3 Miles’s Mode, Part Two

Birth of the Cool is vital to our story because it is an early example of a pattern that Miles would set for the rest of his career. In many ways the music was a deliberate attempt to cool the flames of bop. By emphasizing lyricism, using softer-edged tones and tight arrangements rather than simply a series of solos, the nonet played modern jazz that lacks the ferocity and roiling quality of orthodox bebop.

Those involved in the group were not the only ones taking this “cool” approach. Other musicians also aimed for a lyrical quality. About the same time, for example, the pianist George Shearing formed a quintet that played what was called “bop for the people.” This music, too, employed many of the harmonic advances of bop but was nevertheless cooler in texture and possessed a singable melodicism.

Ironically, Miles and the nonet were not rewarded for playing more accessible bop. However, the cool jazz, played mainly by white musicians, was greatly influenced by Miles’s band and would find a large, primarily white audience in the early 1950s. But Miles himself would have little interest in cool jazz after the nonet disbanded. A further irony is that the music of the group was arguably superior to anything done later during the years of the cool-jazz movement.

Now we come upon another mystery. In almost any history of jazz, Miles’s development is usually portrayed like this: he was originally influenced by Dizzy, but when he discovered that he lacked the ability to play on that kind of virtuosic level, he developed a style in which his lack of technical mastery was not important. Thelonious Monk’s development is often portrayed in a similar manner—in both cases these artists’ evolution is based on their ability to make tasty musical lemonade out of the lemons of their limited technique.

At one time I myself believed this version of history, but I have since come to a very different conclusion. Miles had always maintained that one of the most rewarding musical experiences of his life was his practice sessions with the young trumpeter Fats Navarro. Navarro, who would die from drug-related causes when he was only twenty-six, was a brilliant trumpeter, a great bop virtuoso second only to Dizzy Gillespie. He was also the chief influence on Clifford Brown, another magnificent trumpeter who was fated to die young.

Miles claimed that he himself could play on the same virtuosic level as Navarro and that Navarro, in turn, was able to play ballads as soulfully as Miles. I was always very skeptical about this. How was it possible that the guy who, in Billy Eckstine’s words, “could hardly blow [his] nose, let alone [his] trumpet” in the mid-1940s became a virtuoso on the same level as the prodigious Navarro? Yet Sonny Rollins has told me that he heard Miles and Fats practice together, and it was one of the most exciting musical experiences of that genius’s life. And now we even have aural proof that Miles’s unlikely-sounding story was true.

The Birth of the Cool sides that the band recorded for Capitol were done in three sessions, two in 1949 and the third in March of 1950. In August 1949, five months after the second Cool session, Miles went to Paris to perform at the Paris Festival de International Jazz. He was coleading a group with one of the most important composers and arrangers to arise out of bebop, Tadd Dameron, who played piano in the group. The intent of the festival was to provide an overview of jazz history; the Davis-Dameron group was the representative of bebop.

Dameron had been leading some of the most interesting modern jazz groups of the era, often using Fats Navarro. Perhaps as a result of the Navarro influence, Miles played with a virtuosity that is astonishing. At times he is easily comparable in technique with Navarro, who, as previously noted, was one of the most technically adept of all bop trumpeters. Miles plays on the full range of his horn—high, fast, and with brassy brilliance. The contrast between this performance and his style on the Parker recordings of the time and, especially, his solos on the recordings of his nonet is startling. The nightly trial by fire of his years with Parker had forced him to evolve at an amazing pace, especially when one remembers his incompetent soloing in the very first session with Bird, Miles’s solo debut on records.

So what was going on here? In some ways the answer is simple—Miles chose the style he pursued. He had not been exaggerating when he said that he was able to keep up with Navarro (which also means, of course, that Sonny Rollins’s memory about those sessions is accurate). He was not forced to play the way he did because he lacked technique, at least not at this point. Rather, he developed a style that reflected his inner being. Every aspect of his style was in place because that was Miles’s deliberate choice.

