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Miles Davis Biography

1.0 Introduction
It is fairly acknowledged that Miles Davis was the most consistently innovative musician in jazz from the late 1940s through the early 1990s. Miles Davis played the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective, and harmonious style; make the sound being more personal and intimate. He grew up in East St. Louis in a middle class family, playing in his high school band as well as with several local R&B groups. He quickly became fond of jazz, predominantly the new sounds being created by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Davis' father sent him to Julliard to study music, but Miles didn't spend much time there, dropping out.

2.0 Development of Jazz
Bebop or bop
Miles had his professional performance when he was seventeen years old; he joined Charlie Parker, a talented saxophonist with the Billy Eckstine Band in 1944 (Bowden, 2007). Charlie was known as the inspired strength behind a new form of jazz that later to be called bebop; the term refers to a musician modified accents to give an unpredictable and exciting sound in the music (PBS, 2005). Bebop or bop developed as the first jazz that had small ensemble – a quintet or sextet made up a rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums) and “front line” of only two or three instrumentalists (Kingman, 1990). It is noted that the tempos were usually very fast, the rhythm section became much lighter, the bass played at fast pace, and the drums used less frequently for more accentuation; all of that unity became transformed in color, density, and complexity (ibid.).

Cool jazz
Next, Miles Davis played with Eckstine Band in 1946-1947 and was a member of Parker's group in 1947-1948, making his recording debut as a leader on a 1947 session that featured Parker, pianist John Lewis, bassist Nelson Boyd, and drummer Max Roach (All About Jazz, 2008). Nonetheless, he created a nonet (nine members of band) in 1948 with arranger Gil Evans that used non-traditional instruments in a jazz environment, for example French...