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Miles Davis

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers

                 Miles Davis
   Miles Davis, 1952
   Miles Davis, 1952
           Background information
   Birth name    Miles Dewey Davis III
   Born          May 25, 1926
   Died          September 28, 1991
   Genre(s)      Jazz, Jazz fusion
   Occupation(s) Bandleader, Composer
   Instrument(s) Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Organ
   Years active  1944-1991
   Website       http://www.milesdavis.com/

   Miles Dewey Davis III ( May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was one of
   the most distinguished jazz musicians of the latter half of the 20th
   century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the
   forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II
   to the 1990s. He played on some early bebop records and recorded the
   first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the
   development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with
   other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Free jazz was the
   only post-war jazz style not significantly influenced by Davis,
   although some musicians from his bands later pursued this style. His
   recordings, along with the live performances of his many influential
   bands, were vital in jazz's acceptance as music with lasting artistic
   value. A popularizer as well as an innovator, Davis became famous for
   his languid, melodic style and his laconic, and at times
   confrontational, personality. As an increasingly well-paid and
   fashionably-dressed jazz musician, Davis was also a symbol of jazz
   music's commercial potential.

   Davis was late in a line of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy
   Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge
   and Dizzy Gillespie. He has been compared to Duke Ellington as a
   musical innovator: both were skillful players on their instruments, but
   were not considered technical virtuosos. Ellington's main strength was
   as a composer and leader of a large band, while Davis had a talent for
   drawing together talented musicians in small groups and allowing them
   space to develop. Many of the major figures in post-war jazz played in
   one of Davis's groups at some point in their career.

   Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on
   March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of
   Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. There are plans to make a
   biopic about Davis starring Don Cheadle

Life

Early life (1926 to 1945)

   Miles Dewey Davis was born into a relatively wealthy African-American
   family living in Alton, Illinois. His father, Miles Henry Davis, was a
   dentist, and in 1927 the family moved to East St. Louis. They also
   owned a substantial ranch, and Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.

   Davis's mother, Cleota Henry Davis, wanted Davis to learn the
   violin—she was a capable blues pianist, but kept this hidden from her
   son, feeling that black music was not sufficiently genteel. He did not
   start learning to play seriously until the age of thirteen. However,
   his father gave him a new trumpet and arranged lessons with local
   trumpeter Elwood Buchanan, who happened to be a patient of his, when he
   was nine. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the
   importance of playing without vibrato, and Davis would carry his clear
   signature tone throughout his career. Buchanan was credited with
   slapping Miles' knuckles with a ruler every time that he started using
   heavy vibrato. Davis once remarked on this importance of this signature
   sound, saying, “I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a
   round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right
   in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything.”

   Clark Terry was another important early influence and friend of
   Davis's. By the age of sixteen, Davis was a member of the musician's
   union and working professionally when not at high school. At seventeen,
   he spent a year playing in bandleader Eddie Randle's "Blue Devils".
   During this time, Sonny Stitt tried to persuade him to join the Tiny
   Bradshaw band then passing through town, but Cleota insisted that he
   finish his final year of high school.

   In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band visited St. Louis. Dizzy Gillespie and
   Charlie Parker were members of the band, and Davis was taken on as
   third trumpet for a couple of weeks because of the illness of Buddy
   Anderson. When Eckstine's band left Davis behind to complete the tour,
   the trumpeter's parents were still keen for him to continue formal
   academic studies.

Bebop and the Birth of the Cool (1944 to 1955)

   In 1944 Davis moved to New York City, to take up a scholarship at the
   Juilliard School of Music. In reality, however, he neglected his
   studies and immediately set about tracking down Charlie Parker. His
   first recordings were made in 1945, and he was soon a member of
   Parker's quintet, appearing on many of Parker's seminal bebop
   recordings for the Savoy and Dial labels. Davis's style on trumpet was
   already distinctive by this point, but as a soloist he lacked the
   confidence and virtuosity of his mentors, and was known to play
   throttled notes (a trademark of Davis's) and to sometimes stumble
   during his solos.