Much later in his career, Miles said in an interview that he always tried to keep in mind the context in which he was playing and would always try to adapt his own style to what was going on in the current musical environment. He said that if he had played with Count Basie, his performance would have been far different from, say, that of his own small groups. Undoubtedly, he developed a style playing with Bird that offered a contrast with Parker, giving the music of the group both variety and depth. This contrast—between virtuosic saxophone and lyrical trumpet—would be a pattern for most of his small group work for years to come. After a blistering solo by John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins, Miles’s solos, with their use of space, melancholy lyricism, and pliant tone, could be devastating. Of course, this was no accident—perhaps more than anything else, Miles’s sensitivity and intuition in the use of contrasting aural textures was almost equal to the grand master of sonic architecture, Duke Ellington.

So here, in this contrast between Miles’s playing in Paris and that of the nonet sides, we have the first solid evidence of his skill as musical strategist. Perhaps when he walked the tightrope next to Charlie Parker night after night, he realized that he must make hard choices and then put himself and everything he had behind those choices. He would never again let himself become cornered—because now he had a secret: his knowledge of his own freedom, despite the difficulties of a racist society or the many complexities of the kind of music he had chosen to explore. He knew there would always be choices, and perhaps this knowledge caused him to be what some people called arrogant. Even if he was arrogant, though, it was an attitude based on ultimate self-knowledge and the freedom that comes from such knowledge.

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It was just about this time, the late 1940s, that Miles became addicted to heroin. It is strange that it happened after Miles left Charlie Parker’s group. Drug addiction had become a plague throughout the jazz world during this period, so it was not surprising that Miles finally succumbed. Being an addict was, in the words of Dexter Gordon, “part of the [jazz] social scene at the time.”1 In the bebop subculture, drug addiction was almost mandatory for admission. There were a few, like Dizzy Gillespie, who remained untouched by the dope epidemic, but most young jazzmen felt that heroin was necessary to play at the level that bop demanded. According to Sonny Rollins, using dope also reflected the profound alienation of young jazzmen from mainstream American society. As Sonny put it: “Using drugs was, in a strange way, a negation of the money ethic. Because guys were saying, ‘I don’t care about this, I don’t care how I dress or how I look, all I care about is music.’ Using drugs was kind of a way for the boppers to express what they thought about American capitalist values.”2

Perhaps Miles did not become addicted while he was with Bird as a natural consequence of his awareness that Parker’s life had become a mess. By the late 1940s Miles’s career was no longer in high gear, probably in part because of the disappointing reception that the nonet had received from the jazz public.

Whatever the reason, after he became addicted Miles was increasingly undependable, and club owners were reluctant to hire him. Throughout the early 1950s Miles got very few gigs. However, he did record under his own leadership for the Prestige label. During the first years of his relationship with the label, he did a series of inconsistent sides in which a number of up-and-coming young players were heard, including saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean, pianist Walter Bishop, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. On one date he had both Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker playing tenor sax.

Nevertheless, the early 1950s were the lowest years of Miles’s life, both personally and professionally. It was in these years, however, that he discovered his mature voice and developed a depth of feeling that can be attained only through struggle and hard experience, what jazzmen call “playing your dues.” I wonder whether the darker shades of feeling in Kind of Blue would have existed if it had not been for these years of nightmare.

Finally, in 1954 Miles made up his mind that he had had enough of addiction. As he put it, “I made up my mind I was getting off dope. I was sick and tired of it. You know, you can get tired of anything. You can even get tired of being scared.” Miles decided to get straight by himself. He simply stopped using dope and sweated it out over a few horrible days of sickness and devastating pain. But he made it through. I do not think it is going too far to say that this experience gave him the inner strength to take control of his life and music. It is the kind of experience that ultimately touches a person’s mettle and strengthens his resolve to take his future into his own hands. Now nothing could prevent Miles from going down any path he chose.

