GOING MILES: A MILES DAVIS PROJECT - Alan Goldsher

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo, like yesterday’s...

Fri, 24 May 2013 05:56:47 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo, like yesterday’s cool photo, was pulled from the Miles Style File. This is a fashion do — tomorrow, some fashion don’ts.

And don’t forget, I’m crowdsourcing Monday’s entry to GOING MILES, so if you want to muse about Miles — an anecdote, an homage, an essay, whatever — send your piece to GoingMilesProject@gmail.com. Can’t wait to read it!

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo demonstrates why, back in...

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:21:27 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo demonstrates why, back in the 60s, the trumpeter consistently landed a spot on Playboy’s best-dressed list. It also shows us where Andre Benjamin got some of his sartorial ideas.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo is about as smiley as...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:44:47 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo is about as smiley as you’ll see our man, circa the fifties.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo combines two of my fave...

Tue, 21 May 2013 05:05:31 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo combines two of my fave things: Jazz and quality consumer electronics. Add in a Chicago Bulls game and some homemade mac & cheese, and my head will explode with joy.

CONTRIBUTE TO "GOING MILES!"

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:35:00 -0500

Do you have any thoughts on Miles Davis? You favorite record? A tune that influenced you as an artist, a musician, or a person? If yes, send it to GoingMilesProject@gmail.com, and I’ll include it in next week’s entry. And spread the word to your music-lovin’ friends…

GOING MILES, Part 3 - Horning In

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:24:00 -0500

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words, and that which cannot remain silent. -Victor Hugo

When I got into music, I went all the way into music. I didn’t have no time for nothing else. -Miles Davis

It was the mid-1930s when Miles Davis fell in love with his trumpet, and the American music was in a state of flux, which was unsurprising, because the country, still reeling from the Great Depression of 1929, was a mess. Cheery songs like “Heart and Soul” and “The Peanut Vendor” still inhabited the airwaves, but at the same time, artists like Billie Holiday (“Strange Fruit”) and Huddie “Ledbelly” Ledbetter (“Take This Hammer”) were writing or singing about real issues and real pain.

Another factor in the seismic shift was the proliferation of talkies. Now, instead of merely hearing a tune on the radio or spinning a 78-RPM record, music fans could put a face to the voice or the instrument. Directors like Busby Berkeley, Cecil B. DeMille, and Robert Z. Leonard were turning listeners into viewers, and viewers into listeners. The jazz world was in a transitional phase, although one could argue that up until the early 1980s, the jazz world was always in a transitional phase. Thanks to trumpeter/vocalist Louis Armstrong’s innate showmanship and increasing accessibility, Dixieland was embraced beyond its native New Orleans, while big bands, thanks to the increasing complexity of Duke Ellingon and Count Basie, were slowly migrating from the dancehall to the concert hall. Additionally, due to both economic constraints and the path blazed by Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven, big bands would sometimes shed a few members, offering listeners the opportunity to enjoy a more intimate take on jazz. This was the brave new world in which Miles Davis began his trumpet lessons. Miles landed his first gig at the age of either 12 or 13, when the head scoutmaster of Camp Vanderventer in Waterloo, Illinois asked the burgeoning brassman to play taps and reveille. “I remember how proud I was for him to ask me,” Miles said, “picking me out from everyone. So I guess by then, I was staring to play all right.” Considering how many musicians eventually trashed Miles’ early work, one might question how “all right” he actually was. But somebody somewhere must’ve heard something, because once he started at Lincoln High School, he was introduced to his first honest-to-goodness trumpet teacher, a local musician named Elwood Buchanan.

A native of St. Louis—and that’s the St. Louis in Missouri, not the East St. Louis in Illinois—Buchanan was a protégé of legendary classical trumpeter Joseph Gustat, the first trumpeter with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. An intrepid workhorse, Buchanan gigged at every given opportunity, be it on a riverboat that floated up and down the Mississippi River, or in a dancehall under the leadership of bandleader/saxophonist/tubist Andy Kirk. At some point in the mid-1930s, Buchanan got tired of the grind, and took a job as band director and private trumpet teacher at Lincoln H.S.

