Didn’t He Play With

In 1989 I would have been living on Pitt St. at the corner of Delancey I caught the Harper’s Magazine Index stat of a large number, with the explanation being, “the number of times Miles Davis uses the word motherfucker in his autobiography.”  I would like to be able to provide you the precise number, tender reader, but alas a quick internet search has come up short.  The Index itself seems to be only searchable for subscribers.  Fair enough.   Tantalizingly and disarmingly, setting search parameters from January 1, 1988 to January 1, 1990 with a search for “miles davis motherfucker index” somehow yields 252 results.  Hard to imagine a search in Downbeat magazine with those parameters, let alone one in Harper’s would tap such a rich vein.  

And it was in that year that a dear friend gave me that autobiography.  I know this to be the case as I recently found it in my basement and pulled it up into the present.  There is an inscription inside from that friend, with a lovely message, dated that year.  Alas, the book remained unread these past three decades.  Always tantalizing.  My fondness for Miles, my appreciation for and familiarity with his works only waxing over that time.  Last night then, I decided to finally dig in and consider Miles central role in the sweep of the great African American art form. 

The son of a doctor, admitted to Julliard, playing with Bird when he was my younger daughter’s age, there was no one else like Miles.  I enjoyed the stories of him hearing jazz in East St. Louis as a young teen when it must have been electrifying and all consuming.  I gobbled up all the jazz-third-rail gossip and name dropping: playing with Bird and Diz, arguing with Mingus, pal-ing around with Max Roach, working with tenor players like: Prez and Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt and John Coltrane, and George Coleman, and Hank Mobley and Jimmy Heath and Wayne Shorter and Steve Grossman and Gary Bartz and Bob Berg and uh  . . . who didn’t he play with or help to establish?   We could do the same progression for drummers or bass players and in all these cases we get front row seats. 

The more interesting thing though, beyond the detail on the arc of the most important musical progression of the last hundred years, is the man who withstood it all in the center.  Uncompromising, unwilling to smile and fawn, like Satchmo, unwilling to chat it up with audience and introduce the next song or the one after that.  Not interested in being nice and ingratiating.   Fully possessed to stand his ground when, beneath the sign that announced his performance at the club the policeman told him to “move-on” and he pointed out the obvious and wouldn’t until the cop struck his head and incarcerated him.  Uninterested in pot, and undeterred by an earlier heroin habit he relied instead on cocaine and booze, which caught up with him financially and physically. 

I liked spending a day or two with Miles.  Wondering if all these maverick qualities, standoffish demeanor would have been the least bit out of the ordinary in a French painter or a New York financier.  Wondering about what it might have been like to create with him or have been dismissed by him and glad to be among those who revel in all he did. 

Friday, 01/10/20