Miles Davis is an amazing human being.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

Besides being an amazing arranger and most lyrical trumpeter and, oh, just one of jazz's finest innovators, he kicked a 4-year heroin habit cold-turkey in 1953. Just locked himself in a room in his father's house and stayed there for 12 days, vomiting up whatever he trid to eat, cursing himself in the universe, with his pores and nose running and "smelling like chicken soup," to use his own words. And then it was done.

:applause:

The "Prince of Darkness," indeed. What an amazingly strong, proud, determined, disciplined man, even with a horrible drug habit. Plus, almost nobody could curse like Miles could. I love that motherfucker.

[peekaloo]

1. One of my old bosses had an autographed poster from MD.

I pointed out that the drawing of the little trumpet player in the corner was cool and he told me to look closer. It was Miles' signature.

My boss told me he was one of the most scariest, yet sweetest ,motherfuckers he'd ever met. :D

[WritingIsMyReligion]

4. Miles was a motherfucker.

And I offer that as my highest compliment to him. I'm reading Ian Carr's 1982 portrait of Miles now, and it's very cool. I want to find his autobiography next.

:hi:

[MonkeyFunk]

2. and he had the good sense

to marry Cicely Tyson.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

5. For a while.

He had at least three wives, ya know. His first at age 16 in St Louis. :D

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Isn't he a "was"? And yes, I totally agree - he was a fucking genius.

Amazing musician and composer. Absolutely amazing.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

6. Yeah, but his "spirit lives on," and all that jazz.

Pun intended.

I fucking love Miles. The perfect example of humanity at it's creative peaks. Not a saint by any term, just a genius.

[Bassic]

7. I agree.

I have a few of his albums, mostly from his "Cool" period. Those are some of the best pieces of music I have ever heard.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

8. You know I agree!

:hi:

And please check out his autobiography. Freakin' AMAZING book. :thumbsup:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

9. I'm getting there!

:P

I started with Ian Carr's 1982 MILES DAVIS. Actually, I started with the Ashley Kahn, but you know what I mean.

Miles is so awesome, but not a god. He's better than that.

Check out this frackin' awesome picture allegedly from a Birdland gig:

[Starbucks Anarchist]

10. Did you know they're making a movie about him?

Don Cheadle's going to play him.

Ironically, I wanted to write the script about Miles for awhile, and even had Don Cheadle in mind to play him, but they beat me to it.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

12. Yeah, I did know that.

I wonder if it'll turn out all right. It would be worse than bad if it were off. x(

[Redstone]

11. "IS" amazing? Isn't he dead? Or am I thinking about someone else?

Redstone

[WritingIsMyReligion]

13. He is dead, sixteen years this September, but I wasn't thinking.

:D

[Redstone]

18. Thanks for clearing that up. I just wanted to make sure.

Redstone

[WritingIsMyReligion]

22. No problem.

:)

[MonkeyFunk]

14. I'll differ...

he was an amazing musician. But by all accounts, he was a pretty crappy human being.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

16. As a human he was hardly separably from his music.

Anyhow, he had too many wives, sure, and there was the period of dope as well as the general jazzer debauchery, but as a human being he's far above any neocon who ever walked the earth, for example. So I fail to see how he was a really crappy human.

:D

[dolo amber]

15. Oh honey...Miles was a wretched human being

Brilliant musician, yes. But not warm and cuddly. He also resumed said habit many times, and added some new ones to his oeuvre. He treated most people, and especially women, like complete shite.

Again, musically: Genius. Personally: Douchebag.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

17. I'm quite aware of all that.

There's a reason why he was called the most lovably freakish motherfucker. He did what he wanted, always, and was one of the first black musicians to demand intellectual appreciation for his music, not just entertainment value from whites.

[Initech]

19. His collective body of work nearly dwarfs Zappa's

And Zappa's nearly dwarfs every band ever to exist.

I think I will go put on "The Cellar Door Sessions" later.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

23. Sometime in the '80s a radio station played all Miles's music to date.

Chronologically by album, with no breaks, not even for commercials.

It took over 100 hours.

[Initech]

27. That's insane. Miles was a hell of a musician.

Sure, he probably was a total asshole, but he was still a hell of a musician.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

29. I know. I don't get all this "awful person" stuff.

They were ALL "awful" people, nearly every last jazzer from the idiom's inception through the 1960's, if by awful you mean drug addicts, crazed souls, often paranoid, temperamental, and, yes, racist and sexist. It was the 1950's.

