Miles Davis
Miles Davis
• He began studying trumpet in his early teens;
fortuitously, in light of his later stylistic
development, his first teacher advised him to play
without vibrato. Davis played with jazz bands in
the St. Louis area before moving to New York City
in 1944 to study at the Institute of Musical Art
(now the Juilliard School)—although he skipped
many classes and instead was schooled through
jam sessions with masters such as Dizzy Gillespie
and Charlie Parker. Davis and Parker recorded
together often during the years 1945–48.
Miles intro
• Davis's early playing was sometimes tentative and not
always fully in tune, but his unique, intimate tone and his
fertile musical imagination outweighed his technical
shortcomings. By the early 1950s Davis had turned his
limitations into considerable assets. Rather than emulate
the busy, wailing style of such bebop pioneers as Gillespie,
Davis explored the trumpet's middle register,
experimenting with harmonies and rhythms and varying
the phrasing of his improvisations. With the occasional
exception of multinote flurries, his melodic style was direct
and unornamented, based on quarter notes and rich with
inflections. The deliberation, pacing, and lyricism in his
improvisations are striking.
Miles (late 1940s)
• In the summer of 1948, Davis formed a nonet that included
the renowned jazz artists Gerry Mulligan, J.J. Johnson,
Kenny Clarke, and Lee Konitz, as well as players on French
horn and tuba, instruments rarely heard in a jazz context.
Mulligan, Gil Evans, and pianist John Lewis did most of the
band's arrangements, which juxtaposed the flexible,
improvisatory nature of bebop with a thickly textured
orchestral sound. The group was short-lived but during its
brief history recorded a dozen tracks that were originally
released as singles (1949–50). These recordings changed
the course of modern jazz and paved the way for the West
Coast styles of the 1950s. The tracks were later collected in
the album Birth of the Cool (1957).
Miles (1950s)
•
During the early 1950s Davis struggled with a drug addiction that affected his
playing, yet he still managed to record albums that rank among his best, including
several with such jazz notables as Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, and Thelonious
Monk. In 1954, having overcome the addiction, Davis embarked on a two-decade
period during which he was considered the most innovative musician in jazz. He
formed classic small groups in the 1950s that featured saxophone legends John
Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, pianists Red Garland and Bill Evans, bassist Paul
Chambers, and drummers “Philly” Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb. Davis's albums
recorded during this era, including 'Round About Midnight (1956), Workin' (1956),
Steamin' (1956), Relaxin' (1956), and Milestones (1958), affected the work of
numerous other artists. He capped this period of his career with Kind of Blue
(1959), perhaps the most celebrated album in the history of jazz. A mellow, relaxed
collection, the album includes the finest recorded examples of modal jazz, a style
in which improvisations are based upon sparse chords and nonstandard scales
rather than on complex, frequently changing chords. The modal style lends itself to
solos that are focused on melody; this accessible quality ensured Kind of Blue's
popularity with jazz fans.
Miles and Gil Evans
• Released concurrently with the small-group
recordings, Davis's albums with pieces arranged
and conducted by Gil Evans— Miles Ahead
(1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of
Spain (1960)—were also monuments of the
genre. The Davis-Evans collaborations were
marked by complex arrangements, a near-equal
emphasis on orchestra and soloist, and some of
Davis's most soulful and emotionally powerful
playing. Davis and Evans occasionally
collaborated in later years, but never again so
memorably as on these three masterful albums.
Miles (Free Jazz and Fusion)
• The early 1960s were transitional, less-innovative years for Davis, although
his music and his playing remained top-calibre. He began forming another
soon-to-be-classic small group in late 1962 with bassist Ron Carter, pianist
Herbie Hancock, and teenage drummer Tony Williams; tenor saxophonist
Wayne Shorter joined the lineup in 1964. Davis's new quintet was
characterized by a light, free sound and a repertoire that extended from
the blues to avant-garde and free jazz. Compared with the innovations of
other modern jazz groups of the 1960s, the Davis quintet's
experimentations in polyrhythm and polytonality were more subtle but
equally daring. Live at the Plugged Nickel (1965), E.S.P. (1965), Miles Smiles
(1966), and Nefertiti (1967) were among the quintet's timeless, influential
recordings. About the time of Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro
(both 1968), Davis began experimenting with electronic instruments. With
other musicians, including keyboardists Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul and
guitarist John McLaughlin, Davis cut In a Silent Way (1969), regarded as
the seminal album of the jazz fusion movement. It was considered by
purists to be Davis's last true jazz album.
Miles (fusion)
• Davis won new fans and alienated old ones with
the release of Bitches Brew (1969), an album on
which he fully embraced the rhythms, electronic
instrumentation, and studio effects of rock music.
A cacophonous kaleidoscope of layered sounds,
rhythms, and textures, the album's influence was
heard in such 1970s fusion groups as Weather
Report and Chick Corea's Return to Forever. Davis
continued in this style for a few years, with the
album Live-Evil (1970) and the film sound track A
Tribute to Jack Johnson (1970) being particular
highlights.
Miles (Later Years)
• Davis was injured in an auto accident in 1972, curtailing his activities, then
retired from 1975 through 1980. When he returned to public notice with
The Man with the Horn (1981), critics felt that Davis's erratic playing
showed the effects of his five-year layoff, but he steadily regained his
powers during the next few years. He dabbled in a variety of musical styles
throughout the 1980s, concentrating mostly on jazz-rock dance music, but
there were also notable experiments in other styles, such as a return to his
blues roots ( Star People, 1982) and a set of Gil Evans-influenced
orchestral numbers ( Music from Siesta, 1987). Davis won several Grammy
Awards during this period for such albums as We Want Miles (1982), Tutu
(1986), and Aura (1989). One of the most-memorable events of Davis's
later years occurred at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991, when he joined
with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones to perform some of the
classic Gil Evans arrangements of the late 1950s. Davis died less than three
months later. His final album, Doo-Bop (1992), was released
posthumously.
