Miles Davis was a Black American trumpeter and bandleader born in 1926 in Alton, Illinois, into a middle-class family. He started on trumpet at thirteen and took his first professional job with the Eddie Randall band in St. Louis in 1941. In the fall of 1944, at eighteen, he took a scholarship to the Juilliard School, a convenient passport to New York, and by 1945 he was working 52nd Street gigs alongside Charlie Parker.
In the late 1940s, musicians gathering at arranger Gil Evans's apartment produced the nonet heard on Birth of the Cool, whose horn section added French horn and tuba to the standard format. In 1955, Davis assembled his first important band with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, adding Cannonball Adderley in 1958. Influenced by George Russell's theories, he began playing in modes rather than standard chord changes, which led to Kind of Blue in 1959, the all-time biggest-selling jazz album. His partnership with Evans also produced Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights.
In 1964 he formed his second great quintet with Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Ron Carter and Wayne Shorter, recording mostly originals with all the band members contributing tunes. Davis then led the move toward electric jazz, recording In a Silent Way in 1968 and the sprawling double album Bitches Brew, released in 1970, which became a cornerstone of jazz-rock. After a 1972 auto accident he went into semi-retirement, returning to touring in 1981. He received the NEA Jazz Masters fellowship in 1984 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990, the year before his death.
