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Miles Davis: Jazz
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Intense, mysterious and utterly magnificent, the late Miles Davis was one of the legends of jazz, a genius who re-wrote the genre time and time again in his pursuit of an elusive Holy Grail. Recorded between 1988 and 1990, "Live Around The World" shows a legend taking hold of the divine. The results are unforgettable.
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[T]hen suddenly in 1975 Miles Davis retired. He was in bad health and, as he frankly discusses in his autobiography Miles, very much into recreational drugs. The jazz world speculated about what would happen if and when he returned. In 1981 Davis came back with a new band that was similar to his '70s group except that the ensembles were quite a bit sparser.
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After overcoming his heroin addiction, Davis made a series of important recordings for Prestige in 1954, later collected on albums including Bags' Groove, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants and Walkin'. At this time, he started to use the Harmon mute to darken and subdue the timbre of his trumpet. This muted trumpet tone was to be associated with Davis for the rest of his career.
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In 1947 Davis had topped a DownBeat poll and by 1948 he had already played or recorded with many jazz giants, most notably Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Max Roach, George Russell, John Lewis, Illinois Jacquet and Gerry Mulligan. The following year was to be a landmark for jazz; Davis, in collaboration with arranger Gil Evans, whose basement apartment Davis rehearsed in, made a series of 78s for Capitol Records that were eventually released as one long-player in 1954, the highly influential Birth Of The Cool. Davis had now refined his innovative style of playing, which was based upon understatement rather than the hurried action of the great bebop players. Sparse and simple, instead of frantic and complicated, it was becoming "cool". The Birth Of The Cool sessions between January 1949 and March 1950 featured a stellar cast, mostly playing and recording as a nonet, including Lee Konitz (saxophone), Kenny Clarke (drums), Mulligan (baritone saxophone), Kai Winding (trombone), Roach (drums). Davis was on such a creative roll that he could even pass by an invitation to join Duke Ellington!
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July 8, 1991: Miles Davis joins Quincy Davis onstage at the Montreux Jazz Festival for a set that draws extensively from Davis’ early work with arranger Gil Evans. The performance is released as Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux.
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Miles Davis has been called the "Picasso of Jazz," and his 50-year career is the nucleus of jazz history from the late 1940s into the '90s. He was a master of re-invention, continuously changing his recordings and defining jazz for generations to com
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