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Not long after the ordeal of kicking dope, Miles led a remarkable recording session for Prestige. Part of this session was released under the title Miles Davis and the Jazz Giants, and the name was not just public relations ballyhoo. In addition to the superb Prestige in-house rhythm section of bassist Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke (the founder of bop drumming), the other musicians on the date were Milt Jackson and Thelonious Monk. Every track is sterling, but on Milt Jackson’s medium blues “Bags’ Groove,” Miles plays a perfectly constructed solo in which he creates an atmosphere unlike that of any other musician. He had redefined the blues on his own very personal terms. It is a shattering solo whose cool exterior barely conceals the heat of its emotions. This is music created by someone who had seen and inhabited the darkest side of life yet was able to create from the experience something of rare beauty. At this point we are obviously listening to a master improviser. The solo is a clear precursor to Miles’s playing on Kind of Blue five years later, in which he was able to produce solo statements that had a similar melodic logic and emotional ambience.

The following year Miles played at the second Newport Jazz Festival in an ad hoc group that included baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, and tenorman Zoot Sims. The climax of this group’s performance came when Miles played a gorgeous version of Monk’s famous “’Round Midnight.” It was the talk of the festival, and after the show George Avakian, an A&R man for Columbia Records, asked Miles whether he would be interested in recording for the company. This was the break that Miles needed.

Shortly after the Newport show, Miles put together a regular working group. He chose Philly Joe Jones, one of the rising stars in jazz, as his drummer. The pianist was Red Garland, who was known for his lightness of touch and an ability to create singable melody. One reason Miles chose Garland was that the pianist could, when he wanted to, play in a style similar to that of a Chicago pianist named Ahmad Jamal. Jamal had a unique style that, according to some critics, was not much more than cocktail music. What Miles admired about Jamal was his feather-light touch and ability to use large blocks of space in his playing, implying rather than stating musical ideas. However, there were people who were not entranced with Jamal’s music. The critic Whitney Balliet describes a typical Jamal performance: “Everything was blotted out but the attempt to guess when he would next lift his hands to hit the piano. It was trying work.”3 (I have often wondered whether Jamal was an enthusiast of John Cage.) But under Jamal’s influence Miles expanded what he had learned from Thelonious Monk about space, and this would be one of the earmarks of Miles’s genius: his understanding of when, and how, to make silence work.

Miles chose a talented teenager, Paul Chambers, as his bassist. His problem was finding an appropriate tenorman. First choice was Sonny Rollins, but Sonny was off the scene, cleaning up his own heroin habit. So Jones and Chambers convinced Miles that the right man for the job was a journeyman tenor player named John Coltrane. Miles had actually played with Coltrane early in the decade in a band that also included Rollins. But it was only for a single gig, and Miles had not been all that impressed. Reluctantly he decided to hire the Philadelphian for the group. This quintet would eventually be considered one of the greatest in jazz history.

Miles made several recordings with the group, including four albums that came out of two marathon sessions that he had done in order to satisfy his contract with Prestige. The way Miles recorded these albums demonstrates another career pattern. He merely had the group play its usual repertoire in single takes, just as if they were in a live performance. Miles’s philosophy of recording was never to do more than one take of each tune, if possible—two at the most. There are some jazz musicians (including Coltrane, when he recorded under his own leadership) who insist on doing take after take, hoping to come as close to perfection as possible. But for Miles, doing innumerable takes meant losing the spontaneity and freshness of thought that to him was what gave jazz its edge. This was also the philosophy that he brought to bear in recording Kind of Blue, most of which was recorded in the first take—an awesome feat.

Miles’s work with this group eventually made him one of the most popular figures in jazz. His ballad performances—which he played with a Harmon mute—created a poignant and intimate sonic effect and were especially important in winning him a large audience. As Joe Goldberg wrote about Miles’s performance of ballads, “When Miles played ballads, mute tight against the microphone (he seems to play microphone as much as trumpet) he reveals an area of tenderness and sensitivity which is rarely visible in his public aspect. These performances, in the emotion they evoke, are comparable to nothing in jazz.”4

Well, Goldberg’s point is not entirely correct, at least if you consider Frank Sinatra a jazz singer, which I do. Miles was a great admirer of the crooner, and I believe that Sinatra had been a major influence on the trumpeter’s ability to create such intimacy with his audience. Like Sinatra, Miles projected a strongly masculine persona, which made the tenderness and poignancy of his ballads especially moving. Miles seems to be speaking through his music to say something that is deeply personal. For a man embarrassed to expose the most sensitive aspects of his being, this kind of performance is extraordinary indeed.

