Miles Davis

Here is the first comprehensive study of the work and the life of one of the true geniuses of African-American music. Davis, one the trumpet, is one of the true innovators in this music, and without question, an immortal. Not intended as a full biography, this book nonetheless supplies the essential details of Miles Davis's life, from his birth to a middle-class family in Illinois in 1926 through his arrival in New York at the age of nineteen, his "discovery" by the critics at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, his years of greatest musicianship, and what Bill Cole considers his decline, commencing in the mid-1960s, when Davis's music "became more beautiful than revolutionary." On the specifically musical side of the book, there are, in addition to a general discussion of Davis's playing, thirteen musical transcriptions of Davis solos, and a complete list of Miles Davis's recording sessions, arranged chronologically, which will prove invaluable to any serious student of the man and the music will demonstrate how fine a combination this book is of biography and scholarship. -- From publisher's description.