As was the case with Dr. John Eubanks, Miles met the crotchety teacher through his dad, back when he was attending Attucks Junior High. “Mr. Buchanan was one of my father’s patients and drinking buddies. My father told him how interested I was in music and in playing trumpet, specifically. Later, after I started going to Lincoln High School, he still sort of looked after me to keep me on the right track.” It’s said that Buchanan had a prickly demeanor, and considering that Miles was a self-professed grouch, those lessons had to have been at best contentious, and at worst, bloodbaths.

Eventually, likely at Buchanan’s behest, Davis began taking lessons with Joseph Gustat himself. Little is known about Gustat, but tall tales of his technical prowess abound. For instance, Davis claimed, “Gustat could run chromatic scales in two octaves, seventeen times in one breath.” To put that in perspective, that susses out to 408 notes without sucking in a single puff of air. Sure, with the aid of circular breathing—a trick where a wind instrumentalist breathes in through the nose while at the same time pushing air out through their mouth utilizing the oxygen that they’d stored in their puffed-up cheeks, enabling them to concoct a non-stop series of tones—it was possible…but not probable. Then again, as noted, Miles Davis preferred telling a little white lie to telling a dull story.

Despite Buchanan’s recommendation, Gustat was less-than-impressed with his new apprentice. “I went to Gustat and played one note. He said I was the worst trumpet player I ever heard in his life. I said, ‘That’s why I’m here—I’m the pupil and you’re the teacher.” Eventually, Miles came to respect his teacher’s toughness. “Maybe [Gustat] thought that was the way to get the beset out of me. But it didn’t bother me. As long as he taught me that half an hour for the $2.50 I paid him, he could say anything he wanted.”

The more Miles learned, the cockier he became, but despite his high opinion of himself, he understood that he still had plenty to learn…sort of. “By the time I was fifteen or sixteen, I had learned how to play chromatic scales. When I started playing that shit, everybody around Lincoln stopped and asked me what I was doing. They started looking at me differently after that. The way I was beginning to think to myself was that I could play as good as any motherfucker walking. I probably thought I could play better. Some of the best musicians around East St. Louis wanted me to play with them [so] I was beginning to think I was the hippest thing around.”

Miles became so hip that he landed his first paying music job with, as Miles remembered, “…a guy named Pickett,” an impressive feat for a high school student. “[We played] some gigs on the road—Belleville, Illinois, places like that. We used to play shit like ‘Intermezzo,’ [Fats Waller’s] ‘Honeysuckle Rose,’ and [the Johnny Green standard] ‘Body and Soul.’” (It’s unclear what “Intermezzo” he’s referring to, as the word refers to opera filler music.) He continued, “I would just play the melodies because nothing else hip was happening. Pickett played that roadhouse music, or what some call honky-tonk…that shit that they play in black ‘bucket of blood’ clubs.” It’s odd that Miles referred to honky-tonk with such disdain, because in 1970, he cut a honky-tonk-drenched song called, logically enough, “Honky Tonk,” a tune that showed up on multiple albums, and remained for two full years in a repertoire that was constantly evolving.

When Miles turned 17, his girlfriend, Irene Birth—a young woman of whom Miles said, “I was really into Irene. I got my first orgasm with her.”—challenged the smug instrumentalist to call a local bandleader named Eddie Randle and ask him for a gig. A fellow trumpeter and St. Louis native son, Randle led the Blue Devils, a band of which Miles raved, “…them motherfuckers could play their asses off.” After a quick audition, Miles Davis had his first regular job.

For Miles, being a Blue Devil was the right situation at the right time: As he was a lesser member of a four- or five-man trumpet section, his musical responsibilities were limited to what were likely simple ensemble passages; if he were allotted any solo space, it would be minimal, which gave him less opportunity to screw up in a public setting; and, relatively speaking, the gigs were plentiful and consistent, giving him the opportunity to build up his chops and confidence.

