WICN Artist of the Month, May 2026: Miles Davis

It was the late 1970s, and jazz icon Miles Davis had been invited to attend a musical event at the Carter White House. The trumpeter found himself seated next to the First Lady at a dinner immediately following the concert.

And what had he done to merit such an invitation, the First Lady inquired, apparently trying to engage in polite dinner conversation.

“Well, I’ve changed music five or six times,” Miles said he responded, according to his autobiography. “What have you done, besides being the President’s wife?”

Very blunt, as Miles often was. But also very true. Miles Davis, born 100 years ago this month, on May 26, 1926, did, indeed, change music—jazz, and, on occasion, pop and rock as well—five or six times before his death in 1991.

Davis started to make a name for himself in 1945, while still a teenager, after he left East St. Louis, Illinois, to go to New York City, ostensibly to study at the famed Juilliard School of Music. What he really wanted to do was track down bebop pioneers Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and Dizzy Gillespie so he could hang with and play with them. In November of 1945, Bird chose the teenaged Davis as his trumpeter on several recordings that are still enjoyed—and studied—to this day, including Billie’s Bounce, Now’s the Time, and Thriving on a Riff.

In contrast to Parker’s incendiary, lightning-fast playing, Davis was slower, and cooler—even a bit hesitant, it seemed. But he exhibited some of the qualities that would, within a few years, make him an international star. There was his modern sound—none of the big, wide vibrato that so many trumpeters, especially early jazz and swing players, had brought to their instruments. Miles also had begun to strip the filigree, the note-after-note-after-note quality of early bebop, down to its essence. The ideas, and the extension of the chords (playing 9ths, 11ths, 13ths—not simply the basic chord) that bebop pioneered, were there. But not the abundance of notes.

Cool Jazz, then Hard Bop

Davis’s playing on his sessions with Bird seemed to presage the innovations he would help turn into so-called Cool Jazz just a few years later. In 1949 and 1950, Davis convened a handful of musicians and arrangers and recorded some sides that were later issued under the collective title The Birth of the Cool.

In addition to an almost European sense of harmony and counterpoint and a chamber-music feel to the nine-piece ensemble, the solos and the arrangements on the Birth of the Cool sessions focused on lyricism, space and restraint. It was markedly different than the sometimes frenetic pacing of bebop. And it did, indeed, as the title suggests, help usher in the Cool Jazz movement.

Fast forward a few years, and Davis, after having returned home to the Midwest to kick a heroin habit, was back in New York and at the forefront of the Hard Bop movement. The new style was marked by more emphasis on the blues, on call-and-response lines, and even a little bit of a Gospel music touch. The melody lines, as in Cool Jazz, were often simpler than the original bebop pioneered by Parker, Gillespie and others in the 1950s, but the general bebop language was still in evidence.

Davis’s groups throughout most of the 1950s are generally considered leading Hard Bop ensembles, and they did help set the standard for the style. But they were not the only Hard Bop innovators. Jazz historians give as much or more credit to pianist Horace Silver, and drummer-bandleader Art Blakey, both of whom led their own bands and were involved in iterations of a working ensemble called the Jazz Messengers.

A standout from that period, for Columbia records, is Davis’s 1958 album Milestones, with Miles on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone; Cannonball Adderley, alto saxophone; Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; and Philly Joe Jones, drums.

Davis recorded an acclaimed series of albums for Prestige records at about the same time, most with the same lineup as Milestones, with the titles Walkin,’ Cookin,’ Relaxin,’ Workin,’ and Steamin.’

By this point in his development, two trademark Miles Davis-isms were in evidence. He frequently used a Harmon mute, which gave his playing a softer and more intimate sound. And his sound—with or without Harmon mute—had something in it that made it immediately identifiable as Miles Davis. There was a human quality to it, a poignancy that made you think you were feeling exactly what he was feeling, much as, some say, Frank Sinatra was able to convey when singing a ballad. Deeply emotional without crossing the line into schmaltziness or superficiality.

