Miles Davis

The music listening I've been involved with in recent weeks has been very good for me. Like many things over the years, the experience of music has opened and closed, sometimes imperceptibly, as my life has taken its twists and turns. I'm now finding that I enjoy music more than at any other time in my life.

I grew up a trumpet player, starting at age 10. Over the years I learned to noodle out some faux piano and guitar figures as well and more or less left it at that. I always had the appreciation, but at times I let other things get in the way of my experiences with music.

I think I have a good ear. Not so much in the playing realm, but in knowing good music when I hear it, having the sudden recognition, usually within a few bars, that something interesting or accomplished is happening in a tune. Music has wonderful properties that play hide and seek with the senses. Often extra subtle and inhibited aural meaning emerges with each listening of a particular song, but something has to grab hold of you first, even appropriately placed silence.

I started listening to jazz after high school. That put rock and what little classical music I'd heard growing up on the back burner for many years. Why was I drawn to the trumpet? I used to ask myself the question. I was unaware of jazz to begin with, but something in the sound of the horn caught me, swept me away. As odd as it may seem, I think I heard jazz before I knew jazz. I may have heard Miles before I discovered him.

So much mysticism? I think not.

Playing a typical brass march, which likely contained the first post "Mary Had a Little Lamb" phrases I learned on the horn, didn't stop me from hearing other stuff in my head. I can recall playing improvisations on the horn before reluctantly stopping long enough to learn a piece I had to learn for band competitions. Call it instinctive jazz.

Maybe that is why I finally stopped playing. School band bored me, finally. This was a long time before jazz education infiltrated the school system in Oregon, believe me. I am describing the history of another well-documented failure of our educational system, which hasn't enough good, imaginative teachers and is top-heavy with conforming, careful, and ultimately harmful fools.

Miles Davis was no conformist, of course. He played what he heard in his head, then he took it to the clubs, starting at 15, and put it out there. Be damned if you didn't like it because his hero, Charlie Parker, did. And Miles knew Charlie understood.

After treatment for heroin addiction and staying out of the clubs for a number of years, Miles founded one of the greatest quintets to every bless New York City. In featuring Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Red Garland and John Coltrane, Miles Davis hit his stride as a band leader and created some of his most important and dynamic work.

I played the quintet in the last hour of my show yesterday and had my brain blasted again.

Damn, Miles, you were my favorite. And I know you can hear me.


TS