But possibly the most crucial aspect of his first band was the company. He was surrounded by young, hungry, accomplished musicians who, both verbally and by example, taught him how to find his way down the path towards becoming a professional musician. For young Miles, the most important member of the band was right there in the trumpet section, a fellow teenager named Clark Terry.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo asks the question, what...

Sun, 19 May 2013 05:31:36 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo asks the question, what make and model is Miles leaning on?

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo features our man schmoozing...

Sat, 18 May 2013 06:50:43 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo features our man schmoozing with Count Basie. Which reminds me of the time I met the Count. His orchestra was doing a show at Northwestern University — it was one of his last performances, I believe — and at that point, he was getting around in a wheelchair. After the gig, my pal and I wandered up to the stage to shake The Man’s hand. He wheeled over and bee-essed with us for a while, then, before I could start pelting him with questions about Lester Young, a large, large man strode over, said in a deep, booming voice, “THE COUNT HAS TO GO,” then wheeled him off. Basie waved goodbye, looking sad that he’d been pulled away from a nice conversation with a couple of fawning nerds.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo makes you wonder why...

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:22:01 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo makes you wonder why it’s so damn hard to find a good trumpet ad these days.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo floats like a butterfly and...

Thu, 16 May 2013 05:40:10 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo is just…cool. Leather...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:55:33 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo is just…cool. Leather pants notwithstanding.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo: An ad with the worst tag...

Tue, 14 May 2013 05:08:20 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo: An ad with the worst tag line ever: “Their accuracy and lack of coloration account for their choice by many professional musicians.” Ooh, I’m convinced, gimme six of those.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo celebrates his 1961 victory...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:21:27 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo celebrates his 1961 victory for album of the year, that album being “Sketches of Spain.” Can’t really argue with that choice, can you?

GOING MILES, Part 2 - EAST ST. LOUIS: RUST BELT BADNESS

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:59:00 -0500

“I walked all the way from East Saint Louis, I never had but that one, one thin dime I laid my head in a New York woman’s lap, she laid her little cute head in mine She tried to make me bleed by the rattlings of her tongue The sun would never, never shine I pawned my sword and I pawned my chain Well I pawned myself but I fell to shame I tried to see you in the fall, when you didn’t have no man at all I’d love to meet you in the spring when the bluebird’s almost ready to sing Faree, honey, faree well You can shake like a cannon ball, get out and learn that old Georgia crawl Faree, honey, faree well And I laid my head in a barroom door, and I can’t get drunk, drunk no more Now if you can’t do the sugary get yourself on out of this house to me Faree, baby, faree well I tried to see you in the spring when the bluebird’s almost ready to sing Faree, honey, faree well And I walked on back to East Saint Louis, never had but that one, one thin dime” —“East St. Louis Blues,” Blind Willie McTell

“East St. Louis was so bad that it just made you go out and do something.” —Miles Davis

East St. Louis, Illinois doesn’t have what you would call a great reputation.

In 2007, the FBI cited it as the most dangerous city in the country. Its murder rate was a whopping 101.9, as compared to the United States average of 5.6, and the numbers for rape, robbery, assault, burglary, and car theft were equally ugly. The city’s average median household income was slightly above $20,000, putting over 30% of its citizenry below the poverty level. You can’t drive two miles without running into a so-called urban prairie, an abandoned house or building that’s sprouting unsightly wild foliage.

But that’s the East St. Louis of the 21st Century, the East St. Louis of today. Things weren’t always that bad. As a matter of fact, back in the day, East St. Louis was The Place to Be. “The neighborhood was very nice, with row houses” said Miles Dewey Davis II in 1990, “something like the ones they have in Philadelphia or Baltimore. It was a pretty little city. It’s not like that any more.”

