“My brain fell out”: The moment Miles Davis played David Crosby a song
He might have been the king of cool jazz, but the revolutionary tones of Miles Davis seemed to transcend genre and style, making him a universally loved figure among musicians and songwriters. Throughout his career, Davis explored a wide range of influences, never sticking in one place for too long before adapting his sound to the next generation of music. When you think about the influences of Davis, you might think of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, or even George Russell, but few people would select David Crosby as having impacted the trumpeter.
During the mid-1960s, while Davis was at the peak of his success and notoriety within the field of jazz, David Crosby was embarking upon a countercultural revolution that would alter the lineage of rock and roll indefinitely. Co-forming The Byrds in 1964, Crosby formed an essential part of the psychedelic age, creating some of the most iconic releases of the era in the process. Musically, though, The Byrds were worlds apart from the defiant jazz of Davis, all the more so when Crosby left the group to form Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Nevertheless, Davis always kept his ear to the ground in terms of new and exciting artists. In fact, it was the jazz master who was responsible for getting The Byrds a record deal with Columbia. As Crosby later recalled, “Record companies at that time were guys who had failed at selling shoes, they had no idea what a note was, let alone music, let alone people who could play it. So, we sent [Columbia] a tape and they go ‘Miles, what do we do with these guys?’ ‘Sign ‘em.’”
That is not where Crosby’s strange connection to Miles Davis ends, however. During the late 1960s, the trumpeter was developing a much more experimental, psychedelic sound. Various sessions recorded in 1969 and 1970 produced a variety of innovative and experimental tracks for Davis, many of which would go on to form the seminal album Bitches Brew. However, these sessions would also see Davis cover one of David Crosby’s compositions.
The song in question was ‘Guinnevere’, originally recorded for the eponymous debut of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, but Davis took the track in an entirely different musical direction – so much so that Crosby himself could not identify any resemblance between his song and Davis’ recording. Davis himself showed the track to Crosby upon its recording, with the ‘Guinnevere’ songwriter recalling, “I was on the street in New York, in the Village, and he walked up to me, and I knew it was him. He said ‘You Crosby?’, I said ‘Yes sir’. He said, ‘I’m Miles’, I said, ‘I know.’ He said, ‘I cut one of your tunes.’”
Inevitably, the realisation that one of the greatest musicians of all time had recorded one of his songs was too much for Crosby, who recalled, “My heart stopped in my chest. My brain ran out my nose into a puddle on the floor, and my life was over. God came and took me. It was a shock.” Davis then took Crosby to his house, where he played this new arrangement of ‘Guinnevere’.
There has been a long-running myth that Crosby hated Davis’ arrangement, much to the disappointment of the trumpeter. However, during a 2020 interview with Tom Cridland, he set the record straight, saying, “He played it for me, and it was stunning. It was better than I even realised at the time.” That quote seems to be more reliable, as it is difficult to imagine anybody listening to Miles Davis’ ‘Guinnevere’ and not being utterly blown away by its genius.