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
• Coltrane's first musical influence was his father, a tailor
and part-time musician. John studied clarinet and alto
saxophone as a youth and then moved to Philadelphia
in 1943 and continued his studies at the Ornstein
School of Music and the Granoff Studios. He was
drafted into the navy in 1945 and played alto sax with a
navy band until 1946; he switched to tenor saxophone
in 1947. During the late 1940s and early '50s, he played
in nightclubs and on recordings with such musicians as
Eddie (“Cleanhead”) Vinson, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic,
and Johnny Hodges. Coltrane's first recorded solo can
be heard on Gillespie's “We Love to Boogie” (1951).
Coltrane
• Coltrane came to prominence when he joined
Miles Davis's quintet in 1955. His abuse of
drugs and alcohol during this period led to
unreliability, and Davis fired him in early 1957.
He embarked on a six-month stint with
Thelonious Monk and began to make
recordings under his own name; each
undertaking demonstrated a newfound level
of technical discipline, as well as increased
harmonic and rhythmic sophistication.
Coltrane
• During this period Coltrane developed what came to be
known as his “sheets of sound” approach to improvisation,
as described by poet LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka): “The
notes that Trane was playing in the solo became more than
just one note following another. The notes came so fast,
and with so many overtones and undertones, that they had
the effect of a piano player striking chords rapidly but
somehow articulating separately each note in the chord,
and its vibrating subtones.” Or, as Coltrane himself said, “I
start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions
at once.” The cascade of notes during his powerful solos
showed his infatuation with chord progressions,
culminating in the virtuoso performance of “Giant Steps”
(1959).
Coltrane
• Coltrane's tone on the tenor sax was huge and dark, with clear
definition and full body, even in the highest and lowest registers.
His vigorous, intense style was original, but traces of his idols
Johnny Hodges and Lester Young can be discerned in his legato
phrasing and portamento (or, in jazz vernacular, “smearing,” in
which the instrument glides from note to note with no discernible
breaks). From Monk he learned the technique of multiphonics, by
which a reed player can produce multiple tones simultaneously by
using a relaxed embouchure (i.e., position of the lips, tongue, and
teeth), varied pressure, and special fingerings. In the late 1950s,
Coltrane used multiphonics for simple harmony effects (as on his
1959 recording of “Harmonique”); in the 1960s, he employed the
technique more frequently, in passionate, screeching musical
passages.
Coltrane
• Coltrane returned to Davis's group in 1958,
contributing to the “modal phase” albums
Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959),
both considered essential examples of 1950s
modern jazz. (Davis at this point was
experimenting with modes—i.e., scale
patterns other than major and minor.) His
work on these recordings was always
proficient and often brilliant, though relatively
subdued and cautious.
Coltrane
•
•
•
Coltrane returned to Davis's group in 1958, contributing to the “modal phase” albums Milestones
(1958) and Kind of Blue (1959), both considered essential examples of 1950s modern jazz. (Davis at
this point was experimenting with modes—i.e., scale patterns other than major and minor.) His
work on these recordings was always proficient and often brilliant, though relatively subdued and
cautious.
After ending his association with Davis in 1960, Coltrane formed his own acclaimed quartet,
featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones. At this time
Coltrane began playing soprano saxophone in addition to tenor. Throughout the early 1960s
Coltrane focused on mode-based improvisation in which solos were played atop one- or two-note
accompanying figures that were repeated for extended periods of time (typified in his recordings of
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's “My Favorite Things”). At the same time, his study of the
musics of India and Africa affected his approach to the soprano sax. These influences, combined
with a unique interplay with the drums and the steady vamping of the piano and bass, made the
Coltrane quartet one of the most noteworthy jazz groups of the 1960s. Coltrane's wife, Alice (also a
jazz musician and composer), played the piano in his band during the last years of his life.
During the short period between 1965 and his death in 1967, Coltrane's work expanded into a free,
collective (simultaneous) improvisation based on prearranged scales. It was the most radical period
of his career, and his avant-garde experiments divided critics and audiences.
Coltrane
• Coltrane's best-known work spanned a period of only 12 years (1955–67),
but, because he recorded prolifically, his musical development is welldocumented. His somewhat tentative, relatively melodic early style can be
heard on the Davis-led albums recorded for the Prestige and Columbia
labels during 1955 and '56. Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane (1957)
reveals Coltrane's growth in terms of technique and harmonic sense, an
evolution further chronicled on Davis's albums Milestones and Kind of
Blue. Most of Coltrane's early solo albums are of a high quality, particularly
Blue Train (1957), perhaps the best recorded example of his early hard
bop style ( bebop). Recordings from the end of the decade, such as Giant
Steps (1959) and My Favorite Things (1960), offer dramatic evidence of his
developing virtuosity. Nearly all of the many albums Coltrane recorded
during the early 1960s rank as classics; A Love Supreme (1964), a deeply
personal album reflecting his religious commitment, is regarded as
especially fine work. His final forays into avant-garde and free jazz are
represented by Ascension and Meditations (both 1965), as well as several
albums released posthumously.