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“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

“During the years I was with Andy Kirk we starved almost. I remember not eating for practically a month several times. But we were very, very happy because the music was so interesting, and you forgot to eat, anyway.”

–Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was born on May 10, 1910, in Atlanta, Georgia, as Mary Elfreda Winn. She never knew her father until she was in her twenties. Her mother drank and worked doing a lot of laundry to support the kids. Her mother also liked to play the reed organ and kept Mary there while she