   By 1948 he had served his apprenticeship as a sideman, both on stage
   and record, and a recording career of his own was beginning to blossom.
   Davis began to work with a nonet that featured then-unusual
   instrumentation such as the French horn and tuba. The nonet featured a
   young Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz. After some gigs at New York's
   Royal Roost, Davis was signed by Capitol Records. The nonet released
   several singles in 1949 and 1950, featuring arrangements by Gil Evans,
   Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis. This began his collaboration with Evans,
   with whom he would collaborate on many of his major works over the next
   twenty years. The sides saw only limited release until 1957, when
   eleven of the twelve were released as the album Birth of the Cool (more
   recent issues collect all twelve sides).

   Between 1950 and 1955, Davis mainly recorded as a leader for Prestige
   and Blue Note records in a variety of small group settings. Sidemen
   included Sonny Rollins, John Lewis, Kenny Clarke, Jackie McLean, Art
   Blakey, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, J. J. Johnson, Percy Heath,
   Milt Jackson and Charles Mingus. Davis was influenced at around this
   time by pianist Ahmad Jamal, whose sparse style contrasted with the
   "busy" sound of bebop.

   Playing in the jazz clubs of New York, Davis was in frequent contact
   with users and dealers of drugs, and by 1950, in common with many of
   his contemporaries, he had developed a serious heroin addiction. For
   the first part of that decade, although he gigged a great deal and
   played many sessions, they were mostly uninspired, and it seemed that
   his talent was going to waste. No one was more aware of this than Davis
   himself, and his wife. In the winter of 1953-1954 he returned to East
   St. Louis and locked himself in a guest room in his father's farm for
   seven days until the drug was fully out of his system.

   After overcoming his heroin addiction, Davis made a series of important
   recordings for Prestige in 1954, later collected on albums including
   Bags' Groove, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants and Walkin'. At
   this time he started to use the Harmon mute to darken and subdue the
   timbre of his trumpet, and this muted trumpet tone was to be associated
   with Davis for the rest of his career.

   However, the 1954 recordings were not released immediately, and the
   recovery of his popularity with the jazz public and critics had to wait
   until July 1955, when he played a legendary solo on Monk's " 'Round
   Midnight" at the Newport Jazz Festival. This performance thrust Davis
   back into the jazz spotlight, leading to George Avakian signing Davis
   to Columbia and the formation of his first quintet.

First Great Quintet and Sextet (1955 to 1958)

   In 1955, Davis formed the first incarnation of the renowned Miles Davis
   Quintet. This band featured John Coltrane ( tenor saxophone), Red
   Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (double bass) and Philly Joe Jones (
   drums). Musically, the band picked up where Davis's late 1940s sessions
   had left off. Eschewing the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of the
   then-prevalent bebop, Davis was allowed the space to play long, legato,
   and essentially melodic lines in which he would begin to explore modal
   music. Davis still admired Ahmad Jamal, and the quintet's music
   reflects his influence as well, in the choice of repertoire and in
   Davis's directives to Garland.

   The first recordings of this group were made for Columbia Records in
   1955, released on 'Round About Midnight. Davis was still under contract
   to Prestige, but had an agreement that he could make recordings for
   subsequent releases using his new label. His final recordings for
   Prestige were the product of two days of recording in 1956, released as
   Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, Steamin' with the Miles Davis
   Quintet, Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet and Cookin' with the
   Miles Davis Quintet.

   Though today it is often regarded as one of the greatest groups in jazz
   history, Davis's choice of sidemen received some criticism at the time.
   Additionally, the quintet was never stable; several of the other
   members used heroin, and the Miles Davis Quintet disbanded in early
   1957.

   Also, in 1957, Davis traveled to France to compose the score to Louis
   Malle's Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud. He recorded the entire soundtrack
   with the aid of French session musicians Barney Wilen, Pierre Michelot
   and René Urtreger, and famous American drummer Kenny Clarke.

   In 1958, the quintet reformed as a sextet, with the addition of Julian
   "Cannonball" Adderley on alto saxophone, and recorded Milestones.
   Musically, it encompassed both the past and the future of jazz. Davis
   showed that he could play both blues and bebop (ably assisted by
   Coltrane), but the centerpiece is the title track, a Davis composition
   centred on the Dorian and Aeolian modes and featuring the free
   improvisatory modal style that Davis would make his own.

