Miles Davis

Miles Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois , on May 25, 1926. He was the second of three children. His mother played the violin, and his father was an oral surgeon. The family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1927.

Davis first became interested in music around the age of six, when he began listening to the music of jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) and Duke Ellington (1899–1974) on the radio. Visits with his grandfather in Arkansas introduced him to the soulful sounds of gospel, strains of which would find their way into his music compositions later on in his career.

Launches a career

When he was ten years old, Davis took trumpet lessons, and he was given the chance to improvise (make up his own music spontaneously). In 1943, when he was seventeen, he joined the Eddie Randall Blue Devils and played with them for a year before joining a New Orleans–based swing band called Six Brown Cats. Swing was not the kind of music Davis wanted to perform, so after a short time with the band, he returned to St. Louis, Missouri , where his family had moved to earlier.

While watching a jazz band play at a local club, Davis was asked to sit in with the group when one of the trumpeters became ill. A thrilled Davis sat in with this group of jazz greats that included Dizzy Gillespie (1917–1993) and Charlie “Yardbird” Parker (1920–1955) for two weeks. He learned more about playing jazz and experimenting with sound in those two weeks than he had in his entire lifetime.

No longer content to play music that he was not passionate about, Davis moved to New York City, the center of the jazz world. There he enrolled in the Juilliard School, where he studied music theory and composition. Davis dropped out of Juilliard before graduating and furthered his education by playing with Gillespie and Parker.

The young trumpeter recorded record albums with the jazz greats, but critics panned his solos, saying they were full of errors. Davis organized his own nine-piece ensemble, and the band recorded songs from 1949 through 1950. The compilation of songs was eventually released as an album titled Birth of the Cool. This time, critics praised Davis's sound. The group traveled abroad and experienced more acclaim throughout Europe, especially in Paris, where an annual jazz festival was held.

Turns to drugs

Like many jazz musicians in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Davis soon began to use drugs. What began as experimentation turned into addiction, and the trumpeter soon found himself in a downward spiral. It got so bad that he accepted jobs only if they would make it easy for him to get heroin.

Club owners knew of Davis's addiction, and in the first few years of the 1950s, he was blacklisted (included on a list of people who club owners would not hire). In 1954, the musician quit drugs by sheer willpower and self-imposed physical discipline, and in the period that followed he produced music that some critics consider his best. He formed a quintet whose recordings sounded like nothing else being played at the time. Its sound was a combination of jazz, bop, and urban funk blues. Davis was finally accepted by mainstream musicians and listeners.

The 1960s saw the end of the jazz era as rock and roll took over the music scene. Davis, inspired by the sounds of guitar great Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) and the funk of Sly and the Family Stone, turned to electrified jazz, a unique sound that would later be labeled “fusion.”

Later years

Davis's new sound thrilled some listeners and critics while horrifying others as he moved away from “pure” jazz. Although he claimed he never let the critics negatively affect him, Davis returned to a life of substance abuse and subsequent illness. Between 1975 and 1980, he did not pick up his trumpet. He recorded a comeback album in 1981, which was criticized as weak sounding, but two later releases earned him Grammy Awards. Davis continued to play throughout the 1980s.

Davis died on September 28, 1991. He had been suffering from pneumonia, respiratory failure, and the aftereffects of a stroke. Despite his weakness for drugs, Davis changed the music scene forever and left his own personal sound embedded in the culture. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006.