[SoCalDemGrrl]

20. "was" an amazing person and a maniac on stage. Saw him at the

Troubador in the late 1970s and he was an SOB. He spat on the stage

and was incredibly disrespectful to the audience in every way. He may be a legend,

but I wanted to punch the guy after his show. He was a complete JERK!!

[WritingIsMyReligion]

24. The press used to hound him for that sort of thing.

They were unbelievably upset that he used to--oh my!--walk off the stage at the end of his solo, turning his back on the audience. Or worse, put his hands "in" his ears during another person's solo. In reality, many musicians left the bandstand to allow for all the attention to be on the next soloist, and putting one's hands around one's ears focuses in better on sound, as Miles would do to filter out extraneous noise in order to listen to the other soloist better.

Miles was very hard, grew up very hard near St. Louis, reared by a mother who seemed to want to be white and a father who hated that posturing and often hated the wife who did it, as well. But Miles was an absolute genius. I'd rather have a thousand crazed like him than a single neocon, any day.

[fudge stripe cookays]

21. While he was an amazing musician,

he was a mysoginistic asshole, honey. He was NOT a great human being.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

25. What's with the "honey" business?

Dear, I'm not five. :eyes:

Miles did shit that I'm not sure anyody else will do. How he fully lived his life is absolutely fascinating. I'm not sure that he hated all women or hated all whites, either. (He adored arranger Gil Evans and got along very well with white musicians such as Bill Evans, certainly.) He is the only person whose tendencies for ridiculousness are tolerable, simply beause of who he was and what he did with them. No surrender.

[fudge stripe cookays]

26. Honey is a southern expression of endearment.

I was trying to be kind. And while I know that you are not five, you are a bit younger than I am, and younger than quite a few other folks on this board.

I understand your hero worship of this person as an amazing musician. I also enjoy his music. But he was not a nice person, no matter how you try to equate the two. I never heard any interviews with him where he did not refer to women as "bitches."

He beat the shit out of wives, probably including Cicely Tyson. If he didn't hate them, he sure didn't have any idea how to treat them. You can defend that all you want, but honestly, you look silly doing it. Perhaps when you've had some more life experiences of your own, you may be able to differentiate the two concepts.

Peace.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

31. Again, not really hero worship.

Certainly I do not attempt to make him divine in any way. Because he was such an enormous cockhead, like so many other men of the '50's, he is in that way human, rather than perfectly, amazing.

[fudge stripe cookays]

36. I never said you were trying to make him divine.

But as RKZ pointed out, kicking drugs does not make anyone a great guy. If they were that great, they would never have picked them up in the first place.

You say it is not hero worship, but you are forgiving him what most people would consider unforgiveable, simply because he was a great musician.

Not to mention comparing him with many other men of the 50s (who were decent, kind, human beings). That is a cop-out. Not every man in the 50s stuck a needle in his arm, beat up women, and acted psychotically.

He was human. A VERY FLAWED human.

[RandomKoolzip]

28. If by "amazing," you mean "misogynist," then sure.

Because of his undeniable talent, it'd be easy to forgive someone for things we wouldn't tolerate in other normal human beings. But Ike Turner and Miles Davis had a lot in common, except Ike Turner had less contempt for his audience than Miles.

By just about every first-hand account, Miles was an abusive, overbearing dick who was forgiven over and over again for his faults because of his legend.

Sure - he kicked heroin by himself. My dad did too, and he was a wonderful, generous man to boot. Being able to kick a drug ought not to be a measure of a man (after all, what kind of weakness would make a man pick up the needle in the first place?).

I say this not to denigrate Davis's obvious ability at wrenching emotion from his instrument, his bandleading ability, or his facility for fastening an iconic persona around himself. I say it only to give a fuller, rounder picture of the man.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

30. I know all that. But I still adore Miles.

Miles said at some time, "You can't play anything on a horn that Louis {Armonstrong} hasn't played." Well, I think the same thing applies to him.

I don't get why people think I am making a god out of the man. If anything, it is the exact opposite--I love him BECAUSE he was such a cockhead. He was absolutely and fully human, nothing more, nothing less.

[1gobluedem]

33. He was a gifted musician to be sure

But it is NOT "absolutely and fully human" to beat the tar out of women on a regular basis. It's human to be flawed; it is NOT human to be cruel, misogynistic, and borderline psychotic.

[fudge stripe cookays]

35. Thank you!

Perhaps one day the OP will understand what we are trying to tell her. Right now, it's pointless.

We were teenagers once too.

[Phillycat]

37. Well said.

He was a dick. And a genius. Neither of those traits took away from the other.

[MAGICBULLET]

32. Bitches Brew

AMAZING record...

[WritingIsMyReligion]

34. Holy hell, yes.

:)