THE MUSIC OF MILES DAVIS 1

The Music of Miles Davis

(Subtitle, if any)

(Name)

(University)
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In so many ways, the history of jazz is the history of the triumph of man over

adversity, more particularly, the black man’s/woman’s triumph over adversity. It is a triumph

and adversity that no rock star can ever think they can endure.1 One of those black men who

definitely overcame such adversity was Mile Davis.

Born in Alton, Illinois on May 26, 1926, Miles Dewey Davis moved to New York City

to study music on September 1944 at the Juilliard School of Music. The jazz clubs of Harlem

and the famous 52nd Street won over the academic studies and Davis dropped out of the

school after one year.2 Miles Davis joined Charlie Parker’s band in 1945, performing and

recording with that group until December 1948. Davis made the first recording under his own

name in August 1947.3 Before leaving Parker, he had met arranger Gil Evans, who would

become his close associate in the years to come. Davis and Evans assembled a nonet in the

autumn of 1947. They recorded a landmark album, Birth of the Cool, that would establish the

new genre of cool jazz. Noteworthy is that Davis’s lineups, starting with this nonet, were

often racially mixed and featured white, as well as subsequently South American, Indian and

Asian, musicians.

For his part, Davis was fully aware of the importance of the project, which he pursued

to the point of turning down a job with Duke Ellington's orchestra.4 The importance of the

nonet experience would become clear to critics and the larger public only in later years, but,

at least commercially, the nonet was not a success. The liner notes of the first recordings of

the Davis Quintet for Columbia Records call it one of the most spectacular failures of the jazz

club scene. This was bitterly noted by Davis, who claimed the invention of the cool style and

resented the success that was later enjoyed—in large part because of the media's attention—

1
DeVeaux, S. & Giddins, G. (2009). Jazz (College Ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
2
Tingen 2001, 83
3
Miles Davis All Stars (Savoy S5J 5500)
4
Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1989, ISBN 0671635042.
 THE MUSIC OF MILES DAVIS 3

by white "cool jazz" musicians (Mulligan and Dave Brubeck in particular). This experience

also marked the beginning of the lifelong friendship between Davis and Gil Evans, an

alliance that would bear important results in the years to follow.

Davis continued to work on his own throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, leading

bands and recording with small groups that featured the top jazz musicians of that time: His

recordings of 1956 – Relaxin’, Cookin’, Steamin’ and Workin’ – with a quintet featuring John

Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and “Philly” Joe Jones – constituted an archetype for

the hard bop style of the late 1950s. This group is often referred to as the first great quintet of

Miles Davis.

Davis’s collaboration with arranger Gil Evans continued with the making of the album

Miles Ahead in 1957. Here Davis was a featured soloist backed by a 19–piece orchestra.

Included among the jazz compositions was a classical piece, “The Maids of Cadiz,” by Leo

Delibes. Evans arranged it for trumpet and jazz orchestra. The next collaboration between

Davis and Evans also fused elements of classical music and jazz on the album Sketches of

Spain, which featured the “Adagio” movement from Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar concerto

Concierto de Aranjuez. Their next production was the album Porgy and Bess, an instrumental

version of George Gershwin’s opera. Davis’s album Milestones, released in 1958, anticipated

a new harmonic direction for jazz: modal jazz. In modal jazz the harmonic content is

characterized by use of modes instead of the tonal chord progressions found in earlier jazz

styles. The fairly sparse harmonic rhythms usually found in modal jazz pieces allow the

soloist to stay within one mode over an extended period. Developed by Miles Davis and

John Coltrane in the late 1950s, modal jazz can be considered a counter–reaction to the

frequently changing harmonic progressions that were first created by bebop musicians and

later taken to the limits of human capacity by John Coltrane in pieces such as “Giant Steps”.
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On the bridge of the title track Davis introduced the use of an extended modal texture,

as opposed to a conventional tonal cadence, as the harmonic basis for improvisation. His next

album, Kind of Blue (1959), became the archetype of modal jazz. On the piece, “Blue In

Green,” the harmonic rhythm was augmented and diminished during the performance. On

“Flamenco Sketches” the soloists cued each harmonic change. Davis would develop these

performance techniques further during his jazz–rock period. These albums also featured tonal

and functional harmonies.

In 1951, Davis met Bob Weinstock, the owner of Prestige Records, and signed a

contract with the label. Between 1951 and 1954, he released many records on Prestige, with

several different combos. The most important Prestige recordings of this period was Dig,

Blue Haze, Bags' Groove, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, and Walkin'. Also of

importance are his five Blue Note recordings, collected in the Miles Davis Volume 1 album.

With these recordings, Davis assumed a central position in what is known as hard bop.