A Sense of Style: Musical and Otherwise

By the mid-1950s, Davis was known worldwide, perhaps not only because of his considerable musical talent, but also, one senses, because his sense of style and sometimes stormy personality made people take notice. He began driving elegant automobiles, starting with a Mercedes 190 SL, on through Ferraris and Lamborghinis. A compact, good-looking man, he wore made-to-order clothes from the Andover Shop in Harvard Square, Cambridge, and dated and sometimes married beautiful singers and actresses, among them French actress/singer Juliette Greco, Broadway dancer Frances Taylor, and Hollywood star Cicely Tyson. And, as the White House dinner with the Carters a few years later indicates, he wasn’t afraid to be confrontational and controversial. Couple that with his penchant to keep his Manhattan home dark both day and night, and a raspy, gravelly voice, often not louder than a whisper, the result of a botched operation to remove polyps from his larynx in 1955, and Davis began to be called The Prince of Darkness.

Some say one of Davis’s great skills was as a talent scout—that he had an uncanny ability to see the potential in unknown musicians. Others say that his talent lay in mentoring those artists and helping them find their way—that they might well have not become major players were it not for the guidance he gave them. Among those who got major exposure playing with Davis before becoming stars in their own right: saxophonists Coltrane, Adderley, Wayne Shorter, and Dave Liebman, pianists Garland, Evans, Wynton Kelly, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea, drummers Jones, Jimmy Cobb, Tony Williams and Al Foster, and bassists Chambers and Ron Carter.

Kind of Blue

Davis recorded the album Kind of Blue in 1959, and it took the jazz world by storm. In some ways, it was the logical outgrowth of Milestones the year before. The title track on Milestones, also entitled Milestones, was modal. And it set the stage for Kind of Blue, an album heavily based on modes.

Modes are scales. Most Western music is based on harmonic structures, and most of those structures are built on chords – groups of notes, played all at once, that create a sense of tension and resolution. Often, a song will contain chord after chord after chord, sometimes changing from one chord to the next every two or four beats. A song based on a series of modes, or a modal song, usually stays on one mode, or scale, for a while, and then changes to another mode. This creates a consistent mood rather than a strong sense of harmonic movement.

Davis clearly had something out of the ordinary in mind when he convened the band to record Kind of Blue. He wanted to capture the music as jazz was originally meant to be played—spontaneously, improvised, and with a sense of surprise and discovery. Other than collaborating a bit beforehand with his pianist, Bill Evans, the musicians were seeing material that was new to them. They were given skeletal frameworks and little rehearsal, so the recordings capture near-first-time performances shaped in the studio. Kind of Blue consisted of actual takes—no splicing together parts of one take with another take to focus on the best portions of a solo, and no overdubs or punching in of a correct note or a better line. Producer Teo Macero did only light cleanup, trimming false starts and tightening some beginning and endings.

The result is not only Davis’s most well-known recording, but one that a number of critics have called among the best jazz albums ever recorded.

Everyone on the recording was at the top of their form, and the three front-line players each brought a different sensibility to the recording: Coltrane with his cascading series of loping scales, dubbed “sheets of sound” by one critic; and Adderley with his bluesy, sometimes gospel style of bebop soloing, filled with energy and a few so-called “quotes,” or lines from popular songs or famous jazz solos, bringing an air of warmth or humor to the recording. And, finally, there was Miles, with his modern, vibrato-free tone, who, although not as virtuosic as his two saxophonists or his sometimes buttoned-down pianist (Evans), plumbing the emotional depths of a number while at the same time bringing a sort of cool hipness to his trumpet solos.

The reaction to Davis’s playing on Kind of Blue—good, but not up to the level of his more technically accomplished sidemen—is emblematic of the way the world, or at least the world of music critics, sometimes sees Davis.

It’s Not About Technique

But the hallmark of a truly great artist isn’t his or her technical virtuosity, or how innovative their work is. Truly great art makes us feel something—something profound. It cuts deeply into our soul. Somehow, Davis, lacking the blazing technique of some of his collaborators or some of his competitors, had the ability to do that. Eric Nisenson writes about this quality in his book “The Making of Kind of Blue.”