Recordings with Gil Evans (1957 to 1963)

   In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Davis recorded a series of albums
   with Gil Evans, often playing flugelhorn as well as trumpet. The first,
   Miles Ahead (1957), showcased his playing with a jazz big band and a
   horn section beautifully arranged by Evans. Tunes included Dave
   Brubeck's "The Duke", as well as Léo Delibes's "The Maids Of Cadiz",
   the first piece of European classical music Davis had recorded. Another
   important feature of the album was the innovative use of editing to
   join the tracks together, turning each side of the album into a
   seamless piece of music.

   In Davis and Evans's Porgy and Bess, a 1958 album of arrangement of
   pieces from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, the framework of the
   Gershwin songs provided ample space for Davis to improvise, showing his
   mastery of variations and expansions on the original themes, as well as
   his original melodic ideas. Davis named the album one of his own
   favorites.

   Sketches of Spain (1959 to 1960) featured tunes by contemporary Spanish
   composer Joaquin Rodrigo and also Manuel de Falla, as well as Gil Evans
   originals with a Spanish theme. Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall ( 1961)
   includes Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, along with other tunes
   recorded at a concert with an orchestra under Evans's direction.

   Sessions in 1962 and 1963 resulted in the album Quiet Nights, a short
   collection of bossa nova tunes which was released against the wishes of
   both Evans and Davis. That was the last time that the two created a
   full album again, although Evans remained one of Davis' most important
   musical contributors and friends. Towards the end of his life and after
   Evans' death, Davis once noted that "Gil was my best friend."

Kind of Blue (1959 to 1964)

   After recording Milestones, Garland and Jones were replaced by Bill
   Evans and Jimmy Cobb. Davis probably hired Evans for his harmonically
   sophisticated approach. For various reasons, Evans's stay in the group
   was relatively brief, and he departed late in 1958, replaced by Wynton
   Kelly.

   In March and April 1959, Davis re-entered the studio with his working
   sextet and Bill Evans to record what is widely considered his magnum
   opus, Kind of Blue. The album was planned around Evans's piano style.
   It was also influenced by concepts that Evans had learned while working
   with George Russell on the earliest recordings of modal jazz and passed
   on to the sextet. Kelly only played on "Freddie Freeloader", and was
   not present at the April session. " So What" and " All Blues" had been
   played by the sextet at performances prior to the recording sessions,
   but for the other three compositions, Davis and Evans prepared skeletal
   harmonic frameworks which the other musicians saw for the first time on
   the day of recording, in order to generate a fresh and spontaneous
   improvisational approach. The resulting album has proven to be a huge
   influence on other musicians. According to the RIAA, Kind of Blue is
   the best-selling jazz album of all time.

   The same year, while taking a break outside the famous Birdland
   nightclub in New York City, Davis was beaten by the New York police and
   subsequently arrested. Believing the assault to have been racially
   motivated, he attempted to pursue the case in the courts, before
   eventually dropping the proceedings. Such treatment was markedly at
   odds with his treatment outside the U.S., and especially on his regular
   European tours, where he was fêted by society.

   Coltrane, who had been eager to form his own group, was convinced by
   Davis to play with the group on one final European tour in the spring
   of 1960. He then departed to form his classic quartet, although he
   returned for some of the tracks on the 1961 album Someday My Prince
   Will Come. Davis tried various replacement saxophonists, including
   Sonny Stitt and Hank Mobley. The quintet with Hank Mobley was recorded
   in the studio and on several live engagements at Carnegie Hall and the
   Black Hawk supper club in San Francisco. Stitt's playing with the group
   is found on the Live in Stockholm CD.

   In 1963, Davis's long-time rhythm section of Kelly, Chambers and Cobb
   departed. He quickly got to work putting together a new group,
   including tenor saxophonist George Coleman and bassist Ron Carter.
   Davis, Coleman, Carter and a few other musicians recorded half an album
   in the spring of 1963. A few weeks later, drummer Tony Williams and
   pianist Herbie Hancock joined the group, and soon thereafter Davis,
   Coleman and the young rhythm section recorded the rest of the Seven
   Steps to Heaven album.

