Miles Davis

From Wikiquote

Miles Davis (1926-05-26 – 1991-09-28) was an American jazz musician.

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• "For me, music and life are all about style."

• "I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?"
  • Davis attended a reception in honor of Ray Charles at Ronald Reagan's White House in 1987. This was his reply to a Washington society lady seated next to him who had asked him what he had done to be invited.

• The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.
  • About the new modal style. Interviewed by The Jazz Review, 1958.

• "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."
  • During an interview, after growing aggravated about questions on the subject of race.

• "A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it."
  • On being called a legend.

• "Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin"

• "Who's that motherfucker? He can't play shit!"
  • on Cecil Taylor

• "You a motherfucker."
  • a compliment to Chick Corea, who thought he was about to be fired.

• "He plays like somebody is standing on his foot."
  • on Eric Dolphy

• "He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll."
  • on Prince

• "Why'd you put that white bitch on there?"
  • To George Avakian after seeing the cover chosen by Columbia for Miles Ahead.

• "You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played." and "I love Pops" (Louis' nickname) in a Playboy magazine interview.
  • on Louis Armstrong

• "I’ll play it and tell you what it is later."
  • During a recording session for Prestige, on the album "Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet" (1956).

• "Listen baby, when I say later, I mean it! Later!"
  • After being approached by a relentless interviewer.

• "There are no wrong notes."

• "My ego only needs a good rhythm section." On being asked what he looked for in musicians.

• "When you are creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit."

• "Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth."
  • Davis was questioning the increasing length of John Coltrane solos, and Trane answered "I don't know how to stop."

• "It's that goddamned motherfucking 'Machine Gun.'"
  • Davis' response when questioned on what he heard in the music of Jimi Hendrix.^[1]

• "Don't play what's there, play what's not there."

• "Is that what you wanted, Alfred?"
  • Miles Davis asking Blue Note records producer Alfred Lion's approval of a recorded performance in Rudy Van Gelder's studio. Miles' gravelly-voice question was accidentally recorded, but included at the end of "One For Daddy-O" on the Cannonball Adderley recording "Somethin' Else": a famous recorded peek into the recording studio process.

[edit] References

1. ↑ Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, 2005: ISBN 1-4013-0028-6

[edit] External links

• Coltrane biography
• Miles and Trane