Talk:Miles Davis/Archive 1

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This archive page covers approximately the dates between the creation of the article and 29th September 2005.

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Please add new archivals to Talk:Miles Davis/Archive02. Thank you.   ajn (talk) 16:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand why the most important group led by Miles and in my opinion one of the best ever, the 60's quintet with hancock and shorter, is the least developed in this article. I certainly don't have the expertise to do it myself, but think that it could be very much improved by a knowledgeable addition. -Salvador

I concur, I shall look to develop this section. They played some of the most surreal, moving jazz I've ever heard, and Shorter's compositions of this era are stunning.

"[Miles Davis'] recordings, along with the live performances of his many seminal bands, were vital in jazz's increased artistic acceptance" - could somebody explain the word seminal in this context for me? I am translating the article for the Dutch Wikipedia, but the definitions in dictionaries do not seem to help here.--branko

Well, when we say "the seminal work" in science, it means the work that everyone looks to as a reference, being first and/or best on the topic. I presume that the usage above is meant to convey that the bands were considered the models for others to emulate. I could be wrong. -- April

Sounds good to me. Thanks. (And if somebody thinks April's definition is wrong or skewed after all, please drop a note at http://nl.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?action=edit&id=Miles_Davis/Overleg )--branko
That was pretty much what I meant. Where Davis led (re: electrification, modality, "free" jazz, pretty much everyone else followed. They were usually (amongst) the first, and frequently the best (at least till '72, or thereabouts)

When User:Gareth Owen entered info about Kind of Blue, he added the following comment:

"What can you say about KoB. Well, I can only gush. Let someone else impose NPOV. (How can you be neutral about genius? Hamlet: has its moments, Relativity: quite a good idea ... I'm babbling)"

Well, to begin with, you do not have to talk about the moments of Hamlet, nor about the merits of the idea of relativity. Rather, you can speak of their (perceived) influence in their respective fields and outside.
Hey, I was babbling...
Also, my copy of KoB has got this big yellow sticker on front that enthuses: "Perhaps the most influentual and best-selling jazz record ever made" -- if marketing drones can use words like 'perhaps', I bet so can you. :-)
yeah, well I could. But I don't wanna :)
And third, you could just gush and let someone else impose NPOV. That is the Wikipedia thing to do (well, _a_ Wikipedia thing to do). :-)--branko

There's nothing wrong with reporting on gushing; our NPOV policy just says that the article should avoid expressing its own value judgments, but if many people believe that KoB was the most influential jazz recording of its time, it would in fact be contrary to Wikipedia's goals not to report that "many people believe that KoB was the most influential jazz recoding of its time." -- Lee Daniel Crocker

'Many' of course being any number higher than 1 that resonates with your own subjective impression. :-)
I understand the rules: an article is worded well enough if its audience stops rewording it at least once a week.--branko

The following sentence seems to me vastly overstated:

