Miles Dewey Davis III was a trumpet and flugelhorn player, band leader and composer. He is famous both for his unique personal solo trumpet style and for his innovative pioneering spirit as a band leader, creating a succession of jazz styles.
Davis was born on May 25, 1926 in Alton, Illinois. He was the second of three children in a middle class household. His father was a prosperous oral surgeon and his mother was an educated woman played classical violin and piano who was also versed in the blues musical tradition. Miles began taking music lessons privately and at school beginning at age 10, playing the violin. His father gave him a trumpet for his thirteenth birthday. He played in his high school band. When he was able, as he grew up, he experimented with improvisation and followed the musical acts which came to play in East St. Louis, Missouri, to which city his family had moved in 1927.
Davis's musical career began in East St. Louis in 1943 when he was sixteen. He joined a swing band called "The Blue Devils," led by Eddie Randall, which played Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. After a year Davis joined a New Orleans dance band group called the "Six Brown Cats," led by Adam Lambert, featuring jazz singer Joe Williams. Eventually losing interest in swing, Davis left the band.
His first experience playing in a jazz band was as a substitute for the third trumpeter in Billy Eckstein's band which included Dizzy Gillespie and Buddy Anderson on trumpet, as well as saxophonist Charlie "Yardbird" Parker and drummer Art Blakey, when the band was passing through East St. Louis. He played with the band for two weeks, learning bebop harmony from Gillespie, and adding this information to his musical vocabulary.
Following this experience, when he was seventeen and had graduated from high school, Davis moved to New York City with his wife and son, and enrolled in the Julliard School, as recommended by his mother. He studied music theory and classical composers at Julliard while attending jazz clubs featuring contemporary artists such as Gillespie and Parker at night. Dropping out of Julliard, he continued to visit night clubs and learn from Gillespie and Parker, as well as from Charlie Mingus during his visits to California.
Davis organized his own nine-man group in New York City in 1948 called the Capitol Band, named after the series of recordings it made for Capitol Records, releasing recordings in 1949 and 1950. The band appeared in the Paris Jazz Festival in May 1949 and elsewhere in Europe. He returned to New York City and made eight records in 1949-1950 with the Capitol Band, which were collectively released as one long-playing album titled "Birth of the Cool." These were later recognized as the beginning of the era of "cool jazz."
After a period in the early 1950s when he worked sporadically and became involved with drugs, he entered another productive period in his career when he experimented with the "hard bop" style with a quintet which included John Coltrane, producing albums such as "Milestones" and "Round About Midnight."
Davis redefined jazz yet again in the early 1960s, by forming a group which included keyboardist Herbie Hancock and drummer Tony Williams, producing several records which featured improvisation in a period of musical history transition, as jazz clubs closed and rock and roll was becoming the popular idiom.
By the late 1960s, Davis added electrification to his jazz as a result of listening to Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown. This musical style which he pioneered was later called "jazz-rock fusion."
His 1969 album, "Bitches Brew," which included synthesizer, amplified rock guitar and funk drumming was panned by jazz critics, but lauded by others for his incorporation of rock into jazz and its ability to provide opportunities for young musicians such as Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Dave Holland.
Between 1975 and early 1980 Davis suffered from illness and the effects of recurrent substance abuse. Recordings and tours he made in the 1980s achieved some critical success, but they were not as innovative as the recordings of his earlier years.
Davis died on September 28, 1991 of pneumonia, respiratory failure, and the effects of a stroke.
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