The birthday of cool
Miles Davis was born 100 years ago this week and his influence is still being heard, says Marcus Brigstocke
Benjamin Wachenje
- Graeme Thompson
Jazz Family Trees is on Monday at 9pm on Jazz FM. Add it to your collection
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The centenary of Miles Davis’s birth on 26 May is an opportunity to celebrate one of the most influential musicians of all time, with blanket programming scheduled across not only Jazz FM, but Radio 3 and 4 as well as online station One Jazz. And when comedian Marcus Brigstocke presents a special edition of his Jazz Family Trees show on Jazz FM dedicated to the musician, its branches will spread over the entire landscape of music.
Dubbed the “Picasso of Jazz”, between the 1940s and his death in 1991 trumpeter, bandleader and composer Davis was at the forefront of innovations in bebop, “cool” jazz, hard bop and jazz-rock fusion, working with everyone from Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock to Scritti Politti and Prince.
“He changed the course of music at least three times,” says Brigstocke, who first encountered Davis through a love of hip-hop. “A friend gave me Doo-Bop, the record Miles made with [hip-hop producer] Easy Mo Bee when he was dying. I thought, ‘This is really cool.’ I knew that jazz had played a part in the sample base for so much hip-hop, but that album made me understand it better. It took a while, though. I liked to tell people that I loved jazz for about 10 years while, on my own, never actually choosing to listen to any jazz music.”
Marcus Brigstocke. Getty
Nowadays, he says, jazz is the mainstay of what is played chez Brigstocke. “My poor family! Especially as I get older, I like things that you can immerse yourself in. Among the other things I do, I’m an international cheese judge. You can really immerse yourself in the world of cheese, and jazz is definitely like that, too. On the back of all of those 1950s and 60s albums, each one had an essay that was a love letter to the artist and really nerdy stuff on the track selection. That’s juicy for me.”
His ultimate Davis track is the version of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s show tune It Never Entered My Mind – “When that comes on, I can’t do anything else. It’s just absolutely breathtaking” – while his favourite album is the 1959 masterpiece, Kind of Blue. “I’m sure the Miles Davis connoisseurs would avoid choosing Kind of Blue, but there’s a reason why it has sold outside of the jazz genre, and why it continues to sell millions of copies. It’s just a piece of perfection. I’ve never once put it on and lost interest. There’s always something in it.”
Davis was not an easy man. He was physically abusive to women and a heavy drug user for parts of his life. He and many other jazz greats also endured an enormous amount of racial prejudice. “There was the night in 1959 when Miles was standing under his own name in lights outside the Birdland club in New York,” says Brigstocke. “He was between sets having a cigarette and was beaten unconscious by a racist cop. It’s a bleak story, sadly, but it does make some sense of where that rage came from, and also the dysfunction of so many of these players.”
Miles Davis changed the course of music at least three times
As arguably the most influential jazz musician of them all, Davis’s legacy remains potent, both inside and outside of the genre. “Miles established something that jazz has hung on to, to this day,” says Brigstocke. “If you look at Ezra Collective, their whole thing is about mentoring younger, newer people, and Miles was absolutely instrumental in doing that. And he never stood still. I’m always interested in any artist who pushes themselves and says, ‘Look, it’s not up to me to give the audience what they come looking for every time.’ Bowie did it later, but I’m sure the understanding of that as an artistic practice comes from Miles Davis.”
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Beyond music, according to Brigstocke, Davis’s influence also had an impact on fashion – “What an extraordinary looking, beautifully turned out man” – and at least one British comedian. “There’s a famous Miles quote that goes, and I’m paraphrasing: ‘There’s no such thing as a wrong note. It’s what you play next that counts.’ I use that in comedy. When I’m writing something, I think, no, there isn’t anything you can’t attempt. You’ve just got to keep working at it and see whether there’s something you do afterwards so that it makes sense. And that comes from Miles.”
Authors
Graeme Thompson
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