"In terms of importance to the history of jazz, his legacy is equalled only, perhaps, by Louis Armstrong" That "perhaps" is pure nonsense, and the rest is dubious. Miles Davis was important, but he wasn't as important as Charlie Parker; it was Charlie Parker who did what Louis Armstrong did, changed the way people listened and the way people played.
Thats simply unjustifiable. Davis changed the way people played and listened just as much as Parker did. Furthermore, he did it 3 different times in three different ways between 1955 and 1975 (cool, modal, fusion), whereas Parker's drug problems and early death curtailed his influence to one area -- bebop. As to the lasting effect, bebop musicians are few and far between these days (like serialism, hard bebop was essentially a fad, a necessary and wildly inventive fad, but a fad none-the-less). By contrast, you can't throw a rock without hitting a fusion musician, even now.
Miles, as this article goes on to say, did what Duke Ellington did, put everything into a comprehensible context. Miles was not one-tenth the horn player that Parker and Armstrong were, even if he was smarter and more enterprising and tried more things out musically. Ortolan88 21:22 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)
You're entitled to your opinion, but when I listen to music I'll take intelligence, enterprise and adventurousness over technique, everyday of the week, and twice on Sundays. -- User:GWO
Yeah, but you have to have some technique. I agree that what Davis played was far superior to what the other trumpeters of his day played, and I'm grateful he was around to keep jazz trumpet from going down a dead end of solos consisting of endless running of scales, but I have trouble listening to him because his tone makes my skin crawl. But I suspect his genius was in large part due to his not being a virtuoso -- he concentrated on what he was playing rather than how -- so maybe I shouldn't want to have it both ways. John FitzGerald
Well, better than debating unquantifiables (I hold both Parker and Armstrong in emphatically low regard personally and/or musically, so you can see that opinion won't get us far towards writing an encyclopedia), how about we stick with what can be proven, not what some supposed author maintains? In other words, remove it or attribute it? --KQ
I'm going to remove it. There's ample praise (all deserved) for Davis in the article. I already wrote here that he belongs in the line with Bolden, Armstrong, Eldridge, and Gillespie, and that he compares with Duke Ellington. I don't have anything better to say than that about any musician.
I think thats fair. Good point, well made.
As for the doughty rejections of Armstrong and Parker, my own personal preference is for a blazing brilliant original solo over any amount of brainy noodling. :=). Ref: "West End Blues", "Parker's Mood", and those two use nothing but the blues changes, the most conventional jazz there could be. Ortolan88 10:29 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)
That's fine. "to each his own," and all that.  :-) I'm really not trying to convince anyone; I'm usually not confident I'm "right" anyway. I just wanted to illustrate that opinion is not fact, which you certainly would agree with. Cheers, --KQ

I have my doubts about the value of Other Musicians Who Played with Miles Davis. There were hundreds, dozens on his albums alone. There should be something about Live-Evil (which I don't have) in this article and if Hermeto Pascoal's contribution is noteworthy, it should be noted (and there should be an article on him, he seems interesting, I added a bit and capitalized Brazilian), but another endless list of everybody's favorite musicians tacked on to the end of this article is not the best way to honor significant contributions to Miles's work. There are no articles on John McLaughlin or Joe Zawinul either, but not much would be accomplished by adding their names to this list. My thoughts, that particular guy Ortolan88

I agree. The Other Musicians... section should be removed. Cribcage 08:08, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, Miles Davis was born May 25, 1926 and died Sept. 28, 1991 - should we use these dates?

The 'official' Miles Davis site [1] (run by his estate) says he was born on May 26th. That's usually good enough for me. People (and their family) usually know when they were born. OTOH, both Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole claimed incorrect birthdays, so perhaps we need to do more research. --SeanO 00:45, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)
The birth/death dates in this article came from the Guinness Who's Who of Jazz. I'll the biographies I have and get back to you. GWO 07:03, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Frustratingly enough, if you google for "Miles Davis" "May 26" and "Miles Davis" "May 25", May 26 just edges out May 25. But barely... -- SeanO 13:15, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)
A couple of guys (Jack Woker and Ron Hearn) in rec.music.bluenote maintain an exhaustive list of jazz musicians' birthdates. They've discussed the issue several times, and concluded that May 26 is the correct birthdate. As much as possible, those fellows are the jazz community's "experts" on birthdays, so I would defer to them. My two cents... Cribcage 03:45, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The original 1982 edition of Ian Carr's biography gives 25 May as his date of birth, but the edition sold on Amazon.com has ammended this to 26 May. --Ferdinand Pienaar 19:48, 26 May 2005 (UTC)


Contents

"understanding" recorded/live difference

My point is simple: WHO are the so-called "authorities" who claim that miles was the "first" person to "understand" the difference between live and recorded music? and secondly, WHAT are the differences? interestingly, none are given, no sources, no citations, and no description of what the "difference" is. so the sentence seems pretty nonsensical and ill-conceived, in fact it's pretty much "journalistic fluff" that has no meaning and is internally contradictory. IF ANYTHING, davis must have defined the difference, or somehow created a difference, if nobody else "understood" it yet. Is the writer trying to say somehow, a distinction existed between live and recorded music, but it just hadn't been put into practice, just hadn't ever been realized by any musician? this is absurd. i'm going to change the passage to say something more sensible.

