During the 20th century, if at any time you wanted to know what was currently the coolest, most innovative form of jazz, all you had to do is find out what Miles Davis was playing. He led the way from bebop to cool jazz to jazz fusion.
Miles’ dad gave him a trumpet at age 13, and Miles was playing professionally in a band by the time he was 16. He went to New York to study at Julliard (Great American Things, Aug. 6, 2010), but dropped out to play in local clubs, often with the Charlie Parker Quintet. After Parker’s well-documented drug problems ended his band, Davis went on to play at different times with some of the best-known jazz musicians ever: Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Gerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and more.
Davis’ most famous and best-selling album is Kind of Blue (1959), which has now earned quadruple platinum status. Perhaps no other jazz musician has had quite as much influence on rock music as he had. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll said this about him: “Miles Davis played a crucial and inevitably controversial role in every major development in jazz since the mid-’40s, and no other jazz musician has had so profound an effect on rock.” He received eight Grammy Awards, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.