But Miles was also famous for his fluffs, and in his ballads these little slip-ups make him seem even more vulnerable. I have often wondered whether Miles deliberately made fluffs in certain spots as a calculated effect. Knowing what a master strategist he was, I would not find such a ploy improbable.

By this time Miles had mastered the most remarkable aspect of his style, the use of silence: he was able to condense complex musical ideas into a kind of shorthand, implying more than he stated, knowing when holding back was more meaningful than simply filling the space with notes. As Miles himself put it, “You don’t have to play all the notes; you just have to play the pretty ones.” This technique made the contrast with his saxophonist, John Coltrane, even greater than it had been in Bird’s group. Trane often seemed to be creating byzantine towers of notes that overwhelmed the ear and mind. Add to this Red Garland’s light and straightforward approach to melody, along with Jones’s dominating drums, and the brilliance of Miles’s calculations for his group become obvious.

Virtually every musician who has ever played with Miles can testify that he rarely gave them much direction. Miles hired only musicians who, from his perspective, had something to add to his music. If they were playing with him, it meant that they were already good enough and did not need his input. It was not just that Miles did not want to provide direction; more to the point, he fervently believed that spontaneity can be achieved only if a musician finds his own way. When a musician is playing genuinely personal, idiosyncratic music, he can improvise with a true sense of discovery.

Despite its success, the group had its problems. Coltrane was struggling with his horn, and at times he seemed to falter. The birth pains of his burgeoning mature style were partly responsible. Undoubtedly his addiction to both heroin and alcohol played a large part as well. The entire band, in fact—with the exception of Miles himself—had similar problems, so much so that the group became known to jazz fans as the “booze and dope band.” The musicians were a constant source of irritation to Miles; they would show up late or nod off on the stand and were constantly demanding advances from Miles so they could score their dope. Finally, Miles disbanded the group in March of 1957.

Now that Miles was with a large record company, he was able to do some projects that were simply not possible with the record labels he had recorded with earlier in his career. In particular, he wanted to do a large-scale orchestral piece with his old friend Gil Evans. The resulting album, Miles Ahead, is magnificent, one of the great big-band jazz albums in the history of the music. Evans was not really a composer. Rather, as George Russell has put it, he “recompose[d] existing material.” He had a command of orchestral colors second only to that of Duke Ellington, and there are even times when he surpasses Duke. Miles switched from trumpet to flugelhorn for this date; the bigger horn gave his tone an even softer texture. His soloing on this album clearly shows the influence of Jamal: Miles uses notes extremely economically, playing simple, perfectly phrased, melodic ideas and using space to constantly imply more than what he is actually playing.

At this point Miles’s career took two divergent paths. One was that of his small group work, for which he demanded genuine spontaneity, both in live performances and in the recording studio. The other was the series of orchestral pieces on which he collaborated with Gil Evans—the most famous being Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Miles Ahead. As we now know, the recording of those albums was painstaking. Evans was a perfectionist who was never able to feel satisfied with a less than superlative rendering of his charts. Miles and Evans rarely performed outside the studio, although there were exceptions (such as Miles’s famous Carnegie Hall concert of the early 1960s, when he performed both with his small group and with a large band led by Evans).

Miles had a fascinating approach to playing with the Evans ensemble. He would talk about his playing on these albums as if he were a Method actor—that is, he felt he had to assume a specific role when playing this music. For example, he said that when he played “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” for the Porgy and Bess album, he had to think of exactly what Porgy was trying to say: “I had to think the lyrics, repeating the refrain over and over again in my head. I mean, how many times can you say, ‘Bess, you is my woman’? You can say, ‘Bess, you is my woman,’ ‘Bess, you is my bitch,’ ‘Bess, you is my whore.…’ It fucked me up.” And he had an even more complicated problem recording Sketches of Spain—“Here I was, a black man from East St. Louis trying to think like a Spaniard, like a matador in Spain. I had to think like he would for every note I played.”

