What I didn’t know when I first heard “Bags Groove” was that in the fall of 1953, just before recording it, Miles had kicked heroin. I knew about his drug habit from my cousin Marvin and I had even thought it had a positive effect on his playing and was one of the reasons he seemed so cool. I wasn’t alone in this opinion. In the early 1950s, many hipsters thought that using heroin was very cool. At that time, heroin was just beginning to work its devastating way into urban communities all over the United States. It wasn’t moving only into black communities then. In New York it was moving into the Lower East Side (Jewish and Polish and Russian populations) and the Upper West Side (Irish and Puerto Rican populations). In Chicago, in the fifties, a lot of the junkies were Polish and Slovakian. It was really more of an urban poverty issue than a racial one—unlike the crack epidemic of the 1980s, in which cocaine and crack use did split along racial lines.
The reasons I never got involved with heroin were that I was an athlete and that my cousin Marvin, a junkie himself, advised against it. So, because I respected Marvin and trusted his advice, I never shot up or even sniffed it. Still, deep down, I continued to think that the people using heroin were the hippest people I knew. They were so “clean”—well-dressed—and had such hip, laid-back attitudes. But I didn’t know that before Miles recorded “Bags Groove,” he had secretly gone to his father’s farm in Millstadt, Illinois, to kick his habit. That’s why he played so great, because he was drug-free, really clean.
a case of hero worship
After I fell in love with “Bags Groove” I redoubled my efforts to find out everything I could about “The Prince of Darkness.” I began reading all the magazine articles I could find about Miles. I discovered how he dressed—all decked out in elegant clothes and expensive Italian shoes. I checked out his aloof, disdainful but always—to me—cool attitude. From conversations with older black men who had known him in St. Louis, I discovered how he spoke and behaved, and, after absorbing all of this information about him, my own style soon changed. The way I spoke, stood, walked, and dressed changed. Even the way I “hit on” girls changed so my style would be more in line with the way I imagined my hero did things.
Although I wasn’t into Bird’s music as much as I was into Miles’, because of my love for Miles, I paid attention to the news of Charlie Parker’s death in March of 1955. Today, I love Bird’s music but, perhaps because I grew up with him, I still prefer Miles.
After I first saw Miles play live, as far as I was concerned, he could do no wrong musically or socially. I had had black sports heroes previously, but Miles was my first black hero beyond the world of sports. His music and the way he presented himself to the world opened up the possibility that I would be able to do anything I could imagine myself doing. His music and his example made me feel special. Free. Able to utilize my own imagination.
Later I would come to know that Miles had had the same effect on the lives of many other people from all over the world. In fact, when I was working on his book with him, I discovered there was a group of men and women of all ages and races who followed him around the world attending his concerts, just to hear how differently he would play at each one. I came across them comparing notes at a concert on Long Island. They knew who I was. They knew he had chosen me to pen his life story because they knew everything there was to know about the man, and they looked up to me because I was the Chosen One. Told me so. I was completely astonished to discover these people, as was Miles, who had known nothing about them because they knew enough about him to keep their respectful distance.
the first quintet
By the time I graduated from high school and went on to Grambling College in Louisiana, Miles’ music had changed. The music he and his first “great quintet” created from 1956 to 1960 became some of the most influential small group jazz ever played. John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Garland were the personnel. I remember waiting impatiently for every record the group released. And whenever a new record came out, if it was during summer or a holiday break, I would make a beeline over to Percy Campbell’s house, on Labadie in St. Louis, to listen to it. Of all my friends, Percy (now dead, having been stabbed in Oakland in the 1970s) had the best sound system and record collection. Workin’, Steamin’, Relaxin’, Cookin’: the albums the quintet released became the musical badges of hipness my friends and I proudly displayed in our conversations. The way we saw it was, if you weren’t into Miles and Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Bird, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, you weren’t into anything.
By the time Miles released Round Midnight in 1956, he had added the great alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley to the band. This expansion of the group into a sextet led Miles down even greater musical roads, which fact became evident when he released Milestones in 1958. In December of 1958, I caught the sextet live at the Sutherland Lounge in Chicago; it was my second time hearing Miles live, and, like the first time, it proved memorable.
I was home from college on Christmas break and some friends and I drove to Chicago to hear them. I had a ton of fun in Chicago, and the Sutherland Lounge was a much hipper place to listen to music than Peacock Alley had been. It was bigger, the acoustics were better, and it seemed as if the audience paid more attention. I got into the club with a false draft card again, only this time it was easier, probably because my friends and I were older. We were flat-out “clean,” with the attitudes to match our hip clothes; aloof, disdainful, and too arrogant for words. We didn’t have much money—just enough to get in, buy a few soft drinks, and pay for gas for the trip back home—but we were imitating Miles and that got us over. The music the band played that night was glorious. It was so good it was transcendent.
