Miles Davis

Miles Davis is one of the greatest jazz musicians. Davis’ career spans fifty years, which is almost unheard of in the music industry where careers tend to be short. His long career includes awards such as eight Grammy awards, a life time achievement Grammy, and three Hall of Fame awards. Through his music, Davis inspired many other musicians during his career. Davis is an icon in the jazz world, not only for his long career, but for revolutionizing the jazz genre. Without Davis’ influence, jazz would not be the rich sound it is today. During his successful career Miles published quite a few popular albums which truly impacted the jazz culture. Bitches Brew, Birth of Cool, and Porgy and Bess are just three of his famous albums. Davis was a rebel of his time, he did things with jazz music that no one else dared to do. During the…

Miles Davis was an ordinary boy, born and raised in Illinois, United States who created one of the most complete jazz albums of all time called Kind of Blue. Davis’s parents were a big part of his early success, being that his father bought him his first trumpet at the age of 13 and his mother being a music teacher helped Davis express his love for music. By the age of 16 Davis was talented enough to play at local restaurants and bars around the city. Within one year a band called “Blue Devils”…

stunningly talented, charismatic and versatile. Miles Davis, son of Cleota and Miles Dewey Davis Junior, began his life in Illinois, but the average life in an average town had nothing for him. He played professionally even before he graduated high school, but the gig he found on his home turf simply were not enough. At 18, Miles Dewey Davis III left his middle-class home and comfortable life for an uncertain future in New York City. The Big Apple in the 1940’s was, as it is now, the place…

Despite rising to significance nearly twenty years apart, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong share a common accomplishment: single-handedly changing the musical genre of jazz forever. With his trumpet in hand, Louis Armstrong took the jazz world, and even the entire world of music by storm with his famous gravelly voice and his focus on solo performances in jazz, a change of pace from the prominent collective improv focused jazz of the time. While making these groundbreaking changes to jazz,…

Miles Davis also known to some as Prince of Darkness was said to be the top musician during his time with a plan set out to change the concept of jazz and how the world see it. Davis was born 1926 in Alton, Illinois. He was a leader of a band named Miles Davis Quintet as well as a well-known jazz trumpet player. This paper will be going into details of the jazz artist Miles Davis from the beginning of his music career to the end. In 1926 a well-known jazz artist by the name of Miles Davis…

Miles Dewey Davis III was born on May 26, 1926 in Alton Illinois. Miles Davis was the son of a music teacher and a dental surgeon. He grew up in a middle-class household. At the age of 13 his dad introduced the trumpet to him. Elwood Buchanan wanted to help develop Davis’s style, he was a friend of Davis’s father. Davis played professionally during high school. Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker liked Davis’s work and invited him onstage to perform when a band member was is and wasn’t able to…

Jazz as a genre evolved throughout years due to the progressive artists that create it, but when deciding on who is the "greatest" of jazz musicians, the most important criteria when deciding should be influence and innovation, as the lasting effects of an artist on their artform is what they should be judged by. With this set criteria, the only artist that can be considered the "greatest" is Miles Davis, as he pioneered many of different techniques and genres of jazz. The first reason why Miles…

Miles Dew Davis was an Iconic figure and trumpeter of the twentieth century in America, born in Alton, Illinois on May 26, 1926. Davis’ compositions changed the evolution of Jazz with masterpieces, such as, Kind of Blue in 1959, Sketches of Spain in 1960, and the Bitches Brew in 1969. Kind of Blue won the bestselling album of the year, and is one of the most sought-after recordings as late as 1998. It was the first Jazz album to reach double-platinum, in addition to being a Masterpiece, Kind of…

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue One of the greatest albums in jazz - Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue has received innumerable commendations ever since its release in 1959 and has been admired by jazz fans far and wide. Miles Davis and his sterling band that consisted of top performers at that time together brought this masterpiece to the world. This album features Miles Davis on trumpet, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto saxophone, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans on piano,…

The song “Flamenco Sketches” by the Miles Davis Sextet has the cool jazz sound with the modal jazz style. The song has a light and soft sound with simple melodic improvisations. A traditional rhythm section maintains a steady rhythm throughout the song, but this rhythm section uses countermelodies to add colorations during the improvisations. The pianist is constantly playing a soft melody underneath the improvisations and sometimes mirroring the melody played by the improviser. The bassist…