Miles never talked about this kind of role playing for his small group work, and I am sure it had no part in his creation of that music. While on the bandstand with his small groups, he not only felt free to be completely himself but also knew that the creation of music reflecting one’s unique sensibility was an almost sacred aspect of the African American musical tradition. With Evans’s work, he had to take on another personality in order to fit his playing into Evans’s dramatic arrangements, as if he were a singer in an opera. Actually, Miles had to go beyond what an actor does because the actor’s main concern is to convince his audience that he is the character he is portraying. For Miles, this preparation was all internal. He had to convince himself that he was another person so he could play with the same integrity that existed in his small group work.

As Miles’s star continued to rise, so did the criticism from both jazz writers and some fans. Miles never talked to his audience, never introduced the tunes or the other players. Unlike Dizzy Gillespie, he did not crack jokes onstage, and at times he actually turned his back to the audience (although Miles claimed that he did this just to better hear the drummer). Yet his supposed arrogance did nothing but increase the public’s fascination with him.

Criticism of his taciturn stage manner greatly irritated Miles. After all, he pointed out, classical performers were never expected to introduce tunes or the other musicians. Miles thought of banter in particular as a sort of minstrelsy. For him, all he owed his audience was the best music he could make. Why would they want anything more? Many people wondered whether Miles was actually more of a showman than he would admit. After all, this sort of insolent behavior had become part of his legend, but Miles was at heart a shy man who was not comfortable with his admiring public. He became a master at keeping his fans at bay, but by so doing he earned the reputation of being a misanthrope.

Much of Miles’s growing fame related to extramusical facets of his life, such as his wardrobe. He was always on top of the current wave of men’s fashions, and his choice of clothing complemented his stunning good looks and undeniable charisma. Even people with little interest in jazz often had one or two of his albums. Particularly among college students, owning a Miles Davis album was proof that they were hip. With his beautiful girlfriends, expensive clothes, and cars, Miles was to a degree hijacked by the Hugh Hefner mentality of the time. However, when he spoke for the very first Playboy interview (which at the time was a coup for the magazine, since Miles rarely indulged the press), he revealed that he was not exactly on the same wavelength as the typical Playboy reader. Miles was brusque and often cutting in his denunciation of American racism, making it clear that he had no interest in having anything to do with “the kind of man who reads Playboy.” His angry feelings about the racism of most white men was at the time considered shocking. It certainly was not what anybody would have called a great career move. Unlike so many prominent individuals who learn how to parse their public statements, Miles usually spoke with blunt honesty.

Miles was now in a unique position for a modern jazzman, and with unique opportunities. He had become enormously popular. He could have merely continued pursuing the music that had made him famous, featuring ballads like “My Funny Valentine” or “When I Fall in Love,” or the kind of medium-tempo tunes that his group played so well, such as “Bye Bye Blackbird” or “Diane.” He could have played it safe and remained a major star and celebrity. Like Louis Armstrong or Dave Brubeck, he could even have eventually played Las Vegas. But that sort of fame and success was unthinkable to Miles. Time magazine discovered just how unthinkable when it attempted to do a cover story on Miles. After Miles threw their photographers out of the Village Vanguard, they decided that maybe they should do a story on a more amenable modern jazzman. (Strangely enough, they chose Thelonious Monk, who talked in riddles; but at least he allowed them to photograph him.)

Miles was far too mercurial to allow himself to be trapped into a static identity, especially one constructed by someone else, including the public. More than most people, he was able to come to terms with himself, to be comfortable with being exactly the kind of man he wanted to be without concessions to anyone. He had disdain for a society that made him rich but kept him stereotyped simply because of the color of his skin. More than that, his insatiable curiosity continued to drive him forward. He fully understood that in his art form, standing still was a kind of death. Moving forward was all he knew how to do.

Yet in some ways Miles was musically conservative. He did not want jazz to develop so far into left field that many listeners would feel that they had been left behind. Despite his supposed contempt for the audience (something he vigorously denied), he always wanted his music to be accessible on at least some level.

