Miles Davis Radio Project; 5; Miles Davis, Retirement and Rebirth : The 70s and 80s

Hi, I'm Danny Glover, and this is the Miles Davis radio project. Miles Davis, the 70s and 80s, retirement and rebirth. You all may have everything you got. Well, physical demands are playing the trumpet. First of all, this brass mouthpiece that goes up against your lip and your lips are supposed

to vibrate while its mouthpiece is on there. And if you use too much pressure, the lips will stop vibrating. In order to get the lips to vibrate at a fast rate, you have to have a lot of air velocity, especially to produce notes in the upper register of the trumpet. The air has to really be moving. I think Miles, back in the 40s, if you look at pictures of him with Charlie Parker, you'll notice his posture is very different in the way it is now. His posture was perfect. You can't fault his posture. Now Miles bends over, plays at the floor. How he developed his current posture and why he did. I don't know. I can only venture a guess. And that would be to say that he started playing in those positions, only in order to express himself the way he wanted to.

He didn't feel he could do it by standing up straight and playing the horn. The end of the 60s. Rock and roll and electric music were on the rise. Miles Davis, the great jazz star of the two previous decades, was experimenting. To be an inventor, until the invention is acceptable, you're considered a fool. Now it ends up being a thin line from a fool to a genius. Everybody followed Miles.

There were a lot of people who would have no idea how important Miles was music. He's easily, I think, the most important musician within the last 50 years. I really believe that. I mean, he had such a profound effect on music in general, rock and roll. He's the one that first brought this fusion thing together. Many of his fans were confused. Jazz always represented a higher level of music to them, a higher level of sophistication. Games with his exquisite trumpet style, decked out and expensive Italian cut suits had once embodied this sophistication. Later, he was a symbol of rising black consciousness. But now his fans and critics wanted to know, why was he playing and dressing like a rock and roller?

I remember when bitches grew came out and he started to lose his generation. Like, again, my brother says he had done anything since 1966. Hey, Miles was a rebel. You know, it seems like he almost deliberately did things to upset a lot of jazz critics, for example. You know, he says jazz is like America. It's supposed to be free. Well, he once said to me, and I don't know if he was serious or not, before bitches grew, that he was getting pretty damn angry about how these white guys made so much money, and they weren't even musicians, and he was going to show that he could do it too, and he's done it.

He can do things like he can electrify you, man, next day I'll pull a floor out from underneath and tell you to play, you know. That ain't the same kind of Miles Davis I hear now, or hear about, I don't hear anybody talking about that kind of magnitude or anything like that, and it's not because of him, it's what he's doing. But he's still my main man, and it's a beast. My main man was a Sal Peter music. And it's been known historically, a lot of times, especially in America, we don't get into something until it is old and dead. I would hate for Miles to be dead, before we realize the greatness that existed in the music that he's doing right now while he's alive. Well, I never forget how I felt when I first heard a music, you know, I know that I was on the right track, you know, little that I knew at the end, you know, after I found out

I was really supposed to go, I mean, it just added to what I knew, you know, you know, the man still makes me feel good, you know, just to get a band and just make it sound good, you know what I mean, without a doubt, you know, even if they f*** up, it sound good, you know. That's where it is now. In 1968, Miles broke off a long romance with actress Cicity Tyson and married a young singer named Betty Maybury, son 20 is his junior, Betty was Miles' window into the emerging world of rock, its anti-conventions, its hallucinogenic drugs, day glow fashions, and its

hauling blues guitars. This guitar sound was a derivative of the African American blues tradition. A sound Miles had been steeped in since childhood. To learn to sustain and make a guitar sound like a voice, which is what we're all trying to do, because the voice is the ultimate instrument, its the closest to the heart, guitar, legend, Carlos Santana. That's what Miles is, its a singer, you know, its, you know, his music is out like Johnny Hooker also when he moans, Johnny Hooker moaning says, hell, hell, a lot more than a lot of people with their poets, you know, just boy and moan. So yeah, his voice is really what got to me and then later on, of course, the articulation in the way it's, our Blakey or somebody would say the way they scrambled the eggs, you know, but first it was tone. Miles was the modern language that I went to hear. He was the language polished up, you know, like Louis was.