Of course, Miles’ music had changed since the first time I heard him live. He was moving full speed ahead into his modal period, and everyone was really beginning to stretch out, taking long solos. Coltrane was something else that night. He yelped and howled and blew so furiously it seemed as though his life depended on every note. He was just beginning to get into the style that would later become known as “sheets of sound.” Cannonball was something else, too, tearing off solos that flew like birds. But it was Miles himself who was the spark, the catalyst that ignited, sparked, and drove everyone else that night. The way I remember him playing that evening, his trumpet seemed to soar above the other instruments like a golden eagle, lyrical, probing, and driving everyone to play beyond themselves. He burned through his solos in that now famous “running” style that he had perfected. Then he switched to the mute on the ballads, tonguing the notes like a passionate lover kissing his woman. He was on top of his instrument. He knew it inside and out, knew what to play and when and where to play it. His mind was sharp and free of drugs, his dress was sartorial splendor. Yes, he was “The Man.” I tell you he was something else again, and I left the Sutherland Lounge that night completely blown away.
Album after stunning album was released during this great period from 1956 to 1960, one of the most fertile periods any American musician has ever known. And I listened attentively to them all. Sometime during these years, Miles’ legendary hipness merged with his great music and turned him into an almost mythical figure. In 1958 alone, Milestones, Miles and Monk at Newport, Jazz Track, and Porgy and Bess were released. And the next year, perhaps the most celebrated jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue, was released. That album would make the already world-famous trumpet player a legend and become the most talked-about and influential record of its time.
kind of blue
Like Bags Groove, the album Kind of Blue changed the way I listened to music. This was the third time that Miles taught me how to open my ears. After hearing this album, I found that I needed a sense of openness and open-endedness in the music I listened to. I learned to need space within the structure of the composition. I needed surprise, too, rather than the rigid, tightly wrapped sameness that seemed to be typical of a lot of other musicians. After hearing Kind of Blue, I began to acc
ept and understand the idea that a great artist works in many different forms and styles, always searching, always challenging the status quo. That’s what I, and many others, began looking to Miles for, this notion of change. We began to understand that it is alright to move away from the familiar and to evolve into something different. We learned that venturing into the unknown could produce something special, as indeed Miles proved with Kind of Blue.
I always had loved Miles’ tone and his licks. Now, I also expected him to show me something different every time I heard him, to lead me down a different musical path—preferably one that I knew nothing about. This notion was exhilarating—positively revelatory. It brought me closer to understanding the concept of what freedom for a young black man could be. On Kind of Blue, Miles once again led me to a place within myself that would teach me something about who I was, about what I thought greatness in music, art, sports, any endeavor could be. Kind of Blue became a barometer, as “Donna” and “Bags Groove” had been before it. Miles was my barometer, and no one else came close, not even my father.
Miles’ music and his attitude were beginning to affect how I chose to live in the world. I was starting to choose flexibility over rigidity as a must—as an essential value. When I considered all the different races, religions, subcultures, and social and political philosophies we have in this country, it began to seem imperative that we learn to respect our differences. It seemed to me then—and today seems even more so—that believing in “this and that” wins hands down over “this or that,” which was then and still is the prevailing philosophy—whites or blacks, classical music or jazz. I was beginning to understand that we could love it all. The improvisations of jazz along with the fixed, unyielding notation of classical music. Because in the modern world one has to be ready for anything, to have the ability to switch up when confronted with the constantly new situations that a multicultural society presents.
It was Miles Davis and his music, his ever-expanding approach to and embrace of many different styles, that taught me to see the importance of inclusiveness rather than separation. Later, other artists would stretch my inclusive vision even further: Pablo Picasso, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Aime Césaire, and Derek Walcott, to name a few. But Miles Davis remains the most important model for me, because he was the first to demonstrate that it was alright to court change and strive to be different, that you could constantly reinvent your art and do it artfully, with grace, with the possibility of greatness and integrity. Flexibility, not rigidity: Miles was “The Man” who showed the way for millions like me all over the world.
the “bust”
After hearing Kind of Blue in 1959, I began to crave change. I didn’t know exactly what I was seeking but I did know I wanted and needed change. I knew it was out there, because Miles Davis was out there, playing and living it. So I knew it was possible. By 1959, my friends and I were wearing shades all the time like Miles and the other hipsters. We walked the way we thought he walked, we spoke to women the way we imagined he spoke to them, we stood and dressed just like he did. He was our main man. And in our young minds we were just like him.
So in the autumn of 1959 when word came down to us about Miles’ run-in with a white policeman outside of Birdland, in New York, we were, to put it mildly, distressed. This incident made him into more than just a musical hero to us. Because of it he became a social and political icon, one who would help usher us into the riotous, tumultuous 1960s.