   The young rhythm section clicked very quickly with each other and the
   horns; the group's rapid evolution can be traced through the
   aforementioned studio album, In Europe (July 1963), My Funny Valentine,
   and Four and More (both February 1964). The group played essentially
   the same repertoire of bebop and standards that earlier Davis bands
   did, but tackled them with increasing structural and rhythmic freedom
   and (in the case of the up-tempo material) breakneck speed.

   Coleman left in the spring of 1964, to be replaced by avant-garde
   saxophonist Sam Rivers, on the suggestion of Tony Williams. Davis knew
   of Rivers's leanings toward free jazz, a genre which he disdained; he
   knew that Rivers was not the ideal replacement he was looking for.
   Rivers remained in the group only briefly, but was recorded live with
   the quintet in Japan; the group can be heard on In Tokyo (July 1964).

   By the end of the summer, Davis had managed to convince Wayne Shorter
   to quit Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, a reluctant decision because
   Shorter had become musical director of that group. Shorter's arrival
   completed the trumpeter's Second Great Quintet. Shorter became the
   principal composer of Miles's quintet, and some of his compositions of
   this era ("Footprints", "Nefertiti") are now standards. While on tour
   in Europe, the group quickly made their first official recording, Miles
   in Berlin (Fall 1964). On return to the United States later that year,
   Davis (at the urging of Jackie DeShannon) was instrumental in getting
   The Byrds signed to Columbia Records. This would foreshadow Davis's
   intense interest in rock music by the end of the decade.

   Songs such as So What and Freddie Freeloader were featured on The
   Weather Channel's Local On The 8s and ABC News: America This Morning's
   (formerly World News This Morning) weather segments.

Second Great Quintet (1964 to 1968)

   By the time of E.S.P. ( 1965) the lineup (Davis's second great quintet,
   and the last of his acoustic bands) consisted of Wayne Shorter
   (saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony
   Williams (drums).

   A two-night Chicago gig by this band in late 1965 is captured on the
   8-CD set The Complete Live at The Plugged Nickel 1965 released in 1995.
   Unlike the group's studio albums, the live engagement shows the group
   still playing primarily standards and bebop tunes, albeit with a
   greater degree of freedom than in previous years.

   This was followed by a series of strong studio recordings: Miles Smiles
   ( 1966), Sorcerer ( 1967), Nefertiti (1967), Miles in the Sky (1968)
   and Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968). The quintet's approach to
   improvisation came to be known as "time no changes" or "freebop",
   because while they retained a steady pulse, they abandoned the
   chord-change-based approach of bebop for a modal approach. The rhythm
   section became more free, able to change tempos and time signatures
   spontaneously. Through Nefertiti the studio recordings consisted
   primarily of originals composed by Wayne Shorter, and to a lesser
   degree of compositions by the other sidemen. In 1967, the group began
   the unusual practice of playing their live concerts in continuous sets,
   with each tune flowing into the next and only the melody indicating any
   sort of demarcation; Davis's bands would continue to perform in this
   way until his retirement in 1975.

   Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro, on which electric bass,
   electric piano and guitar were tentatively introduced on some tracks,
   clearly pointed the way to the subsequent fusion phase in Davis's
   output. Davis also began experimenting with more rock-oriented rhythms
   on these records, and by the time the second half of Filles de
   Kilimanjaro had been recorded, Dave Holland and Chick Corea had
   replaced Carter and Hancock in the working band, though both Carter and
   Hancock would contribute to future recording sessions. Davis soon began
   to take over the compositional duties of his sidemen.

Electric Miles (1968 to 1975)

   Recent boxed sets have shown that Davis's progression from the
   "free-bop" (or postbop) of the Second Quintet to the dense, rhythmic
   world of fusion was much less abrupt than it seemed initially, when In
   a Silent Way followed Filles de Kilimanjaro. Miles's influences, widely
   attributed to the tastes of his future wife Betty Mabry, were the late
   1960s acid rock and funk heroes, namely Sly and the Family Stone, James
   Brown and Jimi Hendrix. Slightly later, most prominently on 1972's On
   the Corner, the influence of Karlheinz Stockhausen became evident. This
   transition required that Davis and his band adapt to electric
   instruments in both live performances and the studio.

