And Miles to Go Before We Sleep

Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius

Columnist since 2001

Jeff Fitzgerald is AAJ's resident genius and is often consulted on jazz-related matters of national unimportance.

Recent articles (68 total)

Published: August 16, 2005

“ Modalism is the use of other notes in the traditional major scale as the tonic foundation, creating a different intervalic relationship within the scale which produces intriguing and sometimes dissonant timbres with the notes of the underlying chords. It is considered possibly the most complicated aspect of music theory ever employed to impress women. ”

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Remember back to those halcyon days of February, kids? The world seemed a simpler, rounder place in which to live. Disney-esque choirs of singing cartoon mice heralded even our most mundane daily routines, the air smelled of fresh lilacs, we all walked around in a dreamlike haze where our feet barely touched the ground, and I had not yet given up alcohol for Lent.

Be that as it may.

February was also the month I began the first in my series of in-depth profiles of some of the greatest figures in jazz history. The first in the series was John Coltrane, my personal favorite and one of the seminal figures in all of music in the past fifty years. So it is only natural that the next article should be about Miles Davis, another of my personal favorites and another one of the seminal figures in all of music in the past fifty years. And it is amazing how much easier this column has become since I discovered the cut-and-paste function in Word.

So then.

Miles Dewey Davis (Dewey Decimal System jokes to the left, Dewey Defeats Truman jokes to the right. Huey, Louie, and Dewey jokes free to a good home) was born on May 26, 1926, in Alton, Illinois. His family moved to East St. Louis shortly thereafter, but he eventually caught up with them and by the age of thirteen had forgotten all about it. It was also at this age, he received a professional-grade trumpet as a birthday gift. The Jewish people believe that a boy becomes a man at the age of thirteen, but since Davis was not Jewish, we can be assured that this had absolutely nothing to do with it. The fact that he was playing professionally just a couple of years later is viewed by Rabbinical scholars as being purely coincidental.

However.

Enrolling at Juilliard after high school, he found himself in the center of the jazz world. Rooming with his idol, Charlie Parker, Miles began his real education. Playing the clubs with Bird every night, he began to understand the relationship of individual notes within the chordal structure rather than just the isolated notes of the melody. He also began to understand that jazz musicians were virtually automatic with the ladies, and if he played it cool enough he was pretty much guaranteed some serious leg.

After some time spent largely learning his craft alongside more established musicians, it was time for Miles to step to the forefront as a leader. Though schooled in the breakneck, thrill-a-minute world of Bebop, Miles wanted to take the music in a new direction. During the fabled "Birth of the Cool" sessions, he began experimenting with softer instrumentation and less acrobatic techniques, concentrating on an intimate, almost contemplative melodic solo. He also became the first modern jazz musician to employ a tuba player for anything other than yard work or waxing his car.

Miles spent the first part of the fifties in virtual hibernation, hardly working. In fact, his level of inactivity rose to such a point that many of those closest to him felt he must have taken a civil service job. But Miles emerged from his lethargy in the mid-fifties and produced a series of influential albums that changed the very foundations of jazz. Teaming with composer Gil Evans, whose orchestral arrangements perfectly complemented Davis' horn much the way beer perfectly complements virtually everything pizza to baseball, the pair produced several masterpieces in the late fifties (among them, Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain). They also won the bronze medal in the two-man bobsled at the Winter Olympics at Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy, in 1956, becoming the first jazz collaboration to medal in international competition since Louis and Lil Armstrong failed to medal in pairs figure skating at the 1928 St. Moritz Olympics (historians feel that this was because Louis, from balmy New Orleans, had never even seen ice prior to the competition).

The late fifties also saw Miles' record perhaps the most influential album in jazz history, Kind of Blue, with his brilliant sextet (which isn't even half as dirty as it sounds). Miles had been experimenting with, and had by this time perfected, modalism. Modalism is the use of other notes in the traditional major scale as the tonic foundation, creating a different intervalic relationship within the scale which produces intriguing and sometimes dissonant timbres with the notes of the underlying chords. It is considered possibly the most complicated aspect of music theory ever employed to impress women.

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