‘Music has always been like a curse with me. I’ve always felt driven to play it. It’s the first thing in my life – go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It’s always there. It comes before everything.’
Miles Davis

I recently watched a fine documentary about Miles Davis (‘Birth of the Cool’ by Stanley Nelson Jr).

Davis was a revered jazz trumpeter, a titanic bandleader, a revolutionary composer. He was cool jazz, orchestral jazz, hard bop, post-bop and fusion. He gave us ‘Birth of the Cool’,’’Round About Midnight’ and ‘Kind of Blue;’ ‘Milestones,’ ‘Miles Ahead’ and ‘Miles Smiles.’ He was a restless pioneer, a sensitive soul, a troubled genius.

Let us consider what Davis teaches us about living a wholehearted creative life.

1. ‘Go Where the Action Is’

Miles Davis was born in Alton, Illinois in 1926 and raised in East St. Louis. His family were relatively affluent landowners, his mother a music teacher and his father a dentist. 

Davis received his first trumpet as a gift on his 13th birthday. To escape his feuding parents, he would go out into the woods, listen to the wildlife and play what he was hearing. He began to perform in the school marching band, in talent shows and local ensembles. 

In 1944, Billy Eckstine visited St. Louis with a band that included Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. When a trumpeter fell sick Davis was invited to fill in. 

‘The greatest feeling I ever had in my life – with my clothes on – was when I first met Dizz and Bird. I was 18 years old. I decided right then and there I had to be in New York, on 52nd Street where the action was.’

2. Learn Your Craft

Davis moved to New York and hung out in the jazz joints on 52nd Street. He followed his idol Charlie Parker from club to club, immersing himself in the intense bebop scene. 

At the same time Davis enrolled at the Juilliard School to study classical music theory. Though he was mocked by fellow jazz artists, he was keen to learn his craft.

‘A lot of the old guys thought that if you went to school it would make you play like you were white - if you learned something from theory, you would lose the feeling in your playing. I would go to the library and borrow scores by all these great composers. I wanted to see what was going on in all of music.’

3. ‘If You Want to Keep Creating, You Have to Be About Change.’

Soon Davis was performing and recording with Parker in cities across America. In 1948 he met pianist and arranger Gil Evans with whom he struck up an immediate rapport.

‘We heard sound in the same way.’

They assembled a nine-piece band, the Miles Davis Nonet, which included the French horn and tuba and embraced a textured orchestral sound. Davis was bringing into play both his experiences on 52nd Street and lessons learned at the Juilliard. It was a radical combination.

‘Living is an adventure and a challenge. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe…If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change.’

After signing a contract with Capitol Records, Davis’ Nonet released a series of tracks that were subsequently compiled on the 1957 album ‘Birth of the Cool.’

4. Find Your ‘Illusion of Possibility’

In 1949 Davis was invited to perform at the Paris International Jazz Festival. 

‘This was my first trip out of the country. I loved being in Paris and loved the way I was treated.’

Davis enjoyed the freedom and respect he found in post-war Paris. Moving in creative circles, he socialised with the likes of Sartre and Picasso. He began to appreciate the scale of his own potential as an artist.

‘Paris was where I understood that all white people weren’t the same – that some weren’t prejudiced and others were. It had only been a couple of weeks, but I was living in an illusion of possibility. Maybe a miracle had happened.’

5. Dig Your Way Out of the Holes

Davis’ return to the States was marked by disappointment and depression. He developed a heroin habit, lost his sense of discipline and his career spiralled out of control. He also gained a reputation for being detached and irascible. 

‘I was just cold to mostly everyone. That was the way I protected myself – by not letting anyone inside of my feelings and emotions.’

Davis’ somewhat forbidding presence was enhanced when an operation to remove polyps from his larynx went wrong and left him with a raspy voice for the rest of his life. 

He retreated to his father’s farm for several months to clean up. 

‘I figured there wasn’t nowhere for me to go but up. I was already on the bottom.’

Davis was partially successful, but in the early ‘50s he was in and out of work. He managed to sign a recording contract with Prestige and gradually evolved his style. He took to using a mute, placed close to the microphone, and his phrasing became more spacious and relaxed.

‘Miles had a way of playing that sounded like a stone skipping across a pond. He just touched on the waves.’
Herbie Hancock

In 1955, Davis' fortunes turned when he was invited to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival. 

‘Miles put the bell of his horn right into the microphone and changed the whole of jazz right there - and changed his career right there. Because the beauty of that song, and the beauty of Miles’ trumpet, made bebop a music that could be accepted by everybody.’
George Wein, Promoter

6. Speed Can Be a Creative Ally

After Davis’ performance at Newport, he was snapped up by Columbia Records. But his incumbent contract with Prestige required him to release four more albums.

Davis assembled his band in the studio: Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums and John Coltrane on saxophone. This line-up has been labelled the First Great Quintet. Together they recorded four albums in two one-day sessions. ‘Cookin'’, ‘Relaxin'’, ‘Workin'’ and ‘Steamin'’ are regarded as some of Davis’ best work. Speed can be a creative ally.

7. Allow Space for Spontaneity

In 1957 Davis embarked on a five-album collaboration with Gil Evans. He greatly enjoyed the experimentation: playing a flugelhorn, interpreting classical pieces, employing orchestral arrangements. 

In 1959, he recorded ‘Kind of Blue.’ Rather than turn up to the sessions with a finished score, he built in the opportunity for improvisation.