That sentence went in on the 20th of July [2], and you're right, it needs to come out until it's referenced. --  ajn (talk) 16:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Miles and electric period, etc.

This is a good piece. I see a few stylistic things I'd consider refining. For example, wouldn't it be better to say that Davis was "freed from" rather than "stripped of" the rhythmic constraints he'd been under earlier? Seems the music itself would be stripped of, the man would be freed from.

As to the question of Davis' ultimate importance, I think perhaps it could be stressed that Davis was a real star of jazz, with money, influence and mystique (and clothes and cars), and that this is an important part of what made him a major figure. Also, the parallel with Ellington is interesting and might be elaborate upon beyond the fact that neither were "great" instumentalists (although I'd rate Ellington higher as pianist than Davis as trumpeter). Both were great bandleaders, synthesizers (and, perhaps, users of other's ideas?). I think Davis is as great a figure as any in jazz, but not for the usual reasons jazz figures are great--virtuostic instrumental styles and so forth. And I don't quite get this from the piece, and it's really a critical commonplace these days.


Finally, the electric period (which has come under increased scrutiny and whose value, once low in critical works, has increase dramatically) seems to me to be given short space. The period from '68 to "Agartha" in '75 is seven years, a long time--certainly as long as any period in Davis' career. I think there needs to be more about these records, and most critics now cite "A Tribute to Jack Johnson" and parts of "Get Up with It" and all of "Agartha" as the major Davis electric works. So, could there be more here?

All good points. Put 'em in GWO

All in all, though, nicely done.

Thanks GWO


I added a bit about the reassessment of the electric period, and a sentence about the "Jack Johnson" album, as well as about the release of the "Jack Johnson Sessions." Did a little tinkering with the piece. As I say above, it's a good 'un, and I certainly hope I helped it a bit.

Myself, I love Armstrong and Charlie Parker but can certainly see how opinions might differ...eddhurt

It's pretty clear that Kind of Blue is the "greatest selling jazz record ever", and I've removed some of the other hyperbole about Bitches Brew (which is an album I love, and very important in Davis's development, but not the pinnacle of his career). --Andrew Norman 14:40, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit surprised that whilst John Scofield is singled out as one of Miles' guitarists during his "comeback" period in the 80's, no mention is made of that other great guitar player, Mike Stern.--194.51.11.113 14:31, 28 September 2005 (UTC)Peter L.

Miles Davis Catagory

Is there a reason this article isn't in the "Category:Miles Davis"? It seems like such an obvious one, right? I'm asking first, because I'm betting there's a good reason that I'm just not thinking of. -- TomPreuss 13:21, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pre-fusion

I've chopped the article about, to make more sense of the chronology and remove some inaccuracies. I think there's still work to be done. I'm not a musician, just a fan, and I think it would be good to get some informed musical input about the various styles. --Andrew Norman 09:55, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Break up Discography

Since Miles has such a prodigous discography, why not break the discography into a 'featured' or 'highly recommended' section (w/ Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, Miles Smiles, 'Round About Midnight, Aura, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Pory & Bess, Miles Ahead, The Birth of the Cool, etc.), and a complete discography.

While the Major Discography is a good list, in terms of what a fan might own, I think it might be slightly intimmidating to someone who wnats to delve into his music, and a complete discography (a la the end of his autobiography) is useful for a superfan.

Might help improve accessibility.

Another option might be to break up a complete discography by musical period (modal, fusion, bebop, w/ Gil Evans, etc.) and have a couple representative albums from each set out in some manner.