He had polished up the blues language on the trumpet. Mississippi boy and trumpeter, Olu Dara. I have a mute in here. So I had no trouble when I heard Miles play, he was, he felt it had a guitar, he would have been playing guitar music, you know, Miles do stuff like that, you know, same thing, he'd take the mute, give the metallic sound, you know, that's all, yeah. Carlos Santana. I don't know if a lot of people in this country has ever had an experience of, you know, sucking on a sugar cane, you know, and getting the juice out, you know, and Miles does that

and so does blues players do that, like from Chicago or T1 Walker, they're like, and then they keep getting inside and inside and inside on it till they get the juice out and when they get the juice out of the note, you know it and I know it and everybody knows it, you know, and it's, it's, it's a, it's a kid, they're not playing over it. They're not playing over the, over the note, they're getting inside of it. The way he plays the blues is, it's, it's too to let any Hopkins, you know, and it's still the God bucket cut and shoot crowd, you

know, that I love, you know, I don't, and he has that, man, he definitely has that tone, but what he also brings to it is that elegance things that, that Ducarantin has, it's not, it's God bucket, but it has Tiffany's, man, it ain't cheap like Woolworth's, it's got that real, one of a kind, phrasing and it, it makes, brings it all together. For me, there's no music that is not African except classical music. And I, Jerry and saxophonists and band leader, Thaler. Rock and roll, Ducarantin, music of a Cuba and everything is African music, it's just that it was, you are developed outside Africa, but by those who are Africans, but lived on

a different environment. And Africans, the things they do with beats, Miles Davis, it's certain things they do, man, that you can only do if you were born there, you know, like they'll play a pattern and the next time a pattern comes around, they add another note to a certain part of that pattern, it might be in the middle of the pattern, you know what I mean? And then they keep on, the next time it comes around, they add a note, I mean another beat and another part of the pattern, plus the one they already added, you know, and if you ain't born and next shit, you can say what, who, who? Poet Quincy True. I think the 1960s brought a change in Miles' music, that the position that he had started to go to people like Sly and Jimmy Hendrix.

You see those new rebels who came in to signify the 60s, you know, and Miles, instead of setting the trend, and setting the trend like he had been doing for a number of years, and he began to follow some people, and it was a moment there, a period there of insecurity. He began to look for other ways to play. The focus of Miles' attention at this time was on the young black guitarist Jimmy Hendrix. He saw immediately that Hendrix was in the process of reinventing the electric guitar and

the blues. Miles was interested not only in Hendrix's sound, but in his manner, his overt sexuality and soon his huge commercial success, popular music would never be the same. I played with Jimmy too, on a session we did, I don't know, in 70 or something, but the method of working was the same as with Miles, you know, it was like the way Jimmy put a thing together, he'd play things to you, you know, or start something up, and then you'd pick it up, and then when he wanted something else to happen, he'd set it up for his guitar, you know, so I was immediately, you know, struck by that, you know, that they both had a very similar way of putting together their music. Brazilian percussionist Ayerto Morriera. Miles, he liked the way Jimmy Hendrix played, and Miles has started the war because of Jimmy Hendrix, and they were friends, they knew each other and everything, and one day

he just showed up with, you know, with the Walla pedal, and then he would just go crazy and then Walla fell in love with him, and then Walla fell in love with him. And listening to Hendrix, it always made me wonder what would happen if guys like Miles ever added that kind of beat to their music, what would happen, and you know what?

It happened. I heard a record come out, and that's exactly what was happening. I said, wow, I say it is possible to put it together, if Miles did it, that gave everybody else the freedom to do it, because Miles was the master. You know, Miles led the way all these other musicians would try it. The record was Bitches Brew, and it was one of the first to fuse jazz and rock and roll, using electronic instruments and the techniques of the modern, multi-track recording studio. Before this time, one of the hallmarks of Miles' recording style had always been to