In 1927, the year Miles Henry Davis moved his young bride Cleo, his daughter Dorothy Mae, and his one-year-old son, Miles, the 30 miles due south from Alton, Illinois to East St. Louis, it was a pretty happening town, so happening, in fact, that in 1926—the year of Miles Davis’s birth—jazz composer/bandleader Duke Ellington co-wrote “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,” a jaunty swinger that, between 1926-32, he recorded a whopping 11 times. (This repetitiveness as out of the ordinary, or as gratuitous, or as lazy as it may seem; Ellington had a proclivity for cutting the same song over and over again, but on the plus side, virtually every rendition was somehow different, be it a sped-up or slowed-down tempo, or an altered arrangement, or a different featured soloist. Perhaps coincidentally—or perhaps not—this sort of inventive retreading became a hallmark of Miles Davis, who cut at least 19 versions of the blues/bopper “Walkin’,” and nearly as many reduxes of the standard “I Fall in Love Too Easliy.”) “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” was a showcase for the tune’s other composer, James “Bubber” Miley, a canny trumpeter who, thanks to his expertise with the plunger mute, could wah-wah with the best of ‘em. Of the composition, Todd S. Jenkins, author of I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus, raved, “The quintessential document of Duke’s “jungle music,” this 1927 theme was so letter-perfect that Steely Dan paid it groveling homage nearly a half-century later. Bubber Miley’s hot, growling trumpet, the percussive drive of banjo and tuba, and swooning horns form the fabric of one of Ellington’s most memorable tunes. The roots of everything from Cab Calloway to the Art Ensemble of Chicago are audible in this primordial jazz masterpiece.” The fact of the matter is, the tune had little to do with the city itself. “Everything we used to do in the old days had a picture,” Ellington explained. “We’d be riding along and see a name on a sign. We used to spend a lot of time up in New England, around Boston, and we’d see this sign, LEWANDO CLEANERS, and every time we saw it we’d start singing, ‘Oh, Lee-wan-do!’ Out of that came ‘East St. Louis Toodle-oo.’” (How the members of the Ellington Orchestra made leap from ‘Oh, Lee-wan-do’ to “East St. Louis Toodle-oo” is unclear to anyone who wasn’t a member of the Ellington Orchestra.) The pragmatic, business-savvy Ellington then mused, “Probably it would have gone better if we had called it ‘Lewando’ and got some advertising money from it.”

Aside from a brief chapter in his autobiography, Miles Davis talked little about his hometown—and when he did comment on the city, it was usually something negative and, predictably, somewhat salty—but it’s fair to assume that East St. Louis couldn’t have looked that bad from all the way up in Alton, because Miles’ father was by all accounts A) an intelligent man, and B) a talented, up-and-coming dentist, and chances are that a sharp young man with a bright future wouldn’t knowingly bring his young family into a harsh environment. But Miles, never one to let the facts or a glimmer of positivity get in the way of a good story, chose to focus on the negative aspects of his childhood.

“About the first thing I can remember as a little boy,” Miles said, “was a white man running me down the street hollering, ‘Nigger! Nigger!’ My father went hunting him with a shotgun.” Miles’ well-armed father wasn’t able to track down the racist taunter, which was fortunate for both the dentist and his family, because if you figure that Miles’ legendary temper was hereditary, there’s little reason to doubt that Dr. Davis would’ve pulled the trigger. “There were gangs all around East St. Louis,” Miles continued, “bad gangs like the Termites. East St. Louis was a rough place to grow up in, because you had a lot of cats, black and white, who didn’t take no shit off nobody.”

Miles home life was equally frustrating, primarily because of his iffy relationship with his mother, Cleota Henry Davis, known to her friends as Cleo. “I didn’t get along with her too well,” Miles explained. “Maybe it was because we both had strong, independent personalities. She had her mind about the way I should be doing things, and I had mine.” Ironically, Miles proudly claims that in terms of temperament, he was Cleo’s son: “I guess you could say I was more like my mother than my father.”

Miles was exposed to music at an early age, thanks to a nearby neighbor and his sexy wife. “Next door [from us] was my father’s best friend, Dr. John Eubanks. Dr. Eubanks was so light he almost looked white. His wife, Alma, or Josephine, I forget which, was almost white, too. She was a fine lady, yellow, like Lena Horne with curly black hair. My mother would send me over to their house to get something and his wife would be sitting there with her legs crossed, looking finer than a motherfucker. She had great legs and she didn’t mind showing them either. Anyway, Uncle Johnny—that’s what we called Dr. Eubanks—gave me my first trumpet.” Considering his future obsession with women, we shouldn’t be surprised that young Miles was more impressed with Alma’s (or Josephine’s) legs than he was the instrument.

