter let him sit in with Billy Eckstine's band, alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and he resolved to move to New York. He enrolled at Juilliard that September but spent his nights hunting Parker through Harlem jam sessions, dropped out after three semesters, and in 1945 took Gillespie's chair in Parker's quintet. His solo on Now's the Time already hinted at cool jazz.
The Birth of the Cool sessions followed, then early hard bop on Prestige, a triumphant Newport set, and a Columbia contract; 'Round About Midnight in 1955 first paired him with John Coltrane. Seven Steps to Heaven in 1963 brought in Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams, and with Wayne Shorter the quintet helped invent post-bop. From In a Silent Way in 1969 to Agharta in 1975 he absorbed rock, funk and electronics, his most divisive phase.
Poor health forced a five-year retirement. His 1980s comeback with younger players and pop material on Tutu and You're Under Arrest won cooler reviews but his biggest sales. He died in 1991, aged 65, and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
Source: Miles Davis
