An early morning Trump-free zone
It’s strange to think he’s been gone a quarter of a century when his voice is still so much with us, both the extraordinary music and the stirring social conscience. Miles Davis protested, loudly and often, society’s mistreatment of African Americans from the moment he experienced bigotry in East St. Louis, and he seldom let up until he died at only 65 years old.
There’s the time at a White House dinner for Ray Charles, when a clueless white woman at Miles’ table said his “mammy” would be proud of him dining with President Reagan. Uh oh! Lock and load! He lit into her with an obscenity-laced rant and the lady gasped, “Well, who are you and what have you done?” Paraphrasing his whispered reply: “I’m Miles Fucking Davis and I’ve changed the course of music four or five times.”
His 1940s and ‘50s comments reflect the hope and anger of movements like Black Lives Matter. When you read his views about race in America, spelled out in his unvarnished, gut-pounding 1990 autobiography, it sounds like he could be talking about conditions that killed Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, or Sandra Bland. He alienated many who said he went too far, and he despised what he considered Uncle Tomming by performers like his idol Louis Armstrong: “I didn’t grin or shuffle and didn’t walk around with my finger up my ass begging for no handout and thinking I was inferior to whites.”
There’s a well-known episode, repeated in Don Cheadle’s recent movie, Miles Ahead, which is quite a ride. Miles helps a white woman into a cab at New York City’s Birdland nightclub, where his group is playing (one of the few scenes in the movie that actually happened). It’s 1959 and a white cop, who seems to have a thing about black men and white women, orders the musician to move on. “Move on, for what? I’m working downstairs. That’s my name up there, Miles Davis,” and I pointed to my name on the marquee all up in lights.
So another NYPD detective clobbered Miles over the head, then they arrested him and hauled him to jail, and a race riot nearly broke out when 200 angry people surrounded the police. The next day a picture of a bloody Miles and his wife, the dancer Frances Taylor, made the papers' front pages, accompanied by a blistering column about police brutality by his journalist friend Dorothy Kilgallen. (Yeah, the What’s My Line? lady—a sad character, a conservative Hearst reporter who died young like many of Miles’ friends, from drink and pills.) The Birdland story was then, today the street he lived on in New York City is named Miles Davis Way.
Through all the prejudice, drug addictions, poverty, marriages and divorces, violence (domestic and otherwise), injustice, and early deaths of so many friends (Coltrane, Bird, Monk, Kilgallen) Miles held on to one thing: That trumpet and its ever evolving sound, over the course of more than 70 studio albums (and as many live LPs, compilations and soundtracks). But once the record was done, he moved on. Don’t get too hung up on “So What?” because that’s old stuff; in concert, don’t expect him to play something from your favorite old record because he won’t. He looked ahead, irritating fans and critics, and 25 years later the whole trip holds up.
Just look at the artists who played with Miles—he learning from them and many of them from him: John Coltrane, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Coleman Hawkins, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, and on and on.
The list could’ve been longer. In 1970, Miles was in London to work on a project with Jimi Hendrix. Then word came that Jimi was dead. Flash forward a couple decades and Prince and Miles were talking about a record (they did perform together, five minutes well spent). He saw the young Prince as the future of music—a blend of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, and Charlie Chaplin. Then Miles died so that didn’t happen either.
There are lots of other interviews with Miles Davis on YouTube and some can be uncomfortable to watch because he doesn’t make it easy for the interviewers, especially if they’re blabbering talk show hosts who don’t know music and ask asinine questions. He loved to talk music with other band members, but not Carson or the others (Steve Allen, a musician, was an exception). Miles can come across as one angry or at least tuned-out dude who doesn’t suffer fools, which he certainly did not.
Like others who talk about first meeting him (Herbie Hancock comes to mind), I’d be too nervous to even open my pie hole, afraid I’d mumble something stupid and he’d say “motherfucker”-something and I’d be left standing in a puddle of my own pee, afraid he might get mad. There’s no getting around it, Miles was a pimp, junkie, and wife beater, and I wince at the mutual admiration society he had with Bill Cosby.
That defiance is understandable in light of growing up black and making it in Depression-era and mid-century America, but acting it out with your woman is some inexcusable sorry shit. His public image was this hard, unapproachable guy who wouldn’t even look at, let alone talk to, the audience, and don’t even think about asking for an autograph. But the assistant on Miles’ autobiography, Quincy Troupe, says it was a disguise:
“Miles Davis was not the monster everybody made him out to be,” he said. “Miles Davis was a very shy guy who created a persona, a kind of hostile persona, to keep people away from him.”
Miles wasn’t the most loyal partner. Heck, he went to bed with another woman two days after marrying Cicely Tyson. Monogamy wasn’t his thing. His lovers and victims live with the unease some fans share: Great music from a flawed man (joining a long list). Jo Gelbard, who taught Miles to paint and became another lover, said, “And I don’t negate the violence [but] there should be some forgiveness and insight into him as a human being. It’s time to say he was a genius, and thank you for the music.”
And there was a lot of it. Like Prince and others, Miles Davis has stacks of tunes in the vaults that the public has never heard. This week a reworking of some unreleased material was featured in Rolling Stone, but on this 90th birthday here’s some classic Miles and Trane. (It’s also my late father-in-law’s 90th, one of the kindest men I ever knew.)
That’s April 1959. Joining Miles Davis and John Coltrane are Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. About two-thirds of the way into it, the trombone arrangement is performed by the Gil Evans Orchestra. Evans would compose/arrange/produce many of Miles’ most beloved recordings.