get a tune down in one or two takes. No inserts, no overdves, no looking back. He had a magical ability to coax great performances from his bands, now though new recording technologies allowed for different approaches in the studio, with Bitches Brew Miles took advantage of them. Drummer, Lenny White. Zownool had some charts, and then what we would do is we would play for a while, you track up the rhythm and play for a while, and then Miles would stop, and then he started it up again, and we'd play, and then he'd stop, and he'd start it up again, and everybody would take their solo. And then when Tio went into the studio, they took all these things, and they put it together and made it one continuous, complete piece. CBS Recording Engineer who worked on Bitches Brew Stan Tonko. But I mean, he would never come in with a fixed form, and I'd say, well, this is the album I want to make, and it's going to be so long, we're going to do this piece and

that piece, and that piece never worked that way. We just came in, we did sessions, and between then and the next session, Miles would come into the editing room with Tio, they would listen, they would analyze it, do editing on it, and that would give him an idea of what they had and what they want to achieve in the next session. That's why to this day, I don't even know myself, which sessions we used for specific albums. Recording Engineer Ray Moore. If he wants to come in and splice, it's all right with me, so he was doing that. And it appeared to me that we were taking out all the bass solos, and we were checking out some spots, and he, in the music, I guess before, bass solos starts, he points to what would have been a three, if he were counting, a three in a measure, and he wanted to cut out there. And then after I marked that reel off, a minute or so of tape, or two minutes, whatever it was, and then he'd look at me and say, oh, it's your coming right there.

And I said, Miles, if I come in right there, will you point it? I'm going to come in on a four. So I'm going out on a three, coming in on a four. We're going to have a beat missing, as deep looked at me, and he says, it makes no f***ing difference. Who the hell's going to know? I'm going out on a three, coming in on a three, coming in on a three, coming in on a three. Bitches Brew was a huge commercial success, selling over 500,000 copies in his first year, while most jazz albums sold only 10,000.

Miles did, in fact, bring it all back home with his Bitches Brew band. The grateful days feel mess. It was one of the first all electric bands they had an electric bass, electric guitars, and electric pianos. It was so unlike any jazz group that it had ever existed before, because it had multiple instruments for one thing, sometimes two guitars, sometimes two pianos, sometimes two drummers. It kept changing, and the music was completely simultaneous, in other words, it was more like free jazz with a Bougaloo groove than it was like any other kind of jazz that had occurred before that. And it was revolutionary, and it wasn't so much exploratory, it was synthetic, it brought together many different ways of looking at music. One of the major achievements in music of our century, if I may say so.

I can't stand a music, music awful, saxophonist, Andrew White. Now I didn't, I haven't addressed this yet about his business, you know, but you know this tremendous business aspect of his whole decision to go over there. But you know, as legend has it, if he won't sound enough records with Wayne Shaw and Tony Williams in him, the man just took him in the studio and say what is, if you want an advance, you know, this is what you're going to have to play and get some money, you know. And so that's the way it all started, you know, but that has nothing to do with the music. With the album Bitches Brew, Miles had gone over to rock and opened up a Pandora's box to the jazz world. Williams could either follow Miles and make the money or stay true to jazz and stay poor. The word sellout was in the air, saxophonist, Gary Barthes. I'd probably thought that he was selling out, now later after the fact I got into Jimmy

Interesting, I saw how bad he, you know, he was a great musician. But because of my background, you know, jazz coming from jazz, I couldn't accept a rock musician being on the level of a cold train or Miles. See, Miles could see that at, you know, at that time, I couldn't see it. Jazz writer, Matt Hintoff. You can't take away from Miles what he, what he is so that he can play a half a chorus and you want to hear some more. And then the noise comes in. And I mean noise. I mean, I like the news to say there'll be, I mean, it sounds corny, there'll be two kinds of music good and bad. And I think that's bad music. George Duke. Critics warm out because he started putting the rock thing in his music. And then when he put the funk thing in his music, people said, what is Miles doing?

You know, when he lost a lot of fans, but he stuck his guns, that's what he wanted to do. Singer and songwriter, Johnny Mitchell. You put on a Miles record and it does something to you. Because it does something to you, you go out and buy the next, you put it on. If it doesn't do something to you, right away instantly, you may not be ready for the changes that out that album contain. You may come back to it 10 years later and have gone through the appropriate life changes to be able to channel that communication because your life and it match now, you know, like where, you know, you miss time with ideas and things, you know, that's a trouble. If you get too far in the pop arena to stay on the beam with the public is impossible because they get a concept of you and they can't see anything you do for the concept of you. You're the same face. You're the same name. Oh, I heard that. No matter how many times you reinvent yourself, you know, you can't change your name and you can't, you know, and you can't decronalyze yourself.

