1926 
Miles is raised in East St Louis, Illinois; his father is a dentist
and farmer. He learns first the violin, then the trumpet: his
clear vibratoless tone is an indigenous style of playing to St Louis,
although a style generally out of favour in the 1930s and 1940s.
1948-50
Miles meets Gerry Mulligan and Gil
Evans (then employed by Claude Thornhill as an arranger) and
a nonet is formed, including saxophonist Lee Konitz, Max
Roach and pianist John Lewis. They perform at the Royal Roost
club in September 1948 and make three recording dates in 1949 and
1950, later known as the Birth of the
Cool sessions. This is a
precursor of the cool jazz movement, which is to flourish
on the West Coast. There is an emphasis
on clear articulation, uncluttered and imaginative orchestration,
and use of dynamics and counterpoint. This
emphasis on tone and the texture of the ensemble is in contrast
to the rhythmic dynamism and the virtuosity of the soloist in the
frenetic sounds of bebop,
and Davis is more at home with this more languid style.
1955
An unannounced walk-on appearance at the
Newport Jazz Festival resurrects his career, with a particularly
thrilling rendition of Round About Midnight (performed with
a Harmon mute). George Avakian, responsible for jazz at Columbia
Records, makes arrangements for Miles to 'buy' his way out of a
contract with Prestige by recording five telling albums, including
Steamin' and Relaxin': these albums are highlights
of the 1950s recorded canon.
Alongside his small-group work, Miles records
some hugely popular and innovative albums using
a jazz orchestra with arranger Gil
Evans: Miles Ahead (May, 1957), Porgy and Bess
(Aug, 1958) and Sketches of Spain (Nov, 1959) are the most
important, but they record again in the 1960s, and Gil
Evans remains an influence on Davis for the rest of his musical
life.
1960-62
These are lost years in Davis's jazz odyssey. His first quintet
had broken up by 1959, with Coltrane branching out on his own and
leaving a gap not easily filled. Sonny Stitt, Hank Mobley, George
Coleman and others take the saxophone chair in Miles's various ensembles,
and it is not until 1963 that a new settled group is assembled.
"Jazz
is not a what, it is a how. If it were a what, it would be static,
never growing. The how is that the music comes from the moment,
it is spontaneous, it exists in the time it is created."
Bill Evans in conversation with Gene Lees
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early-1940s
He plays with a local dance band, and sits in with various visiting
bands - including Billy Eckstine's, where Davis meets first Dizzy
Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
mid-1940s
The Juilliard School of Music offer Miles a place, and he travels
to New York - ostensibly to study music, but he finds his way quickly
to 52nd Street to play with the up and coming bebop
stars. He is recorded first in April 1945, and later that year in
November with Charlie Parker, whose quintet
he joins. He works with Parker until late-1948.
1951-54
Davis records with Sonny Rollins, with
whom there is an affinity, Jackie Mclean and, in 1954, with Thelonious
Monk. In 1954 his rhythm section comprises Horace
Silver, Percy Heath on drums and Art
Blakey. Much of his playing is loosely in the hard
bop style (as later it came to be known).
But these are troubled years for Davis. Professionally he is on the
slide, brought about by heroin addiction. In early-1955 he is imprisoned
for failing to pay child support and, although by 1955 he is free
of his habit, he has no regular group and
in near obscurity as a performer.
1955-59
John Coltrane (tenor
sax)
Red Garland (piano)
Paul Chambers (bass)
Philly Jo Jones (drums)
This is a golden period for Davis, with a settled group and plenty
of work. Davis uses his rhythm section to
create a less cluttered sound; Davis often quoted his dues
to pianist Ahmad Jamal, who impressed Davis with his use of space.
An important album, Milestones, is recorded in 1958 with Cannonball
Adderley joining the group, a trial run for the seminal and hugely
popular Kind of Blue, recorded in March 1959, with Bill
Evans (and Wynton Kelly) on piano, Jimmy Cobb (drums), Chambers,
Coltrane and Adderley.
This album is made with, typically, little or no rehearsal and very
few takes, seizes the popular imagination and popularizes the term
modal jazz...
This term, often rather loosely applied, refers to the practice of
improvising on the classical modes (the track Milestones, for
example, is based on two modes - a dorian based on G, and an aeolian
based on A), or even on a simple major or minor mode. It can deteriorate
in to a lazy and unchallenging method of improvisation if not performed
by the very best musicians; unflustered by harmonic interruption,
melodic lines can be more expansive and unhurried, and there is a
simple, raw beauty in Davis's lines on, for example, the famous So
What! track from the Kind of Blue album.
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