   By the time In a Silent Way had been recorded in February 1969, Davis
   had augmented his standard quintet with additional players. Hancock and
   Joe Zawinul were brought in to assist Corea on electric keyboards, and
   the young guitarist John McLaughlin made the first of his many
   appearances with Miles at this time. By this point, Wayne Shorter was
   also doubling on soprano saxophone. After the recording of this album,
   Tony Williams left to form his group Lifetime and was replaced by Jack
   DeJohnette.

   Six months later, an even larger group of musicians, including Jack
   DeJohnette, Airto Moreira and Bennie Maupin, recorded the double LP
   Bitches Brew. These two records were the first truly successful
   amalgamations of jazz with rock music, laying the groundwork for the
   genre that would become known simply as " fusion".

   During this period, Davis toured with the "lost quintet" of Shorter,
   Corea, Holland and DeJohnette. Though Corea played electric piano and
   the group occasionally hinted at rock rhythms, the music was edgy,
   uncompromising post-bop that frequently spilled over into full-blown
   free jazz. The group's repertoire included material from Bitches Brew,
   In a Silent Way, the 1960s quintet albums, and an occasional standard.

   Both Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way feature "extended" (more than 20
   minutes each) compositions which were never actually "played straight
   through" by the musicians in the studio. Instead, Miles and producer
   Teo Macero selected musical motifs of various lengths from recorded
   extended improvisations and edited them together into a musical whole
   which only exists in the recorded version. Bitches Brew in particular
   is a case study in the use of electronic effects, multi-tracking, tape
   loops and other editing techniques. Both records, especially Bitches
   Brew, proved to be huge sellers for Davis, and he was accused of
   "selling out" by many of his former fans, while simultaneously
   attracting many new fans who listened to Davis alongside the more
   popular rock acts of the late 1960s.

   Davis reached out to new audiences in other ways as well. Starting with
   Bitches Brew, Davis's albums began to often feature cover art much more
   in line with psychedelic or black power movements than with his earlier
   albums' art. He took significant cuts in his usual performing fees in
   order to open for rock groups like the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful
   Dead and Santana. ( Carlos Santana has stated that he should have
   opened concerts for Davis, rather than the other way around.) Several
   live albums were recorded during the early 1970s at such performances:
   It's About That Time (March 1970; Shorter's last appearance with the
   group), Black Beauty (April 1970; Steve Grossman replacing Shorter on
   saxophones) and At Fillmore (June 1970; Keith Jarrett joining the group
   as a second keyboardist). In contrast with the "lost quintet", the
   music on these albums is funkier and more rock-oriented, with
   relatively few free jazz tendencies. Corea began to rely heavily on
   effects like ring modulation, and Dave Holland shifted to the electric
   bass (having primarily played acoustic bass for the previous year).

   By the time of Live-Evil (December 1970; Jarrett as the only
   keyboardist, Gary Bartz replacing Grossman on saxophones, and Michael
   Henderson replacing Holland on electric bass, Airto Moreira
   percussion), Davis's ensemble had transformed into a much more
   funk-oriented group. Davis began experimenting with wah-wah effects on
   his horn. The ensemble with Bartz, Jarrett and Henderson, often
   referred to as the "Cellar Door band" (the live portions of Live-Evil
   were recorded at a club by that name), never recorded in the studio,
   but is documented in the six CD Box Set "The Cellar Door Sessions"
   which was recorded over four nights in December of 1970.

   The year 1970 saw Davis contribute extensively to the soundtrack of a
   documentary about the great African-American boxer Jack Johnson.
   Himself a devotee of boxing, Davis drew parallels between Johnson,
   whose career had been defined by the fruitless search for a Great White
   Hope to dethrone him, and Davis's own career, in which he felt the
   establishment had prevented him from receiving the acclaim and rewards
   that were due him. The resulting album, 1971's A Tribute to Jack
   Johnson, contained two long pieces that utilised the talents of many
   musicians, some of whom were not credited on the record, including the
   guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock. Working with producer
   Teo Macero, Davis created what many critics regard as his finest
   electric, rock-influenced album, though its use of editing and studio
   technology would be fully appreciated only upon the release of the
   five-CD The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions in 2003.