In 1970, the president of Columbia Records, Clyde Davis, suggested to Miles that he abandoned the jazz clubs where he had made his reputation and began to play the new, larger halls like the Fillmore in San Francisco to reach the big young rock audience. Procutionists, I heard to Mordiera, who joined Miles' band at this time. We used to have the great full dad in the same deal with us that a few more last. I mean, this was crazy and the audience, they were rockin' rollers, man, they were totally crazy. Everybody was an asset. They would dance anything. I remember in San Francisco, man, we would play this very complex stuff like, was like a ramble kind of thing and the people they were dancing, they were rolling the floor and just, you know, it was like, wow.

The great full dad's a real mesh. Frankly, I was embarrassed to have to follow Miles. I felt there's no way that we can follow Miles. I had never heard the tapes from that show and I don't think I'd want to because I felt we played like shit. So, but the best, the great thing about it was, it didn't matter. I got to be on stage behind the amps when Miles was playing and everybody in the band was up there with their, with their chins down to their navels. Miles is open, ears open too. Go, go.

Music Miles has banned by now always containing electric guitar and percussionists, both the acoustic and electric bassists, and two electric piano players. And once again, his band was the springboard for players who would later redefine the music. Among them were Czechorea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawano, Billy Cobham, John McLaughlin, and Tume, and Keith

Jarrett. Even among musicians who had reservations about Miles' current musical direction, few turned down the chance to join his band. I wasn't exactly turned on by the band. I wanted to play with Miles. Pianist, Keith Jarrett. And that was already an understanding with Miles, which is why even though it sounds weird, my direction didn't get changed. In some ways it was regressive because the so-called free playing on those instruments is never free. You can't make an electric instrument free. It's not sensitive enough to be pushed around. When we did those things at the Fillmore that are crazy, I mean, there was an incredible amount of will involved, but I don't think of that as very interesting music. Saxe of Onus, Gary Bots. When I went with Miles, it was all this electricity, and he

had to wash up pedals, and they were so loud. I mean, that band was so loud, Keith would crank that thing up, and I was the only thing acoustic. And I could tear my lips up, really. I had a lot of nights. I didn't think I was going to stay long, but I grew to like it. Miles has started a whole new genre of music, now called Jazz Fusion. He taught his musicians to use the basic vocabularies of rock and funk in open, jazz-style improvisations. Drummer, Lenny White. There's four major fusion bands, and I will refute anybody like this. Tommy Williams Lifetime, Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Return to Forever.

Now, the principal elements of all of those bands were on the Bitchesbury record. John McLaughlin from Tommy Williams Lifetime, Chick Carrier, Return to Forever, Myself, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Zalner with Weather Report, and John McLaughlin with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. So like that album, you created something, there was no evolutionary part, there was a creation, there was something new on our rise, something different, you know. And Bitchesbury was totally different. And from that, man, all those other bands came, and like you had a new movement. Miles has succeeded in building a following among the young white rock audience. He also

wanted to build his black teenage audience. Already serious young black musicians were listening closely to Miles. To who were listening carefully were Maurice and Verdeen White, who went on to form Earth, Wind, and Fire. Verdeen White. This live was already a legend by that time. Hendrix was a legend. All of a sudden, Columbia Records and Warner Brothers discovered that there was black music for profit, that you mean Niggas by albums, whereas we always had a history of buying 45s. As the mid-70s came along, everybody bought albums. It was a regular thing. So it was more blacks who in a lot of ways were competing, you know, in style and look, for different reasons. You had Herbie and Anne were coming up with their groups, which were smoking. Glowflin, Returntrue for Ever, all those cats were coming, which all of those guys played with

