Miles Davis

The music listening I've been involved with in recent months has been very good for me. Like many things over the years of my life, my interest in music and my musical tastes have taken many 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 subtle and inhibited aural meaning emerges in successive encounters with 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 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 bad, instinctive jazz.

Maybe that is why I finally stopped playing. School band, a diet of Souza marches, bored me, finally. This was a long time before jazz education infiltrated the school system in Oregon, believe me.

Of course Miles Davis didn’t grow up in Oregon and he was no conformist. He played what he heard in his head, and then he took it to the clubs, starting at fifteen. He 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 in the 1950s and created some of his most important and dynamic work.

TS