In contrast with bebop, hard bop used slower tempos and a less radical approach to harmony

and melody, often adopting popular tunes and standards from the American songbook as

starting points for improvisation. Hard bop also distanced itself from cool jazz by virtue of a

harder beat and by its constant reference to the blues, both in its traditional form and in the

form made popular by rhythm and blues. A few critics 5go as far as to call Walkin' the album

that created hard bop, but the point is debatable, given the number of musicians who were

working along similar lines at the same time (and of course many of them recorded or played

with Davis).

Also in this period Davis gained a reputation for being distant, cold, and withdrawn

and for having a quick temper. Among the several factors that contributed to this reputation

5
Ashley Kahn Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece.
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were his contempt for the critics and specialized press and some well-publicized

confrontations with the public and with fellow musicians.

The "nocturnal" quality of Davis' playing and his somber reputation, along with his

whispering voice,[17] earned him the lasting moniker of "prince of darkness", adding a patina

of mystery to his public persona.[18]

In this chapter I will briefly outline the main changes in Davis’s music that took place

between the years 1967 and 1969. Before 1967 Davis had cautiously experimented with

different ways to break away from the traditional conventions of jazz by the use of pedal

points, melodic ostinatos, bass ostinatos, “time-no-changes,” variations of forms during

performance and even–eighth rhythms. “Time-no-changes” or “free bop” is rhythmic

communication with musical phrases. It differs from completely free improvisation in that the

rhythmic motion – the tempo – of the music is maintained, while the harmonic content and

form are not preplanned. The pieces’ thematic material (intervals, melodic and rhythmic

motifs) is often used as the basis for improvisations.

The recording of “Circle In The Round” in December 1967 introduced many of the

essential non–jazz elements used by Davis from early 1968 onwards. Until then, most of the

elements in Davis’s music had relied primarily on the jazz tradition. Harmonically, the use of

pedal point and bass ostinatos became the only reference points for a tonal center. Repetitive

ostinatos in the bass were combined with repetitive melodic riffs and phrases.

This multi–level repetition created form through rhythmic cycles. Chord progressions

were gradually eliminated. Consequently the melodic–harmonic tension relied on the players’

abilities to improvise over the pedal point and against each other. It was now up to the players

to adjust the level and duration of tension by improvising lines and chord progressions that

would resolve to the tonic of the pedal point.

The rhythm section gradually became the center of the music. Because the pieces

contained no pre–established harmonic progressions, the forward motion of the music relied

largely on the players’ interaction within the repetitive grooves (A term referring to the

rhythmic concept of a composition or performance formed by different rhythmic layers. It is

also used as synonym for “swing” to describe a feeling of dancability achieved by a player or

players within a musical performance). These grooves were modeled after the rock and soul

music of the day and were often rhythmically based on even eighth–note phrasing instead of

the triplet phrasing customary in jazz. The creation of rhythmic tensions and releases over a

relatively static backdrop was an essential element of this improvisational style.

The repetition of melodic motifs – using them as ostinatos – reversed the traditional

roles of soloist and accompanist. This contributed to the emancipation of the rhythm section

and promoted its equality within the ensemble. The pieces’ forms were often created on the

spot, whether in the studio or on stage. The recording studio became Davis’s musical

laboratory. It was no longer only a place to document musical achievements; it became a

place to manipulate the recording process itself. Postproduction editing became an important

part of the compositional process. At this stage, postproduction was limited to cutting and

pasting the tape and adding electronic effects to the music; overdubbing was not yet a

common practice during this period. On stage, the musical forms were shaped through use of

predetermined “coded” phrases that propelled the music forward.

The instrumentation evolved from traditional acoustic instruments to the amplified

instruments associated with rock music. The number of instruments also grew increasingly to

the point where two rhythm sections were present simultaneously with three keyboards and

several wind instrument soloists. Before the end of the decade, Indian and South American

instruments were added as coloristic elements into this dense musical texture. Davis began to
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use certain of these instruments for purely coloristic purposes, without any significant

melodic, harmonic or rhythmic function.

Completely free episodes were juxtaposed against more arranged musical sections. Of

all the prewritten material, Davis used only the sections he believed were essential for his

musical concept and eliminated everything else, a practice that occasionally created an

illusion of unpreparedness among the jazz critics of that period. Much of the music recorded

was never included on the albums released at that time. It is worth noting that it was primarily

the composed musical sections that were cut from the releases; the original albums

concentrated primarily on the improvised portions of the music. A consequence of this

practice was that the prewritten parts’ function was to establish a mood. Once Davis achieved

the mood, it was the improvising that followed – the essence of jazz – that mattered and was

what he retained. Much of the previously unavailable material has been subsequently

released, shedding new light on the subject. Because Davis’s recording companies still

possess substantial amounts of unreleased material, it is likely that further “undiscovered”

sessions will be released in the future.

References
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Ashley Kahn Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece.

DeVeaux, S. & Giddins, G. (2009). Jazz (College Ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Miles Davis All Stars, Savoy S5J 5500, 1947

Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1989,

ISBN 0671635042.

Tingen, Paul (2001), Miles Beyond – The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967–1991,

New York. Billboard Books.