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Miles Davis Biography

in full Miles Dewey Davis III

(1926–1991)

Related Works

Albums
1952 Young Man With A Horn
1952 The New Sounds Of Miles Davis

1953 Miles Davis Vol. 2
1953 Miles Davis With Horns
1953 Blue Period
1953 Miles Davis Plays Al Cohn Compositions
1953 Miles Davis Quintet
1953 Miles Davis Quintet Featuring Sonny Rollins
1954 Miles Davis Vol. 3
1954 Miles Davis Sextet
1954 Jeru
1954 Miles Davis Vols. 1 & 2
1955 Walkin'
1955 Miles Davis All Stars Vol. 1
1955 Miles Davis All Stars Volume 2
1955 Blue Moods
1955 Musings Of Miles
1956 Miles Davis And The Modern Jazz Giants
1956 Dig Miles Davis/Sonny Rollins (with Sonny Rollins)
1956 Workin'
1956 Collectors Item
1956 Steamin'
1956 Cookin'
1956 Relaxin'
1956 Miles - The New Miles Davis Quintet
1956 Blue Haze
1956 The Birth Of The Cool (recorded 1949-50)
1956 Miles
1956 Miles Davis And Horns
1956 Quintet/Sextet
1957 Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet
1957 Bags Groove
1957 Round About Midnight
1957 Miles Ahead
1958 '58 Miles
1958 Miles Davis And The Modern Jazz Giants
1958 Miles And Coltrane (with John Coltrane)
1958 Milestones
1958 Porgy And Bess
1959 Workin' with The Miles Davis Quintet
1959 Kind Of Blue
1960 Sketches Of Spain
1960 On Green Dolphin Street
1960 Live In Zurich
1960 Live In Stockholm 1960
1961 Miles Davis In Person
1961 Someday My Prince Will Come
1961 Steamin' With The Miles Davis Quintet
1962 The Beginning
1962 At Carnegie Hall
1963 Seven Steps to Heaven
1963 Diggin'
1963 Quiet Nights
1964 Miles In Antibes
1964 Miles And Monk At Newport (with Thelonious Monk)
1964 Miles Davis In Europe
1964 My Funny Valentine
1964 ‘Four’ And More
1965 ESP
1965 Miles Davis Plays For Lovers
1965 Jazz Classics
1966 Miles Smiles
1967 Sorcerer
1967 Nefertiti
1968 Miles In The Sky
1968 Filles De Kilimanjaro
1969 In A Silent Way
1969 Double Image
1969 Paraphernalia
1969 Bitches Brew
1970 At The Fillmore
1971 A Tribute To Jack Johnson
1971 What I Say? Vols. 1 & 2
1972 Live-Evil
1972 On The Corner
1973 Tallest Trees
1973 In Concert
1974 Black Beauty
1974 Big Fun
1974 Get Up With It
1974 Jazz At The Plaza Vol. 1
1976 Agharta
1976 Pangaea
1976 Live At The Plugged Nickel
1977 Water Babies
1979 Circle In The Round (recorded 1955-70)
1981 Directions
1981 Man With The Horn
1981 A Night In Tunisia
1982 We Want Miles
1983 Star People
1983 Blue Christmas
1983 Heard 'Round The World
1984/6 Blue Haze
1985 At Last
1984 Decoy
1985 You're Under Arrest
1986 Tutu
1988 Music From Siesta '88
1989 Amandla
1989 Aura
1989 Mellow Miles (recorded 1961-63)
1989 Ballads (recorded 1961-63)
1990 The Hot Spot
1991 Dingo
1993 Doo-Bop
1993 Live In Europe
1993 Miles And Quincy Jones Live At Montreux (with Quincy Jones, recorded 1991)
1995 The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965
1995 Highlights From The Plugged Nickel
1996 Live Around The World
Compilations
1989 The CBS Years 1955-1985
1990 The Collection
1993 Gold Collection
1996 Ballads And Blues
1996 This Is Jazz No. 8 - Miles Davis Acoustic
1996 Miles Davis And Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings
1998 Panthalassa (1969-74)

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Related People

Related Sites

Milestones: A Miles Davis Web site

(born May 26, 1926, Alton, Ill., U.S.—died Sept. 28, 1991, Santa Monica, Calif.) American jazz musician, a great trumpeter who as a bandleader and composer was one of the major influences on the art from the late 1940s.

Starting out

Davis grew up in East St. Louis, Ill., where his father was a prosperous dental surgeon. (In later years he often spoke of his comfortable upbringing, sometimes to rebuke critics who assumed that a background of poverty and suffering was common to all great jazz artists.) He began studying trumpet in his early teens; fortuitously, in light of his later stylistic development, his first teacher advised him to play without vibrato. Davis played with jazz bands in the St. Louis area before moving to New York City in 1944 to study at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School)—although he skipped many classes and instead was schooled through jam sessions with masters such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Davis and Parker recorded together often during the years 1945–48.

Davis's early playing was sometimes tentative and not always fully in tune, but his unique, intimate tone and his fertile musical imagination outweighed his technical shortcomings. By the early 1950s Davis had turned his limitations into considerable assets. Rather than emulate the busy, wailing style of such bebop pioneers as Gillespie, Davis explored the trumpet's middle register, experimenting with harmonies and rhythms and varying the phrasing of his improvisations. With the occasional exception of multinote flurries, his melodic style was direct and unornamented, based on quarter notes and rich with inflections. The deliberation, pacing, and lyricism in his improvisations are striking.

Cool jazz and modal jazz

In the summer of 1948, Davis formed a nonet that included the renowned jazz artists Gerry Mulligan, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Clarke, and Lee Konitz, as well as players on French horn and tuba, instruments rarely heard in a jazz context. Mulligan, Gil Evans, and pianist John Lewis did most of the band's arrangements, which juxtaposed the flexible, improvisatory nature of bebop with a thickly textured orchestral sound. The group was short-lived but during its brief history recorded a dozen tracks that were originally released as singles (1949–50). These recordings changed the course of modern jazz and paved the way for the West Coast styles of the 1950s. The tracks were later collected in the album Birth of the Cool (1957).