   Davis refused to be confined by the expectations of his traditional
   audience or music critics, and continued to explore the possibilities
   of his new band. As he stated in his autobiography, he wanted to make
   music for the young Afro-American audience. On The Corner ( 1972)
   showed a seemingly effortless grasp of funk without sacrificing the
   rhythmic, melodic and harmonic nuance that had been present throughout
   his career. The album also showed the influences of Paul Buckmaster's
   studio arrangements and Stockhausen in its layered recording and
   post-production editing. The album was highlighted by the appearance of
   saxophonist Carlos Garnett. The record provoked fierce disparagement
   from many critics, with one British critic noting: "I love Miles, but
   this is where I get off." In his autobiography, Davis stated that this
   criticism was made because no critic could categorize this music and
   complained that On the Corner was promoted by the "traditional" jazz
   radio stations, therefore not to young African-americans. Miles himself
   thought that the record would be "something for black people to
   remember me by."

   After recording On the Corner, Davis put together a new band, with only
   Michael Henderson, Carlos Garnett and percussionist Mtume returning
   from the Cellar Door band. It included guitarist Reggie Lucas, tabla
   player Badal Roy, sitarist Khalil Balakrishna and drummer Al Foster. It
   was unusual in that none of the sidemen were major jazz
   instrumentalists; as a result, the music emphasized rhythmic density
   and shifting textures instead of individual solos. This group, which
   recorded in the Philharmonic Hall for the album In Concert (1972), was
   unsatisfactory to Davis. Through the first half of 1973, he dropped the
   tabla and sitar, took over keyboard duties, and added guitarist Pete
   Cosey. The Davis/Cosey/Lucas/Henderson/Mtume/Foster ensemble would
   remain virtually intact over the next two years. Initially, Dave
   Liebman played saxophones and flute with the band; in 1974 he was
   replaced by Sonny Fortune.

   By the mid-1970s, Davis's previous rate of production was falling. Big
   Fun (1974) was a double album containing four long jams, recorded
   between 1969 and 1972. Similarly, Get Up With It ( 1975) collected
   recordings from the previous five years. Get Up With It included "He
   Loved Him Madly", a tribute to Duke Ellington, as well as one of
   Davis's most lauded pieces from this era, "Calypso Frelimo".
   Contemporary critics complained that the album had too many
   underdeveloped ideas, though many of these ideas foreshadowed the
   hip-hop, trip-hop and electronic innovations in the later part of the
   20th century. This was his last studio album of the seventies.

   In 1974 and 1975, Columbia recorded three double-LP live Davis albums:
   Dark Magus, Agharta and Pangaea. Dark Magus is a 1974 New York concert;
   the latter two are recordings of consecutive concerts from the same
   February 1975 day in Osaka, Japan. At the time, only Agharta was
   available in the US; Pangaea and Dark Magus were initially released
   only by CBS/Sony Japan. All three feature at least two electric
   guitarists (Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, deploying an array of
   post-Jimi Hendrix electronic distortion devices; Dominique Gaumont is a
   third guitarist on Dark Magus), electric bass (Davis still relying on
   the funk-tinged, stripped-down playing of Michael Henderson), drums,
   reeds, and Davis on trumpet (also electrified) and organ. These albums,
   documenting the working bands Miles was leading at that point, were the
   last music he was to record for five years and considered by many to be
   some of the more influential music of the last 30 years. Troubled by
   osteoarthritis (which led to a hip replacement operation in 1976, the
   first of several), depression, bursitis, ulcers, rheumatism and a
   renewed dependence on alcohol and illegal drugs (primarily cocaine and
   marijuana), Davis' performances were routinely panned throughout late
   1974 and early 1975, though the recorded evidence proves otherwise; By
   the time the group reached Japan in February of 1975, Davis was
   teetering on a physical breakdown and required copious amounts of vodka
   and cocaine to complete his engagements.

   Immediately thereafter, Davis withdrew almost completely from the
   public eye for five years. As Gil Evans euphemistically said, "His
   organism is tired. And after all the music he's contributed for 35
   years, he needs a rest."