Miles at one time or another. Then they got famous on their own. So it made Miles probably be part of a lot of the guys. So in order for him to be ahead, he had to push music, you know, which probably confused him because people weren't paying attention to him as much. Miles was at another crossroads. His teaching and his music had spawned another generation of innovators, who were becoming very successful, artistically and commercially. But Miles had lost his place as the top box office drawing jazz and was now competing with his former players. Again, Keith Jarrett. He was running out of players. He was running out of people who could bridge as many worlds as he heard in his head because of all the musical interest. You know, all the things he liked in music were very disparate. He wanted this Motown bass player for a very good reason, rhythmically. But he had to trade knowledge away. You know, he had to have a bass

player who didn't know what the hell the band was doing. Outside of this little rhythm pattern, he was asked to play. Eventually, when Jack left, he had to find drummers that he and I talked about drummers for months. No, we couldn't come up with anybody. So I think one by one, the players were not anymore in that other world that Miles was in a way coming from. And he had to make a choice, you know, what am I going to go crazy trying to find there? You know, how am I going to replace this band? This was the first time since Miles played with Charlie Parker that he was following

others as much as leading them. Doing this period, Miles' dependency on drugs increased. In 1975, suffering from a bleeding ulcer, Miles broke up his band and went into what was supposed to be a temporary retirement. But this break stretched into a long ton of drug abuse and psychotic behavior. During this period, Miles went for as long as a year to time without leaving his house. The actress, Cicely Tyson, re-entered Miles' life, trying to help him drop his heavy cocaine and alcohol habits. Miles Davis, I asked the doctor, I said, why am I in shape and I have diarrhea and I'm sweating? He said, because he don't ever close your eyes and you're almost an alcoholic. So your liver is large. So I stopped drinking, stopped using coke, because one day I went to pick

up something. My hand was like this and Cicely causing. So she was in Africa, so she came back and my hand was like this for about a month. So I stopped smoking, stopped drinking, stopped snoring coke. By 1980, Miles hadn't recorded or performed in five years. In fact, he hadn't even picked up his trumpet once. CBS executive, Dr. George Butler, became interested in getting Miles out of retirement. A number of executives had tried to get Miles back into recording and of course each person was unsuccessful. And I thought, well, let me at least demonstrate to Miles that he

has a friend here. And of course, my ulterior motive was to get Miles back into the studio, but I was not going there talking specifically about recording. I thought I would focus my attention on three areas that I knew he enjoyed talking about. Of course they were boxing, cars and clothes. Butler nervously called Miles one afternoon. To his surprise, Miles asked him to come over the next day. Miles kept the house very dark. The blinds were pooled, the shades were pooled. And as I recall, the only illumination was this advent television that he kept on 24 hours. And I remember going into Miles' place, not being able to see and feeling my way because I couldn't see where I was going. I know Miles was leading me up these stairs and I didn't know where I was going and I actually felt my way up to the second level of his brown

song. And I really can't tell you what was in the apartment of all the months that I spent there. I never really could see anything, you know. Butler went to visit Miles every morning, five days a week for six months. For the first five months, the two men spoke about cars, boxing and women, but not once about music. And I was getting a little bored thinking that I'm just spending my wheels that nothing's going to happen, you know. And Miles had a little piano. It wasn't even a spin it because it had less than 48 keys, you know. And perhaps only five or ten of the keys worked. And one day he said to me in his tone of voice that he had some ideas. And he said, listen to this. And he played a chord. And I could only hear one note because the keys weren't working. And evidently he heard it in his head. But I was still trying to figure out whether this

was a diminished chord or augmented chord or whatever, you know. But at least he was talking about music. Eventually, Butler persuaded Miles to go back into the studio to make a new record. Most of the jazz world had by now written him off as a husband. But the idea that Miles Davis was going to come out of retirement and record had people buzzing with excitement. At the point of Miles returned to the studio, he had not even touched a trumpet in five years. Well, the first thing I noticed when he walked in was that there was no horn. And I was looking at the fellows I had brought in and the sum of money that I was paying them and the hotels. And many of them were ordering room service sufficient for ten people. And all I could think of was dollars, you know. And here's Miles Davis, no horn. And what I didn't realize was that he was orchestrating things. He wanted to make certain he had the right composition of musicians, you know. And of course, when Miles found the right

combination, then I guess he felt like it's time for me to come in with my horn. Now, this took approximately two weeks. He came in with his horn. And of course, I got excited then. I thought, whoa, Miles is going to record, you know, he's going to play the horn. And he put the horn up to his mouth. And of course, without the embassure, all you got was a win and that frighten me because I thought I've paid out a fortune now for two weeks this fall as a man town. And Miles can produce a tone. Each day, Miles' lips got stronger. And I could hear at least a facsimile of a tone. And the thing that impressed me about Miles and his still impresses me today is his power to bounce back. His resiliency.

