“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
–Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois, on May 25, 1926. There were also two other children, an older sister and a younger brother. In 1928 the family moved to St. Louis, Illinois, where Davis’s father became a successful oral surgeon. At the age of thirteen his father gave him a trumpet and soon Davis joined his high school band. While still in high school he met and was coached by his earliest idol, the great St. Louis trumpeter Clark Terry.
Davis fathered two kids in 1944 in New York, City. He studied classical music then. He also enrolled in a school of music. Then in the early 1950′s he became addicted to heroin. But he soon fought the battle and came back to being successful three years later. In the 1970s Miles found that rock had replaced jazz as the music choice for the younger people, kids, generation. In order not to get left behind he started to perform with an electronic band. The sound was bubbling, dark, and dense, and it further decreased some jazz fans and many critics as well. Davis didn’t end it though. He though that that there are other powers music yet to be discovered.
So in the 1970s and between the 80′s he sure did continue group with electronic players. He played the organ instead of his laid back trumpet. He also began to play with his back to the audience. He loved to experiment being on the stage in front of people just to see how they would respond. How funny Davis with the art. At the end of the 70s things started to foreshadow lots of things and the electronic. Miles died on September 28, 1991, but his music, style, will always continue to influence not only jazz music, but popular culture as well.
Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Davis was noted as “one of the key figures in the history of jazz”. On November 5, 2009, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a famous piece of work (music) in the US House of Representatives to recognize and commemorate the album Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary. The measure also talks about jazz being a national treasure and pressures the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz musis and to never let it go anywhere. It passed with seceral votes of 409–0 on December 15, 2009.
3/5/2010