   Davis characterized this period in his memoirs as a colorful time when
   wealthy Caucasian women ostensibly lavished him with sex and drugs. In
   reality, he had become completely dependent upon cocaine, spending
   nearly all of his time propped up on a couch in his apartment watching
   television, leaving only to score more drugs. In 1976, Rolling Stone
   reported rumors of his imminent demise. Most of Davis' oldest allies
   and collaborators in the jazz community, already aghast at the
   polarizing music of the 1969–1975 period, found this development to be
   the culmination of his hubris and shunned him. Although he stopped
   practicing trumpet on a regular basis, Davis continued to compose
   intermittently and made three attempts at recording during his exile
   from performing; these sessions (one with the assistance of Paul
   Buckmaster and Gil Evans, who left after not receiving promised
   compensation) bore little fruit and remain unreleased.

   As with any prolific and respected artist who abruptly stops for
   mysterious reasons Davis' legend grew exponentially among listeners
   despite him being a pariah among other jazz musicians. This was
   evidenced in 1979 when he placed in the yearly Top 10 trumpeter poll of
   Down Beat magazine. Columbia continued to issue compilation albums and
   records of unreleased vault material to fufill contractual obligations.

   During his period of inactivity, Davis saw the fusion music that he had
   spearheaded over the past decade firmly enter into the mainstream.
   Whether played by Davis's many protégés, including Herbie Hancock,
   Chick Corea with his groundbreaking fusion group Return to Forever,
   John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the Weather Report
   (founders Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul both spent time in Davis's
   bands), Davis's influence could be heard everywhere, much as it could
   after each of his previous revolutionary advances. Even though he had
   maintained cordial relations with all of these musicians prior to 1975
   and would remain good friends with drummer Jack DeJohnette and
   McLaughlin until his death, he remained very envious of the crossover
   success enjoyed by his former sidemen, and found a string of concerts
   opening for Hancock in late 1975 as being demeaning to his ego. When he
   did emerge from retirement, Davis' musical antecedents would be in the
   realm of New Wave rock, and in particular the stylings of Prince.

   Davis's 1970s recordings have in recent years undergone a fairly
   radical reassessment, and are now seen by many as a significant body of
   work comparable to that of his earlier periods - an extremely
   interesting mixture of ideas gleaned from jazz, funk and rock music, as
   well as from experimental, "process-oriented" European composers.
   Recently, Dave Douglas, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Isham, Tim Hagans,
   Nicholas Payton and others have recorded albums more or less indebted
   to Davis's electric era.

Last Decade (1981 to 1991)

   By 1979, Davis had rekindled his relationship with actress Cicely
   Tyson, who had entered the field of superstardom after appearing in
   Roots. With Tyson, Davis would fully detoxify and regain his enthusiasm
   for music. As he had not played trumpet for the better part of three
   years, regaining his famed embouchure proved to be particularly
   arduous. While recording The Man With The Horn (sessions were spread
   sporadically over 1979-1981), Davis attempted to cover his perceived
   technical deficiencies by playing mostly wah-wah with a younger, large,
   and somewhat inexperienced band.

   The initial large band was eventually abandoned in favour of a smaller
   combo featuring the talents of saxophonist Bill Evans (no relation to
   the pianist) and a young bass player named Marcus Miller, both of whom
   would become one of Davis's most regular collaborators throughout the
   decade. He married Tyson in 1981; they would divorce in 1988. The
   long-anticipated The Man With The Horn was finally released ( 1981) and
   received a poor critical reception despite selling fairly well. In May
   the new band played two dates as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. The
   concerts, as well as the live recording We Want Miles from the ensuing
   tour, were well reviewed. Due to ongoing health problems, Davis'
   performances could still be fairly erratic, but concertgoers enjoyed a
   program with conventional song-based structure (as opposed to the
   nonstop approach of concerts from the end of 1967 to 1975), and on good
   nights a trumpeter with a vastly expanded range, the result of hours of
   nonstop practice.

