Miles Davis’s blues is more alive than ever

Miles Davis, the trumpeter, band leader, innovator, proud African American and icon of cool, would be celebrating his 100th birthday on 26 May had he not departed in 1991. His sound and renown are more alive than ever, the shadow of his influence still felt throughout the world. Prepare for tributes in clubs and festivals, album releases and treasures pulled from various catalogues and archives.

Davis’s ever-changing nature was his superpower. He became the standard-bearer for generations of musicians and shaped the course of improvisational music numerous times. Try to name a contemporary musician of any genre who is willing to leave behind successful sounds and risk losing an audience by forging into unproven territory – and remain popular? Davis accomplished that (as did John Coltrane, his number-one pupil). There was also his trumpet sound – piercing, evocative and deeply emotional; his compositions, which continue to be studied by generations of students; and his still top-selling recordings: Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, Sketches of Spain, Tutu. There is his stature as a defiant African American, coolly confident and active, extending his spirit to fashion and visual art.

Then there was his role as a talent scout and band leader: he had an ear for the future, founding “The University of Miles Davis”, as his various line-ups were called. Many of its graduates – John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and others – became headliners themselves.

Who was he? There was a story he liked to tell about his brief year and a half at New York’s Juilliard School of music when an instructor was explaining the origin of the blues. As Davis relates in his autobiography:

She was up in front of the class saying that the reason black people played the blues was because they were poor and had to pick cotton. So they were sad and that’s where the blues came from, their sadness. My hand went up in a flash and I stood up and said, “I’m from East St Louis and my father is rich, he’s a dentist and I play the blues. My father didn’t never pick no cotton and I didn’t wake up this morning sad and start playing the blues. There’s more to it than that.”

He was self-aware and proud, cocky and outspoken, and intelligent beyond his years. He was also sensitive, with an especially short fuse when it came to matters of music and racial stereotyping. He did not hesitate to put someone on the spot and was adept at finding the right word to express the gist of what he wanted to convey. It was a skill he perfected over time and used for sport and self-protection – and also professionally, allowing him to draw the most from the groups he assembled.

The details of Davis’s story merit retelling: the dentist’s son born in 1926 to middle-class comfort in East St Louis. The acolyte learning trumpet in the fertile, blues-drenched music scene of his home town. The sensitive soul forging a seething streetwise exterior that later earned him the title “Prince of Darkness”. The determined teenager convincing his parents to send him to Juilliard in 1944, a ploy that allowed him to locate and join the band of his idol, the bebop pioneer Charlie Parker.

It wasn’t long before he grew from sideman to leading his own projects and bands. In 1949, he co-led the restrained, classical underpinning of the famous “Birth of the Cool” group (his first foray with arranger Gil Evans); in 1954, he created the blues-infused hard bop anthem “Walkin’” and a year later formed his first famous quintet (Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Red Garland, Philly Joe Jones) with whom he developed his signature muted trumpet sound that helped him break through  to mainstream recognition. His subsequent jump from independent record labels to Columbia Records, then the Tiffany of recording companies, propelled his career beyond a limited jazz audience, while a series of late-1950s albums (Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain) secured his widespread popularity.

Davis’s group shifted and morphed through the early 1960s until he settled for a four-year run with his classic quintet, a line-up that is still hailed as one of the greatest and most influential jazz groups of all time. Their albums together – from Miles Smiles to Filles de Kilimanjaro – traced a pattern of unparalleled growth and innovation.

Had Davis stopped there, he’d still be hailed as one of the greatest pioneers in jazz, but his creative momentum would not let up. He was listening to the world around him – the amplified explosion of rock bands and the new, heavy-on-the-one funk of James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone. From the ambient hush of In a Silent Way to the otherworldy space jams of Bitches Brew, he achieved another shift in musical paradigm.

Bitches Brew was controversial, a bestseller, and attracted a younger generation into the Miles Davis fold. Thousands flocked to hear him and a slew of fusion bands were spawned, led by his former sidemen, such as Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever. The studio albums that defined Davis’s kaleidoscopic sound in the 1970s included a series of (mostly) double albums – Live-Evil (1971), On the Corner (1972) and Get Up with It (1975). The cover notes listed line-ups of up to 11 musicians, adding new names to an ever widening circle of on-call talent.

By the end of 1975, Davis was tired and unwell. A period of seclusion ensued, years in which he dealt with personal demons and health issues, bouncing between bouts of self-abuse and boredom. It was the longest time he had been off the radar, only amplifying the appetite for his return.

When he reappeared in 1981, expectation had reached fever pitch. A final series of albums for Columbia reflected his continuing fascination with the funk of the day (Rose Royce, Cameo, Chaka Khan and, later, Prince), and the sounds of synthesizer and drum machines. In 1985, his album You’re Under Arrest – with unexpected covers of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time” – brought the long Davis-Columbia association to a close. He signed to Warner Brothers Records and worked with producer the Tommy LiPuma, scoring successes with Tutu (composed mostly by bassist and producer Marcus Miller), Music from Siesta, Amandla (featuring a new breed of soloists including the alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza, guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly and keyboardist Joey DeFrancesco) and Doo-Bop.

Those titles proved Miles’s farewell, still exploring new musical territory. He had always resisted looking back – avoiding nostalgia and loathing leftovers. “It’s more like warmed-over turkey,” the eternal modernist said of Kind of Blue 25 years after recording it. Ironically, in 1991, only weeks after performing a career-overview concert in Paris that featured old friends and collaborators from as early as the 1940s, he died from a brain aneurysm.

Like his music, Davis spoke with an economy of expression. And for him, it had to be fresh or forget it. “I don’t want you to like me because of Kind of Blue,” he insisted. “Like me for what we’re doing now.”

Ashley Kahn’s books include Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and the Making of a Masterpiece (Granta)

[Further reading: Paul Simon talks to God]