The artist every musician loved, according to Miles Davis: “Could almost feel that shit”
Music taste is an entirely subjective thing, and no matter how hard I want to wish it into reality, I have to regularly acknowledge that the music of Miles Davis isn’t going to be for everyone.
Sure, I and others might find it easier to persuade someone of the genius behind his earlier bebop and modal jazz records, considering that despite their relentless creativity, they were far more approachable and easier to delve into without feeling intimidated. Records such as Kind of Blue and Workin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet are prime examples of gorgeously crafted jazz records that don’t demand too much from the listener other than to sink into the blissful worlds they inhabit.
It’s not going to be quite as easy to convince others on his fusion works, with the releases he started putting out in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s being far more challenging. The repetitive nature of On The Corner is an exceptional piece of work that sees Davis and his band lock into incessant grooves for almost an hour, but it’s far from being accessible in the same way as his earlier records.
On top of this, an album like Get Up With It is intense, manic, and difficult to love even for the most seasoned jazz fusion admirer, but is a veritable showcase of his genius. I know deep in my mind that he’s one of the most singular musicians to have ever walked the earth, and an innovator who deserves all the praise he gets, but albums like this aren’t going to be the best entry point for someone who is on the fence about his brilliance.
While this mission to make him universally adored is never going to be straightforward, there’s one jazz icon who Davis himself acknowledged was beloved by all, and despite all of his flirtations with the more experimental side of things, it’s someone who was far more interested in displaying the simple beauty of the genre who he admired more.
Davis was a great admirer of the esteemed singer, Billie Holiday, and proclaimed that she was also a true original without whom the world of jazz would be entirely different. In his 1989 autobiography, he argued that she was able to convey emotion in ways that no other artist was capable of doing.
“Whenever I’d go see her, I always asked Billie to sing ‘I Loves You, Porgy’,” he stated. “When she sang “don’t let him touch me with his hot hands,” you could almost feel that shit she was feeling. It was beautiful and sad the way she sang that. Everybody loved Billie.”
While he acknowledged her brilliance as an artist, he also noted her flaws as a person, and the tragic tale of addiction that brought her life to an unfortunately sudden and early end. “The last time I saw her alive was when she came down to Birdland, where I was playing in early 1959,” he recalled, “she asked me to give her some money to buy some heroin, and I gave her what I had, I think it was about $100… Her husband, John, kept her on the stuff so he could control her.”
As troubled as she may have been, and in spite of her career being tragically cut short, Davis isn’t wrong about her excellence as an artist, and her influence remains palpable to this day, even far beyond the world of jazz that she was such an integral part of from the 1930s through to the 1950s.
