The Miles Davis Reader Downbeat Hall Of Fame

Interviews and features from Downbeat Magazine

This research and information guide provides a wide range of scholarship on the life, career, and musical legacy of Miles Davis, and is compiled for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars in jazz and popular music, musicology, and cultural studies. It serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field.

It was 1969, and Miles Davis, prince of cool, was on the edge of being left behind by a dynamic generation of young musicians, an important handful of whom had been in his band. Rock music was flying off in every direction, just as America itself seemed about to split at its seams. Following the circumscribed grooves and ambiance of In A Silent Way; coming off a tour with a burning new quintet-called 'The Lost Band'-with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette; he went into the studio with musicians like frighteningly talented guitarist John McLaughlin, and soulful Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul. Working with his essential producer, Teo Macero, Miles set a cauldron of ideas loose while the tapes rolled. At the end, there was the newly minted Prince of Darkness, a completely new way forward for jazz and rock, and the endless brilliance and depth of Bitches Brew. Bitches Brew is still one of the most astonishing albums ever made in either jazz or rock. Seeming to fuse the two, it actually does something entirely more revolutionary and open-ended: blending the most avant-garde aspects of Western music with deep grooves, the album rejects both jazz and rock for an entirely different idea of how music can be made.

A bandleader and trumpet player, Miles Davis was one of the twentieth century's greatest musicians. Performing with jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker early in his career, Davis expanded the idea of what jazz could be. His greatest albums redefined the genre, and members of his band, such as Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea, went on to become famous in their own right. Readers will learn that Davis also faced challenges, including rocky romances and a drug addiction he struggled to kick. Through it all, he found comfort in his music, which remains relevant decades after his death.

Includes, beginning Sept. 15, 1954 (and on the 15th of each month, Sept.-May) a special section: School library journal, ISSN 0000-0035, (called Junior libraries, 1954-May 1961). Also issued separately.

The contemporary music magazine.

Interviews, essays, and other documents offer information about the life, work, and contributions of the innovative jazz trumpeter whose career stretched from the 1940s to the 1970s.