   By the time of Star People ( 1983), Davis's band included guitarist
   John Scofield, with whom Davis worked closely on both Star People and
   1984's Decoy, an underdeveloped, experimental mixture of soul music and
   electronica. While much of Davis' records from the period have been
   described as having an uneven, minimalist feel, this may well have been
   intentional: by this point he had fallen in love with road work and
   seemed to consider studio releases as not afterthoughts per se but
   blueprints for the looser, more organic concerts. With a seven-piece
   band, including Scofield, Evans, drummer Al Foster and bassist Darryl
   Jones (later of The Rolling Stones), he played a series of European
   gigs to rapturous receptions. While in Europe, he took part in the
   recording of Aura, an orchestral tribute to Davis composed by the
   Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg.

   Back in the studio, You're Under Arrest ( 1985) included another
   stylistic detour: interpretations of contemporary pop songs ( Cyndi
   Lauper's "Time After Time" and Michael Jackson's "Human Nature"), for
   which he would receive much criticism in the jazz press, although the
   record was otherwise well-reviewed. Davis noted that many an accepted
   jazz standard was in fact a pop song from Broadway theatre, and that he
   was simply selecting more recent pop songs to perform.

   You're Under Arrest would also be Davis's final album for Columbia.
   With the commercial and artistic decline of fusion in the late 70s and
   early 80s and the disappearance of the genre-breaking Davis, a new wave
   of traditionalist jazz generally rejecting any advances made in the
   genre after 1965 emerged, to great acclaim amongst those who felt
   disenfranchised in a sea of fusion and free jazz. The focal point of
   this movement was trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, also signed to Columbia,
   who recorded several albums of classical music in addition to his jazz
   efforts and publicly dismissed Davis' recent work as not being "true
   jazz." At first Davis shrugged off Marsalis' comments, referring to him
   as "a nice young man, only confused," but he grew extremely irritated
   when the latter appeared unannounced on stage during a concert and
   whispered into Davis' ear that "someone" had told him to do so. He
   immediately ordered Marsalis to leave the stage. Fans remained divided
   on the issue: some felt that Marsalis' criticisms had considerable
   validity, while to others the fact that the brash young trumpeter would
   publicly insult someone whom they considered to be a living legend was
   nothing short of sacrilege. The breaking point came when a Columbia
   jazz producer requested that Davis call Marsalis on his birthday.
   Already irritated with a delay in the release of Aura and Marsalis'
   mammoth publicity budget, Davis signed with Warner Brothers.

   Again demonstrating his eclecticism during this time period, Davis
   collaborated with a number of figures from the British new wave
   movement, including Scritti Politti. At the invitation of producer Bill
   Laswell Davis recorded some trumpet parts during sessions for Public
   Image Ltd.'s Album album, according to Public Image's John Lydon in the
   liner notes of their Plastic Box box set, although in Lydon's words,
   "strangely enough, we didn't use (his contributions)." (Also according
   to Lydon in the Plastic Box notes, Davis favorably compared Lydon's
   singing voice to his trumpet sound.)

   Having first taken part in the Artists United Against Apartheid
   recording, Davis signed with Warner Brothers records and reunited with
   Marcus Miller. The resulting record, Tutu ( 1986), would be his first
   to use modern studio tools—programmed synthesizers, samples and drum
   loops—to create an entirely new setting for Davis's playing.
   Ecstatically reviewed on its release, the album would frequently be
   described as the modern counterpart of the classic Sketches of Spain,
   and won a Grammy award in 1987.

   He followed Tutu with Amandla, another collaboration with Miller and
   Duke, plus the soundtracks to three movies, Street Smart, Siesta, and
   Dingo. He continued to tour with a band of constantly rotating
   personnel and a critical stock at a level higher than it had been for
   fifteen years. His last recordings, both released posthumously, were
   the hip hop-influenced studio album Doo-bop and Miles & Quincy Live at
   Montreux, a collaboration with Quincy Jones for the 1991 Montreux Jazz
   Festival in which Davis performed the repertoire from his classic 1960s
   recordings for the first time in decades.

   Miles Davis died from a stroke in September 28, 1991 at the age of 65.
   He is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

Discography

   For a list of recordings made by Miles Davis, see Miles Davis
   discography.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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