‘I didn’t write out the music for ’Kind of Blue,’ but brought in sketches - because I wanted a lot of spontaneity in the playing…I knew that if you’ve got some great musicians, they would deal with the situation and play beyond what is there and above what they think they can.’

‘Kind of Blue’ was an instant success and is still the best selling jazz album of all time. 

8. Don’t Be Embarrassed by Success

Davis enjoyed his success. He invested in sharp suits and fast cars. He wore silk scarves, directional sunglasses and an intense look.

‘Being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean, I was all of those things and more. But I was playing the f**k out of my horn and had a great group. So I didn’t get recognition based only on a rebel image.’

When asked how he tallied owning a sports car with parenthood, Davis replied:

‘I tell them to get a taxi.’

9. Know When It’s Time to Break Up the Party

Success didn’t protect Davis from the racism endemic in America at that time. 

Taking a break from a recording session at Birdland in New York, he stepped outside to escort a woman to a taxi. A policeman told him to ‘move on.’ When Davis explained he was working at the club, he was arrested and beaten up. His head wound needed five stitches.

‘That incident changed me forever. Made me much more bitter and cynical than I might have been.’

Despite the success of ‘Kind of Blue’, Coltrane left the band to start his own ensemble, and soon the others followed. Davis recognised that it was time to break up the party and rebuild from scratch.

'In the last years that Trane was with my group, he started playing for himself. When that happens the magic is gone out of a band and people who used to love to play together start not caring anymore. And that’s when a band falls apart…. I had always been looking for new things to play, new challenges for my musical ideas. Now it was time for something different.’

10. If You’re Good Enough, You’re Old Enough

Between 1963 and 1964 Davis put together what became his Second Great Quintet: Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums and Wayne Shorter on saxophone.

Hancock was 23 and Williams was just 17. Davis regarded their youth as an asset. 

‘Creativity and genius in any kind of artistic expression don’t know nothing about age. Either you got it or you don’t. And being old is not going to help you get it.’

11. Set Up a Creative Laboratory

The Second Quintet could play at great speed and embraced elements of free jazz, all five contributing simultaneously as equals. The band was a creative laboratory for ideas.

‘We were looking at every night going into a laboratory. Miles was the head chemist. Our job was to mix these components, these changes, this tempo, to something that explodes safely every night with a bit of danger. And it happened every night.’
Ron Carter

Davis encouraged his musicians to work outside their comfort zone.

'Miles wanted us to live on the stage in front of the people, creating in front of the people. In other words, don’t lean on what you know. What he was looking for is the stuff that you don’t know. Miles even told us, ‘I pay you to practice on the bandstand in front of the people.’’
Herbie Hancock

12. ‘Play As If You Don’t Know How to Play’

'Do not fear mistakes. There are none.' 

One of the fascinating aspects of Davis’ working practice was his special relationship with miscues and missteps. He found merit in mistakes.

‘The note next to the one that you think is bad corrects the one in front.’

Herbie Hancock relates how Davis was completely non-judgemental: he regarded errors as creative opportunities.

‘I played this chord that was so wrong. I had destroyed everything. Miles took a breath and then he made some notes that actually made my chord right. How do you do that? I had judged what I had done. Miles didn’t judge what I did. He heard it and heard it as part of the music - something new that came into the music.’

Davis was a true pioneer who wanted to take his music right to the edge. And beyond.

‘Do you ever get tired of playing music that sounds like music? Do you ever feel like you wanna play as if you don’t know how to play?’

13. Stay Competitive, Stay Ambitious

At the end of the ‘60s Davis was increasingly conscious that the younger generation were into rock, soul, and funk. He became an enthusiast for the work of James Brown, Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix.

‘1969 was the year rock and funk were really selling like hot cakes. People were packing stadiums to hear and see stars in person, and jazz music seemed to be withering on the vine. We played a lot of half-empty clubs in 1969. That told me something.’

In particular Davis was aware of how lucrative the rock business model had become.

‘I started realising that most rock musicians didn’t know anything about music. I figured that if they could do it – reach all those people and sell all those records – without really knowing what they were doing, then I could do it too. Only better.’

Davis threw away his sharp suits and restyled himself for the hippie era. Having expanded his band to include multiple percussion players, sitar and electric bass, he started recording long, dense improvisational fusion pieces. 

‘I told the musicians that they could do anything they wanted, play anything they heard. So that’s what they did.’

For the 1970 double album ‘Bitches Brew’ Davis adopted studio techniques like splicing, distortion, multi-track recording and tape loops. The album went on to sell a million copies.

 ‘I wanted to change course - had to change course - for me to continue to believe in and love what I was playing.’

14. Never Look Back

By the mid ‘70s Davis was suffering repeated health problems. He turned to alcohol and cocaine for support, and became violent and abusive. Artistically drained, he gave up playing and became a recluse.

But by the early ‘80s Davis was back with his horn. He continued to record and perform, collaborating with artists like Prince, appearing on talk shows and in movies, learning to paint. 

As his son Erin observed, he never looked back.

‘Miles never talked about his old records. He didn’t keep them in the house. He didn’t have any of them - not one of them. He didn’t want them in there. He only wanted the stuff he was working on.’

Davis carried on creating until he passed away in 1991. He’d had a five-decade career, lived an extraordinary life and left a phenomenal musical legacy. On his deathbed he observed:

‘When god punishes you, it’s not that you don’t get what you want. It’s that you get everything you want and there’s no time left.’

No. 318