Miles Davis finally returned to the music scene in 1981 with the album, Man with the Horn. And on Thanksgiving Day that year, he and Cicely Tyson were married. Miles' musical direction was still influenced by the 60 stars like James Brown and Sline the Family Stone. But it was now also inspired by the new Black Dance music that had hit the scene in his absence, most notably, that of Prince. As always, Miles was deeply concerned with rhythms. Miles Davis, I go, Prince, if you listen to the bass drum and on his records,

if you write something, you'll hear that. Then he'll write something over it. And if you really listen to some of his stuff, he uses, like, nursery rhymes and things. Press uses everything. My drummers, I use two drums because I like poly rhythms. My drums are looking at me like this. What a jeep, I said. I said, just think of, um, my mom and little baby love shorting, shorting, and probably to pop, to pop, boom, pop, whatever, to pop, to pop, what he locks it in when you tell him what to listen for. In the early 80s, Miles began recovering himself and making music again. Many of his fans

and fellow musicians admired Miles' new playing, but could not embrace the vehicle he was using to play over. I love the way Miles sounds now, and every time I hear him play, I understand why he has going behind him, what he has, but when he isn't playing, it's worse than ever. pianist walked to Bishop Junior. That really could relate to what he was doing musically, and like the music didn't start anywhere, didn't go anywhere, and it didn't end anywhere. I went backstage, I was talking to Miles, I asked him, what's the Miles? What are you doing?

So he didn't answer me. I said, what are you doing? He didn't answer me. I said, a tap to pay Miles. What are you doing? He said, you know what? I said, what? People launched shit. End of conversation. I thought about that. I also thought about the fact that the reason why he was so innovative and led the stuff was so low with his back, he could care less about people and what people wanted. We played for the integrity of the music, record producer, Quincy Jones. Everybody started talking about selling out menu. If you want to sell out, you've got to have something to sell. Because there was a time where we all believe that, if we wanted to, just because we decided to and condescended to being accessible to the public, we could do it. That's bullshit. Your soul has got to be pure

nothing. The public is not going for anything that you don't believe in. You're less the boy. I don't know when this is that he ain't happening. I mean, he's up to date and he has his sound. I mean, you know, these people definitely work. I mean, I don't believe that being good to me, I mean, like, I ain't every day on my hands. I'm great. Yeah. Miles' new music and style in the 80s seem almost to personally offend some of his fans,

especially those who knew him back when. Those whose own growth was influenced by Miles Davis, jazz critic Martin Williams. The last time I heard him, he was a nightmare to me. He was standing up on stage, you know, what looked like a whole Halloween fright suit, stalking around, playing one or two plaintive notes with these speakers on either side of the table, who were bigger than this room. Anyway, I was bigger than the room, I first heard him play it. But the thing it bothered me the most was this deafening sound. And I felt about that the way I feel about so much rock music now. It gets louder and louder and louder to me because it's very frustrated, it's not saying anything. It doesn't have any story and the musicians are so frustrated that they just keep turning

it up and turning it up and turning it up and turning it up and turning. And I felt the same way but, and I'll tell you the truth, it gave me physical pains across my chest that just the booming of those speakers. And I had to get up and leave and I felt so sad because that guy has been able to make beautiful music out of the dumbest pop song that attracts him, which, you know, something jazz musicians have always done. But almost anything he could turn into something very personal and very special. And yet I didn't hear anything coming out of this. Producer Tommy LaPuma. Listen, if I want to go out and hear B-Bop, I'll go and listen to one of the 4,000 albums I have in my record collection down down in the bin because that's when the shit was happening, you know. You know, for me to just go in and make the same records over and over again, man, would

just be the most boring thing in the world. I think Miles feels the same way, you know. In 1986, Miles left Columbia Records and went to Warner Brothers. He collaborated with his former bass player, Marcus Miller, and producer Tommy LaPuma. His first record for Warner Brothers was entitled Tutu, for South African Cleric and Liberation Activist Desmond Tutu. Tommy LaPuma. I don't know if we get when we did Tutu and he put his solo on there. You know, that was like the first time down, man, that was it. And I kept looking around the machine to make sure it was recording because he was so good and I was like, man, I can't believe I'm getting this on tape. Yeah. .