I have a friend who cannot understand why Miles is so admired, why he is considered to be on the highest tier of jazz achievement, when he was obviously not a great [trumpet] virtuoso like Clifford Brown or Dizzy Gillespie. The answer is simple—Miles’s music deeply affects people; he is able to reach a part of us that other musicians, no matter how accomplished their technique, cannot touch.

It is this quality that continues to fuel the sales of Kind of Blue, either as a CD, LP or download, or on streaming platforms, more than 60 years after its release, making it one of the most listened to jazz album of all time.

The Sixties Revolution

In the sixties, Davis changed along with much of the rest of the world, musically and otherwise. He became fascinated with rockers Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, for the work they produced, their lifestyle, and their style of dress. Gone were the Ivy League suits and expensive establishment style, replaced with outsized sunglasses, platform shoes, and bell-bottomed pants. Near the end of the decade, Miles also brought in electric instruments for recordings: Fender Rhodes keyboards for his pianists, and electric bass for his bassists.

He shook things up to an extreme in the summer of 1969, adding a number of new musicians, including an electric guitarist, and adding rock rhythms to the mix in his recording Bitches Brew, which was released in early 1970. Similar to his M.O. for the Kind of Blue sessions, Davis gave the musicians simple sketches for each tune—a chord progression or a pattern, and perhaps what mood he wanted. He asked that they stay within the boundaries of the chordal pattern or the sketch, but other than that, they should feel free to do whatever they wanted. He let the tape recorders run. The result is a double-LP with only one cut under 10 minutes long. The title track ran an entire album side—27 minutes.

Rock ruled the day in 1970, and Davis, by now, was practically a household name, but that didn’t guarantee him a hit record. The album received a mixed response—both critically and commercially, before gaining momentum and become a best-selling, Grammy-award winning record. Like Kind of Blue, it eventually was proclaimed one of jazz’s greatest albums.

Most of Davis’s subsequent recordings and tours involved rock rhythms and electronic instruments. He frequently played an amplified trumpet—with a microphone pickup attached directly to the horn—and often used electronic effects, including a wah-wah pedal.

Some of his more popular albums, post Bitches Brew, include the soundtrack to the movie Jack Johnson, Miles Davis at Fillmore, Black Beauty: Miles Davis at Fillmore West, On the Corner, Get Up With It, Live-Evil, and Tutu.

As he toured and recorded, Davis was plagued with escalating health problems. He broke both his ankles when he crashed his Lamborghini in 1972, he struggled with alcohol and cocaine, and his hip deteriorated to the point where he underwent a hip replacement operation. As his problems piled up, he withdrew from touring and recording from 1975 to 1980.

He emerged from his hiatus in 1980 and resumed touring, but his health problems were not over.

He suffered a stroke in 1982 that temporarily paralyzed his right—playing—hand, and by 1985 he was diagnosed with diabetes, requiring daily injections of insulin. When he checked into a hospital for what were to be a battery of tests in September of 1991, doctors—over the course of several days—urged him to consider a tracheal tube to aid his breathing after repeated flare-ups of bronchial pneumonia. Davis resisted angrily; during the hospitalization, he suffered a massive stroke—an intracerebral hemorrhage—that left him in critical condition and placed on life support. He died on September 28, 1991, after life-sustaining measures were withdrawn.

Miles and Miles

Miles Davis may have passed away almost 35 years ago, but neither he nor his music has faded. So much of Davis’s vast recorded output has a timeless quality. It can still thrill us, and make us feel shivers up and down our spine.

His sense of style, and his image as one of the ultimate purveyors of hipness and modern jazz, is still so pervasive today, that his wistful, spacious, and moody music—and his image—are central to a current television ad for a luxury car: the new all-electric plug-in Lexus RZ.

The commercial, called “Miles and Miles,” features a $50,000 stereo turntable playing his song Blue in Green from the album Kind of Blue, as the voiceover intones, “If it plugs into your wall, and feeds off your electrons, then it owes you something in return. Because the greatest measure of an automobile is how it makes you feel.”

And the greatest measure of Miles Davis’s music, many would say, is the visceral feeling we still get from his music—long after he has left us.