Miles Davis began playing the trumpet when he was 13.
Miles Davis (1926-1991) grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. His father was a wealthy dentist who was able to provide Miles a privileged life. His family had a big house in the city and a 200 acre country estate where Miles loved to ride horses when he was a boy. After receiving a trumpet from his father, Miles began trumpet lessons and practiced his instrument regularly. He loved music and admired jazz greats, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, whom he listened to on the radio.
During his high school years, he studied musical theory and received classical training.
Miles claimed he was the best trumpeter in his music class but was overlooked during competitions because he was an African American. Prejudiced attitudes motivated Miles to outdo his classmates and excel as a musician.
Miles had his first professional gig when he was 17. Miles traveled across the river to St. Louis, Missouri to hear well-known jazz musicians play in clubs. Mesmerized by their talent and style, he would listen to their all night jam sessions. Charlie Parker, a talented saxophonist, arrived in St. Louis with the Billy Eckstine Band in 1944. Charlie was the creative force behind a new form of jazz that was later to be called bebop. In playing bebop, musicians shifted accents to give the music an unpredictable and exciting sound. Miles was fascinated with bebop's complex melodic and harmonic structure. He wanted to play bebop too.
Miles had to find a way to get to New York.
Bebop had a following in New York City, the hottest jazz scene in the country. Miles wanted to move to New York where he could listen and learn bebop from jazz greats like saxophonist Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Miles's mother demanded that he attend college and get a degree instead of becoming a jazz musician. Miles compromised and agreed to study classical music at New York's prestigious Juilliard School of Music.
After attending Julliard for a semester, Miles dropped out to pursue jazz full-time. As an African American musician, Miles realized he would have difficulty getting work playing in classical symphonies. His goal was to play bebop like his idol Charlie Parker. Night after night, he followed Charlie's quintet from one club to the next. Eventually, he was invited to be a substitute trumpet player for Charlie's quintet. As a substitute, Miles tried to mimic the playing of Dizzy Gillespie, the leading bebop trumpeter. Dizzy could hit high notes repeatedly and play at a fast, energetic pace. Miles struggled to recreate Dizzy's dynamic style and realized that he needed to find a sound of his own.
Miles found his own style.
In 1949, he formed a nine-pieced piece band, The Miles Davis Nonet. Some people criticized him for hiring white musicians like Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan, but Miles never cared what color a person was if they could play music he liked. Having departed from bebop's feverish pace, Miles used his trumpet to project a tender, dreamy sound. His music had a unique, poetic quality.
Miles had an influential career. Miles continued inventing new ways of making music and in doing so he discovered many up-and-coming musicians. They include John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Besides making recordings with his own small jazz groups, Miles also had a great success with a large orchestra that his friend Gil Evans wrote the music for. In later years, he experimented with fusing rock and pop music with jazz. Miles remained an innovator of music throughout his career.