According to the news reports, the incident began innocently enough, with Miles walking his friend, the famous white newspaper gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, out of the club to get a cab. Out on the street, Miles encountered a white policeman, who asked him to “move on.” Miles refused on the grounds that he wasn’t loitering as the policeman had accused him of doing, pointing to his name on the display board outside Birdland’s entrance to prove it. The cop wouldn’t listen to him and a struggle followed, with Miles getting hit on the head by a second policeman, who had been watching in the shadows. After beating and subduing him, they took Miles to Rikers Island, where he spent the night in jail.
It seems like we knew all of this even before the picture of a bloodied Miles walking out of the jailhouse hit the newsstand. In the photograph, his beautiful, stylish first wife, the black dancer Frances Taylor, was draped over his arm. Miles had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and blood spattered his expensive Italian sports jacket. Despite his injuries, Miles still looked unbroken. In fact, he looked positively defiant, his eyes flashing rage. This photo was flashed all around the world, in the pages of newspapers everywhere. Naturally, it caused outrage among many of his fans, including me.
This photo and the fact that he had defended himself and seemed willing to fight to the death for his rights only increased my respect and admiration for “The Man.” After all, this was just before the beginning of the civil rights movement, and respect as equal citizens was what most black people would soon be fighting for. With that incident, Miles vaulted into the political arena of civil rights. (What timing he always had!)
sketches of spain
In 1960, Sketches of Spain was released to universal critical acclaim. Gil Evans, Miles’ best friend, served as arranger, making this their third album together. Perhaps because of its strong classical European overtones, the critics loved it almost immediately. On the other hand, my friends and I in St. Louis were baffled when we first heard it because it was such a change and so European in its orientation. Then we fell completely in love with it. Sketches of Spain proved to be the biggest-selling album of Miles’ career until then. (It was later surpassed by Bitches Brew.) Today, it remains the favorite Miles album of millions of people.
Released immediately after Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain surpassed anything Miles possibly could have imagined. It turned him into a sex symbol, someone who was pursued by beautiful women from all over the world. People who weren’t even jazz fans were talking about his impeccable style and taste. Popular magazines like Time ran feature stories about him. He had crossed over from being an idol of black people to being an idol of whites, too.
For a black man in 1960 to achieve this kind of musical success was astonishing. Today, such success can be understood only when compared to the impact that Michael Jackson had twenty-five years later. Miles’ Sketches of Spain was the first real “crossover” moneymaker.
transitions
After finishing college, I joined the army and traveled to France, where I played basketball on American army and French teams. This took me all over Europe—and everywhere I went I found that numbers of people loved Miles Davis, his music, and his style. He was their hero, too. This surprised me, but it only added to my respect for him.
In France I found myself traveling back and forth between Metz, where I was stationed, and Paris, where my girlfriend lived and where I played basketball. It was in France that I began to write poetry, look at art, and associate with others (both French and American) who were considered “bohemian.” I began truly interacting with whites and “intellectuals” for the first time, hanging out until all manner of hours (after the basketball season ended) in dark, smoky clubs in Metz and on the Left Bank of Paris. I became a sponge, absorbing all kinds of artistic and political ideas, and by the time I left Europe in late 1964, I was a changed person.
I returned to the United States at the time of assassinations (John and Robert Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X), incendiary rhetoric, and shoot-outs between black, Latino, and Native American groups and the police and the FBI. These were the violent manifestations of the deep political and cultural changes that were happening then and are still reverberating today. Another aspect of those changes was the growing acceptance of black music and black musicians by white audiences. Rhythm and blues, renamed “rock and roll,” was about to conquer white America.
From the beginning of his career, Miles had wanted to reach a wide, racially diverse musical audience. He alway
s wanted to be cutting edge, but he always wanted to be popular, too. In the early 1960s, his challenge was to accomplish both of these goals without compromising his musical integrity. Sketches of Spain had brought him a huge audience, but more American whites than African Americans were listening to it. After its great success, Miles wanted more than ever to reach black Americans, especially young black Americans.
Grown weary of playing old standards, he wanted to return to music that was closer to the roadhouse funk he had grown up with—but he also wanted a contemporary sound.
Miles set out to create a more accessible music, one that combined jazz with elements of rhythm and blues, African modal music, and rock and roll. That’s just what he eventually did accomplish, but when he achieved his goal he was both celebrated and ridiculed for his efforts by long-time fans and music critics.
He began by listening to the music that was popular with young people: James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone. He also listened to Motown, the African-American label out of Detroit’s inner city, and he was certainly well aware of the company’s phenomenal success. Headed by a black man, Berry Gordy, Motown was releasing all kinds of great “crossover” music, and Americans of all races and ethnicities were listening and dancing to Motown’s megahits.
Miles & Me Page 11