Miles Davis Biography

In 1945, after graduating from high school, he moved to New York City and set about finding his heroes, amongst them Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Coleman Hawkins.

By 1949, his career was beginning to blossom, and he began to work with arranger Gil Evans, with whom he would collaborate on many works over the next twenty years.

Playing in the jazz clubs of New York, Davis was in frequent contact with illegal drugs and developed a serious heroin addiction. In 1954, he returned to Illinois and, with the help of his father, he kicked his heroin habit.

He returned to New York reinvigorated, and formed the first great incarnation of the Miles Davis Quintet, with John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. Their records defined the sound of cool jazz.

He then recorded a series of albums of stunning variety and complexity, 'Miles Ahead', 'Milestones', (1958), and 'Kind Of Blue', which is amongst the best selling jazz albums of all time, and still widely hailed as the greatest.

That year, Davis was beaten by the New York police in a racist attack. He attempted to pursue the case in the courts, but eventually dropped proceedings.

Throughout the 1960s Davis continued his prodigious output but, increasingly influenced by the sound and attitude of rock music, he began to produce the first truly successful amalgamations of jazz with rock music.

By the mid 1970s an unwell Davis withdrew almost completely from the public eye, but by the 1980s he was back, and ready to assemble a new band from the finest musicians available. They produced five experimental albums, and two movie soundtracks.

Miles Davis died from a stroke in September 1991.