Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century. The son of a successful dental surgeon and music teacher, he was born in Alton, Illinois, before the family relocated to East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1927. After his father gave him his first trumpet at age 13, he practiced for hours to master the instrument. At 17, he met and played with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker for the first time. In 1944, he moved to New York City to study at Julliard School of Music, and at night he played in Harlem clubs with Charlie Parker's band as bebop emerged as a fast, improvisional style of instrumental jazz that defined the modern jazz era. The 1949 studio recordings of his own nonet, steeped in bebop tradition, later became the album Birth of the Cool and helped transform jazz into its next phase. Over the course of a 50-year career, he continually evolved musically, playing with jazz legends in the 1940s and 1950s, turning in the late 1960s toward electric sounds influenced by artists such as Jimi Hendrix and James Brown to create a jazz-rock fusion, then returning after going underground in the late 1970s with a new modern jazz sound in the 1980s and 1990s, including his first Rap/R&B hit single, Doo Bop. He recorded and released more than 100 albums and won nine Grammy Awards.

Alton, Illinois · United States