{"id":88313,"date":"2021-09-27T16:03:17","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T14:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/miles-davis-100-titres-5-escales\/"},"modified":"2021-09-27T19:21:21","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T17:21:21","slug":"miles-davis-100-tracks-5-stops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/miles-davis-100-tracks-5-stops\/","title":{"rendered":"Miles Davis: a sun\u2019s path in 100 tracks and 5 stops"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On 28 September 1991, a musician who could claim to have \u2018revolutionised music five times\u2019, without ever having inspired mockery or ridicule, passed away. Like any good gemini, Miles Davis went where the wind took him, following his seemingly magical intuition. To tell his journey, PAM has teamed up with Get Up<\/a>, which publishes a series of playlists recounting the trumpeter’s various creative periods. You will find them, one by one, by clicking on the links under the titles of each part of this article, written by John Raby. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Birth of a legend <\/strong>(1945\u20131955)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Listen to the playlist on Spotify<\/a>, Deezer<\/a> or Apple Music<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all started at the age of eight when Ellington, Hampton and Basie were on the radio. Our young Illinois native was hooked. He soon took up the trumpet, taking lessons and joining his high school band, though never coming first in any competitions. Why not? Because he was Black. In response he worked hard to master his music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at this point that he started to meet people like Clark Terry and Sonny Stitt.Then came the slap in the face that was Parker and Dizzy\u2019s bebop. “I was so shocked that I couldn\u2019t decipher a single note<\/em>.” Davis left for New York where by day he studied at the prestigious Juilliard School, and by night sought out Parker in the clubs on 52nd Street. When he finally met his hero he mistook him for a tramp. Davis then became enmeshed in the cutting edge of the avant-garde, alongside his new friend (\u201cBillie\u2019s Bounce\u201d). He was nineteen years old. “Bird wanted a different trumpet player from Dizzy. He wanted a more relaxed style, someone who played in the middle register, like me.<\/em>” Miles took on a more restrained style that he drew from the Saint Louis playbook: a round, clean sound with a slight vibrato.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1947, he began to make recordings as a band leader (Milestones<\/em>) and began a lifelong friendship with Gil Evan. “This tall, thin white guy came in with a bag full of radishes that he ate with salt<\/em>.” Davis remembered of the man who who chiselled out the refined arrangements for \u201cMoon Dreams\u201d on Birth of The Cool<\/em>. Dizzy didn’t like it, commenting that “you have to sweat your balls off in this kind of music. They softened it up.<\/em>” Others, such as Chet Baker, jumped into the breach. As for Miles, he worked with Sonny Rollins (\u201cMorpheus\u201d), Lee Konitz (\u201cOdjenar\u201d), Zoot Sims (\u201cTasty Pudding\u201d), and Charlie Mingus (\u201cSmooch\u201d). Though these are all assured works, a stagnation was beginning to occur. Addicted to heroin, Davis gave up playing and started hustling and pimping in order to satisfy his vice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of 1953 he locked himself away at his father\u2019s house to get away from it all. He  rebirth came with Walkin\u2019<\/em>: “This album completely changed my life and my career. (…) I wanted to set the music on fire again with improvisations of bebop, that Diz and Bird had started<\/em>.” These legendary sessions with Monk in 1954 are remembered to this day. On one of Milt Jackson\u2019s songs (\u201cBag\u2019s Groove\u201d), Miles insisted that the pianist not play during his solo. Angered, Monk danced like a bear around the trumpeter. “When you\u2019re a brass player and you\u2019ve got Monk behind you, it\u2019s like having the devil himself poking you in the ass with his pitchfork \u2013 it\u2019ll either distract you or give you wings to fly<\/em>,” remarked Laurent de Wilde in an apt analyses. Drama also occurred on \u201cThe Man I Love\u201d. During his solo, Monk remained silent for ten interminable seconds. It was too much. Miles gave him his marching orders and asked his pianist Red Garland to imitate the airy style of Ahmad Jamal (\u201cWill You Still Be Mine\u201d). His intuitions were astute and the first quintet was to become legendary…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Miles ahead<\/strong> (1955\u20131960)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Listen to the playlist on Spotify<\/a>, Deezer<\/a> or Apple Music<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Charlie Parker\u2019s death, Miles decided to form his own quintet. Brando, Sinatra, Eva Gardner \u2013 everyone came to hear them. “So there was Coltrane on saxophone, Philly Joe on drums, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and me on trumpet. And faster than I could have ever imagined, the music we were making together became incredible. It was so good that it gave me and the audience chills. Shit, it got scary real fast, so much so that I was pinching myself to make sure I was really there<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trumpeter recorded the albums Cookin\u2019<\/em>, Relaxin\u2019<\/em> and Workin\u2019<\/em> in quick succession in order to end his contract with Prestige. In 1956, the band recorded the Monk classic, \u201c\u2018Round Midnight\u201d. Every night after playing it Davis asked Monk, “How was it tonight?<\/em>” To which the pianist replied, looking very serious, “not good<\/em>“. They kept this up for some time. \u201c’That\u2019s not how it\u2019s played<\/em>‘, he would sometimes say to me with a mean, exasperated look on his face. Then one night he said, ‘Yeah, that\u2019s how you play it.’ That made me crazy with happiness. I had found the sound<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coltrane dove into dope and Davis beat him up. So Coltrane went to work with Monk and pretty soon Davis had dismisses his quintet in order to work with a larger ensemble under the aegis of Gil Evans, and Dizzy admitted to having worn out his first Miles Ahead<\/em> album in just three weeks… Miles went to play at the Saint Germain club in Paris, the same place where he had fallen madly in love with Juliette Gr\u00e9co. One night he improvised the music for Ascenseur Pour l\u2019\u00c9chafaud<\/em>, a film by Louis Malle. When he returned to New York, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley joined the reformed quintet that recorded Milestone<\/em>. “Trane and Cannon were really playing like crazy and had now gotten used to each other. It was my first record written in a modal form<\/em>.” Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones left and were replaced by Jimmy Cobb and pianist Bill Evans, a connoisseur of Ravel and disciple of Lennie Tristano. Coltrane, who had meanwhile given up heroin, set off on his more esoteric phase. In the late 1950s, things started to really hot up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n