. . . . And the next day when I spoke to him, you know what I was just telling him, just how excited I was over what we got in a great ensemble. And I asked him if he was coming down and he said, man, he said, I got to take a couple days off, man, he said. And that was hard. So I realized that he had just, I mean, he had given it all. He just gave his all to the point of exhaustion. And there's nothing else you can ask out of any,

any artist, a position player, you know, is to just give you, you know, everything he's got. . These, these little particles of pastel comes, they come in like crumbs and rocks, and you put them on and when they dry, flat, they won't come off. But when, when they're in texture like this, see, it's a knot line. So you can either leave it or work with it, you know. Miles' need for expression is not limited to music. Over the past 10 years, he has spent an increasing amount of time painting. For him, there are clear parallels between music and visual arts. Here is Miles' while painting at his California home.

You can balance this, I'm balancing this section right here. See this section of that? I have this too much. See it? The day he's taking a whole different shape. But I like that shape of potato, you know, like down and across. And I like contouring motion in music and art. And all this work, you'll see that I have a line that goes like this. And one like this. You know, see this is straight. Like this way, this way, this way, this way. All of a sudden you see this line here, you see. Which makes it move, like in the sky when you see a fall in star. Over here, it makes the pattern move.

It makes you come alive. You know, see that straightness calls so much money. See all the time I'm putting it in here. You understand? See this little bit in here? That's what you pay for that, right? And on top of that, my name plus my name. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? I think so good, but he did it. My old days was an artist and all aspects of his life. The way he carries until the way he dresses, the way you know what I'm saying?

That's a true artist. He changed not only music, he changed the way people thought about music. He changed the way people thought about presenting music. He changed the way people thought about themselves. Miles has wanted a few that survives 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s going into the 90s. You know, that's going into a 60th year. And that's a long time to survive and survive on your uniqueness. His taste is so beautiful. The line, just the line drawing of it is like Matisse or Picasso. So you know, maybe it's because he draws. Maybe that added interest creates a dimension to his playing. To see the line before your eyes as it comes out. To say, oh, how we go there instead of there. You know, he's just a great artist.

He's just a great artist. Basically what he does is he brings his essence. And he reshapes it like a painter. He brings it through each decade. The parallel between him and Picasso is really applicable. You know, the blue period, cubism, you know, it's what it's about. And he jumps into it. He sticks his foot into it. He's got a curious mind. He explores it. He's constantly creating to deal with evidence that he's really, really on a live human day. And he is. If I write some music, I want a sound. You use contra-emotion. You can do that in art too. From one corner to the other. This comes out. This comes up.

Sometimes I get through the pain of looking at an artist. There's no fears there. You know, you have to be loose when you're an artist. When I look at a piece of art, it just shows you what you can do musically. You know, there's no, you know, no, no. There's no rules. Music Miles Davis on trumpet back by Barrel Booker in a group here at Birdland. And here is one of Miles' originals called Squirrel. Miles Davis, retirement and rebirth, was written and produced by Steve Roland, Quincy Troop,

Larry Abrams, and Jay Allison. Historical and musical consultant, Lewis Porter, archival audio restoration, Joe Waters, editing and production support by Amy Staples, Chris Engels, David LaValle, and Chris Kellett. The narrator is Danny Glover. Special thanks to the Painted Pride Arts Center, Michael Ella, Tom Stevens, Skip Peasy, Steve Wolliet Panasonic, Mark Gonzalez at Sony, Shelley Perkins Roland, Tina Eggloff, Margaret Porter, and the staff of American Public Radio. Principal funding for the Miles Davis Radio Project was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional major funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the William Penn Foundation of Philadelphia, and the American Public Radio Program Fund. For the Miles Davis Radio Project, executive producer and producer Steve Roland, co-producer Quincy Troop, co-producer and mixed engineer, Jay Allison, copyright 1990, Zook Productions.

Yeah, well, Miles Davis. This is the American Public Radio Network.