But he couldn’t do anything with Mrs. Eubanks’ body. He could, however, use the trumpet.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo: In honor of Mother’s...

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:43:50 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo: In honor of Mother’s Day, here’s a shot of Miles Davis with sister Dorothy Mae, his brother Vernon, and his mother Cleota H. Henry Davis, a.k.a. “Mama-Cleo.”

Come back tomorrow for a new entry!

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo is actually a cool...

Sat, 11 May 2013 05:44:09 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo is actually a cool everybody photo, a poster for the Coachella of the 70s, the Isle of Wight Festival.

Don’t forget to check out GOING MILES! (http://www.alangoldsher.com/Going_Miles/Going_Miles.html) New update coming on Monday.

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo: A 45-RPM version of a...

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:28:00 -0500

Today’s cool Miles Davis photo: A 45-RPM version of a 20-plus minute track that took up an entire side of an album. Is that even possible?

Come back on Monday for the next GOING MILES update!

So what’s your favorite Miles Davis record?

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:28:30 -0500

So what’s your favorite Miles Davis record?

I know I officially turned this into a Miles Davis blog, but I...

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:43:13 -0500

I know I officially turned this into a Miles Davis blog, but I love discovering new Beatles pix, and had to share.

GOING MILES: AN INTRODUCTION

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:30:00 -0500

When it came my jazz education, I lurched from era to era, with no regard for time, place, or style. No logical chronological path for young Alan Goldsher: I didn’t start in New Orleans with trumpet great Louis Armstrong, then go into the big band era with pianist/composer Duke Ellington, then join alto saxophone genius Charlie Parker in the land of bebop and beyond. The first jazz I remember hearing came from the smooth and smart guitar of Pat Metheny…not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ya gotta start somewhere.

In some ways, a guy like Metheny—a savvy melodocist who blends a contempo-pop sensibility with a more-than-solid jazz background—is the perfect place for a kid who’d been weaned on the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Earth Wind & Fire to start. His band’s eponymously-named 1978 outing Pat Metheny Group is a fusion gem, loaded with memorable compositions and intelligent solos, the kind of record that would meet with the approval of even the snobbiest jazz elitist. (And I’m allowed to call out snobby jazz elitists on their often obnoxiously exclusionary attitude, because I myself used to be a snobby jazz elitist par excellence.)

Musically speaking, the backwards leap from Metheny to Chick Corea’s 1972 set Light as a Feather made perfect sense. Utilizing rock grooves, Latin-esque tinges, and a cheery Fender Rhodes, Chick came up with something that a newbie could wrap his head around. After that came Weather Report’s Heavy Weather. Between, say, 1978-1982—an in-flux musical period that open for the taking—Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul’s multi-culti fusion unit was arguably one of the most important bands of its era, dominating the jazz landscape with an arena-rock-band-like vibe. Their anthemic “Birdland” was a crossover hit of sorts, garnering airplay on mainstream AM radio stations, something that few, if any true jazz ensembles have experienced since. (This probably tells us that had I stumbled upon Weather Report before Metheny, I would’ve been sucked into the jazz abyss. It was inevitable.) From there, it was an easy hop, skip, and jump to Herbie Hancock, whose funk-drenched 1973 set Head Hunters appealed to my Parliament-Funkadelic-loving side. What differentiated Head Hunters from my previous jazz discovery was the length of the tunes; aside from Led Zeppelin’s more meandering (read: wanky) stuff, I hadn’t had much exposure to songs that were more than six minutes. “Chameleon,” the best-known, and best cut on Head Hunters, clocked in at over 15 minutes, and if I could sit through, absorb, and enjoy a 15-minute instrumental, I was ready to dig deeper.

In the spirit of further exploration, I went to my school library and picked up the coolest-looking jazz book I could find—Julie Coryell’s 1978 Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, the Music. Written by the wife of guitarist Larry Coryell, Jazz-Rock Fusion is a compilation of interviews with the likes of new heroes Shorter, Hancock, and Corea, as well as guitarist George Benson, and bassist Ron Carter, among many others. The one thing that the majority of these wide-ranging, engaging interviews had in common was a collective love for trumpeter Miles Davis.