I agree. The discography section is expanding into an almost complete discography, and if people want that then they can go to Peter Losin's excellent Miles Ahead site, the first thing in the links section. Perhaps a "top ten" with some reasoning would be a good idea? Trouble is, any fan would have a different list ("top twenty"?). I'd suggest: Birth of the Cool, Milestones, Miles Ahead, Kind of Blue, Miles Smiles, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, On the Corner, Tutu. --Andrew Norman 09:04, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
A good approach that has worked on other pages is to create a new page, like "List of Miles Davis albums", and link to that as a "see also" at the top of the discography section. Having that page exist will make people less tempted to keep adding albums to the major discography section. --Arcadian 17:11, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I've done that. I've moved the lot to the new page, which also now attempts to categorize the various albums. I'm in two minds about whether we need a recommended albums list - it's pretty clear to anyone who reads the article that some (Milestones, Kind of Blue, Porgy and Bess, etc) are standouts. --Andrew Norman 10:55, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Sexism and Racism of Miles Davis

I have no idea why people have ignored this subject or have completely put it off the map. Miles Davis, while a significant force in music, was also a cruel man toward women and also a racist against whites. He made this quote in regards to whites "If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow." (Jared Taylor (Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in America -- 1992, pg. 233)

He was very angry on the subject of race, but I don't think that quote is representative - he loved to wind people up, especially on this subject, and in fact took some stick throughout his career for having white people in his group (I think Dave Liebman talks about this in the Miles Davis Story DVD). Women are another matter, and he was undoubtedly extremely cruel and sexist, as several of them testify in the DVD. I think it's worth mentioning - in fact, the article says very little about his personal life. It doesn't need to turn into "Miles Davis - wifebeater who also played the trumpet", but there ought to be something in there. --Andrew Norman 06:52, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
There's several things you can write about both. Whether he was a racist or not, I am not convinced. Miles always said that he could always be able to tell what a white saxophonist sounded like and what a black saxophonist sounded like. Conversely, Miles was quite pro-integration on the subject of the "Crow Jim" phenomenon in jazz. He was vituperated for hiring Bill Evans into his group, yet he responded: "I remember when I hired Lee Konitz, some coloured cats bitched about me hiring an ofay in my bands when Negroes didn't have work. I said if a cat could play like Lee, I would hire him. I couldn't give a damn if he was a green and had red breath." In contrariety, Miles stated quite a militant approach in 1963, "When it comes to human rights, these prejudiced whites keep acting like they own the damn franchise!". As regards women, he was rather perplexed by them, "I don't care what a bitch does, as long as she doesn't lie about it. I can always tell when they're lying, and I hate that. I hate the lies." There's some jump-off points.--Knucmo2 18:30, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

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The 'Miles Myth'

This article states that Miles was 'largely responsible' for the developments of fusion and modal jazz. Nothing could be more discrediting and denigratory to the other musicians in jazz who were equally vital in these developments. For instance, the use of modes in jazz was George Russell's innovation as seen in his work from the early fifties and his academic essay "Lydian Concept of Tonal Organisation". Brubeck, Mingus, and even Ellington were using modes in the early fifties too. This was just a movement which Miles happened to focus on because he was sick of the harmonic jumble of chord changes that jazz was becoming. Fusion is another instance, for example musicians such as Larry Coryell, Seventh House, even Tony Williams and his group Lifetime, a member of Miles' group & John McLaughlin a future Miles employee, were experimenting with rock and jazz before Miles decided to. In both cases, Miles came to define and popularize these movements, but he did not actually invent them per se. This is fictitious and it is characteristic of the vacuous nonsense wrote by rock journalists with no grasp of what jazz really is who write in Mojo, and Uncut who write stuff like 'Miles had already changed jazz three times blah blah invented cool, blah invented fusion'... et cetera, et cetera.--Knucmo2 19:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

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  test

Trying to Remove Childish B.S.

 Some punk put the following at the bottom of the Miles page:

"Miles sucks.

Everyone who reads this will die in 7 days muhuhaha"

 For the life of me, I can't see where it is on the 'edit' page, in order to remove it.  My thanks to anyone who can do this - the sooner the better.

URGENT - this featured article is messed up - please fix

Hello, this article is messed up, the references and links are gone. I reverted the last edit that blanked it, but there was quite a few previous edits that really messed up the article. Isn't anyone monitoring this article while it is featured on the main page? Please fix as soon as possible.--CrazyTalk 15:12, 28 September 2005 (UTC)