Miles Davis was one of the most important musical and cultural icons of the 20th century. He was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer, and was the biggest star in jazz for almost half a century. In addition to his musical influence, Davis was also extremely charismatic and a style icon.
Miles Dewey Davis was born on May 26, 1926, in Alton Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis. Davis received his first trumpet at age 9, and took lessons from “the biggest influence on my life,” Elwood Buchanan, a teacher and musician who was a patient of his father. In his lessons, Buchanan stressed the importance that Davis play without vibrato, and use a clear, mid-range tone, which was against the style of that time. By age 12, music was the most important thing in Davis’s life, and at 13 he began to play in local bands.
In 1944, Davis moved to New York to study at the Julliard School of Music. However, his true learning ground quickly became 52nd Street – often simply called “The Street” – where all the jazz clubs were located. It was here that he met saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the two leading stars of the bebop genre.
In 1945, Davis dropped out of Julliard, choosing instead to pursue performing full-time. He began performing at clubs on 52nd Street with Coleman Hawkins and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. In April of 1945, Davis had his first recording session, when he entered the studio as a sideman for Herbie Fields’s band.
Later that year, he became a sideman to Charlie Parker and immediately set himself apart by not only playing a different trumpet sound, but also avoiding the virtuoso, super fast playing that was the hallmark of bebop soloists at the time.
Davis’s aversion to this style sowed the seeds for one of the aspects of his soloing style that he became famous for. His ability to convey more feeling by playing less, by leaving spaces. He later explained, “I always listen for what I can leave out.”
Davis enjoyed his first recording session at leader in 1947, and in 1949, when he was still only 23, he created his first epoch making recording: The Birth of the Cool. Though the album wouldn’t be released until 1957, these tunes introduced the concept of “cool” to the jazz world, dominated by the frenetic bebop. The album was based on orchestral style arrangements, in part by Gil Evans, a composer and arranger. This album remains one of the most influential jazz albums of all time.
Miles Davis once said, “I have to change, it’s like a curse.” Constant change was at the heart of Davis’s music, and as a result, he was at the forefront of several new musical genres. For him, regurgitating old hits was creative death. Normally, innovative artists are celebrated if they manage to change the course of music once, but astonishingly, Davis was at the forefront of cool jazz in 1949-1950, hard bop in the mid 1950s, modal jazz and orchestral jazz in the late 1950s, avant bop in the mid 1960s, and jazz rock in the late 1960s through the 1980s. Because of these constant stylistic changes, Davis is often likened to Picasso.