But it actually went beyond love—it was more like reverence. When asked about his three desert island albums, drummer Lenny White cited Miles’ 1959 Columbia Records set, Milestones. “I think that’s the best of any of them,” Lenny said. “If I had that one, I wouldn’t need anything else.” After noting that Davis was one of his boyhood heroes, guitarist John McLaughlin described playing with his idol as nerve-wracking: “I found myself after two days in the same recording studio as Miles very nervous, simply because this man had lived inside of my imagination, inside of my record player for so many years. Suddenly, to be confronted with the actual reality, it was quite disturbing emotionally, but not in an unpleasant way.” Drummer Billy Cobham called Miles, “…a unifying spirit. [Playing with Davis] was an education, a school of higher learning.” Fortunately for a curious soul such as yours truly, the centerpiece of the book was a ten-page interview with the man himself, a candid, wide-ranging, profane interview that, I found out much later, was a rarity, as Miles wasn’t a big fan of being interviewed, and when he actually bothered to speak to the press, he was hardly ever candid or wide-ranging. (He was, however, almost always profane.) I read that chapter at least five times before I ever heard the man play a single note.

This was 1980, soon before Davis was about to make his semi-triumphant return to public life, thus the music press was buzzing with Miles Mania, and music retailers followed suit, meaning that the jazz bins at my local record emporiums were overflowing with Miles vinyl. The question was, where to start? It was overwhelming, flipping through the dozens of titles—to that point, of all the bands in my record collection, the Beatles probably sported the largest discography, and at any given time, there were only about 15 different Fab Four records at those aforementioned local record emporiums—so I grabbed the first album that made some sense: Miles Davis Greatest Hits. (The incongruity of there being a Miles Davis “greatest hits” album was lost on me, as I didn’t know that Miles didn’t do hits.)

Fortunately for those of you who are reading this blog, it was the perfect choice. Had I grabbed an abstract album like Miles Smiles, or a rambling album like Bitches Brew, or a messy album like Dark Magus, I might not have become the Miles obsessive that we know and love. But the Columbia compilation had eight user-friendly cuts, the ideal introduction not only to Davis specifically, but to acoustic jazz in general. I listened to the album’s opener, “Seven Steps to Heaven,” incessantly, marveling at such little things as the transition from the skipping 3/4-time bass intro to the punchy 4/4-time melody, and Tony Williams’ two-bar drum fills that punctuated the song, and the ease with which the soloists navigated what, to my relatively untrained ears, sounded like a complex set of chord changes. Greatest Hits contained two classic ballad performances (“My Funny Valentine” and “’Round Midnight”), a couple tunes from what I was told was the greatest album in jazz history, Kind of Blue (“All Blues” and “So What”), two up-tempo swingers (“Walkin’” and “E.S.P.”), and a song from my the film soundtrack childhood (“Someday My Prince Will Come”). A diverse batch of material, no doubt, but it somehow made sense.

And then there was the cover. The jackets of all the albums in tiny jazz collection didn’t feature photos of the artists, but rather semi-abstract photographs or illustrations. (Light as a Feather was the only album whose cover reflected its title—it was a simple blue background with, you guessed it, a feather.) But this Miles cover was as in-your-face and defiant as any cover I’d ever seen. You have Miles from the shoulders-up, wearing a purple velvet turtleneck, staring/glaring at the camera, as if to say, “Buy this record, muthafucka, or don’t…but if you don’t, it’s your loss.” In the upper left corner, you had the Columbia logo, more prominently displayed than any other label logo I’d ever seen, and in the upper right, the album title, and, underneath that, a list of song titles. That was another first for me—the only one of my records that featured a tune title on the cover was the Beatles Please Please Me, and that read, “with “Love Me Do” and 12 other songs,” as if the label or the band didn’t have the balls to mention the rest of the material. Balls were one thing (or two things, I suppose) that Miles Davis was not lacking.

