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Miles Davis
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![Listen to Tutu (Deluxe) [Remastered] by Miles Davis](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/41/73/62/mzi.ttedhtfd.jpg/1380x1380bb.webp "Listen to Tutu (Deluxe) [Remastered] by Miles Davis")
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About Miles Davis
Hometown
Alton, IL, United States
Born
May 26, 1926
Genre
Jazz
Miles Davis had a story about a big dinner he went to at the White House in the late â80s. Lots of powerful people, almost none of them Black. A politicianâs wifeâhe didn't say whoâasked if he thought America truly values jazz. Thereâs a back-and-forth. But the gist, Davis explained, was that white Americans were too stubborn and proud to ever let Black people win. The woman bristled. Whatâd he do that was so great to get invited to dinner at the White House anyway, she asked. He changed music five or six times, he saidâwhat had she ever done other than be white?
True or not (his autobiography is filled with this stuff), it speaks to Davisâ conception of his legacy. Tender, vicious, understated, or relentlessly confrontational, his music captures a life in constant creative flux, from the cool of the late â40s and early â50s (Birth of the Cool), through the bop and modal experiments of the â50s (Miles Ahead, Kind of Blue); the electric density of the â70s (A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Agartha) to the almost-pop of the â80s (Youâre Under Arrest). He could pitch jazz as self-consciously sophisticated as orchestral music (Sketches of Spain) and as direct and colloquial as funk (On the Corner).
He was born in 1926 and raised in East St. Louis, Illinois, the son of a dentist and a music teacherâsolidly middle-class professions that Davis, who came up though the dissipated, supposedly alleviated racism of the Jim Crow era, never let people forget. (Studying at the Institute of Musical Arts, later known as Julliard, Davis corrected a white music history professor who said that Black people played the blues because they were poor and had to pick cotton, saying that his dad was rich and didnât have to pick cotton a day in his life, and he still played the bluesâwhat about that?)
If his band members changed music in their own rightsâJohn Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evansâitâs in part because Davis prized individual expression above all. Asked in 1986 about some of the foundational songs in jazzââI Got Rhythm,â âBody and Soulââhe said they were done at the right time and the right place by the right people, but that was over nowâsame goes for âKind of Blueâ or âSo What.â What he had was better: the present.
Miles Davis has also released music as a member of Charlie Parker Septet, Miles Davis Orchestra, Miles Davis Quartet, Miles Davis Nonet, Miles Davis & The Modern Jazz Giants, Miles Davis All Stars, Charlie Parker Quintet, Miles Davis Quintet, and Miles Davis Sextet.
Musical InfluencesMiles Davis's musical influences include Lester Young, Harry James, Billy Strayhorn and more.
Influenced by Miles DavisMiles Davis has influenced the music of Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Donald Fagen and more.
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