Staying true to my topsy-turvy, anti-chronological way of seeking out new music, I plowed through Miles’ discography in a haphazard fashion, grabbing a “best of” collection culling some stuff from his 1950s association with Prestige Records, then a Charlie Parker box set featuring his earliest work from the 1940s, then some of his electric-soaked albums from the late-1960s. The one thing I learned from all these albums, and the armful of Miles records I acquired over the next few years, was that I had a lot to learn. Hearing this wide range of styles during my formative listening years opened up my ears to, well, everything. Because of Miles, I was comfortable with an avant garde-ist like Ornette Coleman, a hard bopper like Art Blakey, and an electric-based guitar noodler like Al DiMeola. If Miles said through his music that avant garde, hard bop, and electricity were okay with him, then they were okay with me. (Little did I know that Miles would probably be loathe to explicitly associate himself with any of those musical movements…or, for that matter, any musical movement in general.)

There are a zillion reasons why, decades after his death, Miles Davis remains such an important figure both musically and culturally, but I believe it was his innate sense of restless diversity—his ability to float on top of the curve while simultaneously staying ahead of the curve—that makes him such an influence to this day. Hell, you can pick almost any contemporary artist and successfully play “Six Degrees of Miles Davis”:

MADONNA

-Madonna recorded with Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds (Bedtime Stories)

-Babyface recorded with Eric Clapton (“If I Could Change the World”)

-Eric Clapton recorded with Jack Bruce (Every Cream album)

-Jack Bruce recorded with John McLaughlin (Things We Like)

-John McLaughlin recorded with Miles Davis (In a Silent Way)

KENNY G

-Kenny G recorded Jeff Lorber (Wizard Island)

-Jeff Lorber recorded with Freddie Hubbard (Water Sign)

-Freddie Hubbard recorded with Art Blakey (Caravan)

-Art Blakey recorded with Miles Davis (Dig)

JAY-Z

-Jay-Z recorded with Mariah Carey (“Heartbreaker”)

-Maria Carey recorded with Ol’ Dirty Bastard (“Fantasy”)

-Ol’ Dirty Bastard recorded with Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the 36 Chambers)

-Wu-Tang Clan performed with A Tribe Called Quest (“Rock the Bells”)

-A Tribe Called Quest recorded with Ron Carter (The Low End Theory) Ron Carter recorded with Miles Davis (virtually every Miles album in the 1960s)

Pop, lite jazz, and hip-hop. Miles Davis, whether he wanted to or not, had his fingerprint on everything.

This blog is not a biography, because, frankly, thanks to authors Jack Chambers (Milestones 1 and Milestones 2) and Ian Carr (Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography) another Miles bio isn’t necessary. Collectively, those three books are untouchable, detailed, respectful, and even-handed, the kind of titles that any biographer tackling any subject in any genre should take note of.

Nor is this project a picayune, complete overview of Miles’s work. Any artist who’s lucky enough to have the public’s ear for five years, let alone five decades, is bound to record and release a clinker or two—it’s the law of averages, after all—so for your sake, I’ll cherry pick, because, let’s be honest, there’s no reason to spend as much time on Agartha as on Filles de Kilimanjaro.

What this is, is a labor of love, a celebration, and an introduction. Yes, there will be biographical information—because, no matter how much he protested, Miles’ life informed his music, and knowing about said life will enhance listening to said music—but there will also be trivia about Miles’ sidemen, and best of/worst of lists, and random bits of information that’ll hopefully appeal to both newcomers and longtime inhabitants of Miles’s world.

My ultimate goal is to compel you, the reader, to fire up your iTunes, or to go to your local record emporium and pick up a couple of new Miles records, whether it be something like Kind of Blue to pop your Miles cherry, or a live rarity with the Chick Corea/Dave Holland/Jack DeJohnette rhythm section from early-70s that’ll round out your collection. I want you to have that same feeling I had when purchased that greatest hits package and stared at jazz’s Prince of Darkness staring back at me, that feeling of, “Buy this record, muthafucka, or don’t…but if you don’t, it’s your loss.”