After he disbanded the quintet, Miles did a number of projects without a working group, including the first album with Gil Evans and the sound track for a French film directed by Louis Malle titled Elevator to the Gallows. It is a lovely sound track that gives some indication of the direction in which Miles was moving. The simplified chord progressions and indigo mood of a number of the tracks are prescient of the emotional ambience and harmonic conception of Kind of Blue.

Back in America, Miles decided to put together another quintet. He rehired Garland, Jones, and Chambers, but Coltrane was not available. He was playing with Thelonious Monk. Miles wanted Sonny Rollins; however, he was no longer a sideman but the leader of his own group. Miles finally hired a young alto saxophonist from Florida named Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. Cannonball was a large, jovial man with, in Miles’s words, a “very special spirit.” Miles generally had contempt for overweight people, but he made an exception with Cannonball. The saxophonist was, like most modern alto players, heavily influenced by Charlie Parker, but his tone was fuller and his playing had a funky quality that made his sound immediately identifiable. He often sounded as if he were influenced by rhythm-and-blues saxmen such as Earl Bostic or Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.

For a short while Miles’s group was a quintet. But in late 1957 Coltrane left Monk and early in 1958 joined Miles’s band. By this time Coltrane had gone through an astonishing metamorphosis, both as a man and a musician. His voice was now so strong, his conception so intense, that he seemed to overshadow all of the other musicians in the group. Some leaders might have been uncomfortable with a sideman who played such long solos and who had become such a commanding force in the band. But not Miles; he once said that he was “too vain” to lead a group that was not at the top of the game. He realized that having as powerful a player as Coltrane simply enhanced his music. Miles was also wise enough to understand that Coltrane’s ferocity offset his own subtlety and use of space.

In two sessions—in February and March of 1958—Miles recorded what would be the only album of the sextet with Coltrane, Adderley, Garland, Chambers, and Jones. It is a great album, but the sessions were chaotic. The members of the rhythm section were on their way out, and Jones and Garland did not show up to record all the music. Miles was bringing a new drummer, Jimmy Cobb, into the band and was looking around for a pianist to take Garland’s place. One of the pieces was a tune based on a simple scale rather than chord changes. It was the first taste of things to come. (Originally this tune was titled “Milestones” but was changed to simply “Miles” when somebody remembered that Miles had recorded a different tune also called “Milestones” with Charlie Parker in the 1940s.) Both Miles and Adderley—although Cannonball treats the tune as if it had the usual kind of harmonic progression—have little problem navigating within this early modal piece, but Coltrane seems hesitant and unsure of himself. But as discussed later, Coltrane was going through a confusing time from a musical point of view.

There were further indications of Miles’s direction in his next project. In July and August of 1958, Miles recorded his second large orchestral piece with Gil Evans. The movie of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was due to be released, and Columbia Records wanted some of its artists to record music from the folk opera. This was during an era when jazz recordings of show tunes were in vogue. André Previn’s jazz interpretations of the music from My Fair Lady had been especially popular, and a number of jazzmen followed suit. Miles never used such gimmicks. He was not interested in playing show tunes simply because it was a popular trend. The music from Porgy and Bess, however, is of an entirely different order, containing some of the most beautiful American music ever composed; and it fits well with jazz interpretation. Evans and Miles virtually recomposed the score, making it seem to listeners that they were hearing the familiar songs almost for the first time.

Miles and Evans both wanted to experiment with using simpler chord changes. One piece, their version of “Summertime,” made use of only one chord. It is also one of Miles’s most stunning performances. By this point, Evans was creating dense tonal colors that were unlike anything else in music. On “Summertime,” Miles plays simple melodic phrases that are answered by the thick textures of Evans’s arrangements. Although far different from the way “Summertime” is usually played, it nevertheless has the dusky, humid atmosphere that the tune is meant to convey. The Porgy and Bess album is one of Miles’s greatest triumphs, one of the most gorgeous albums ever recorded. The simplified harmonic structure of this and some of the other tunes on the album give further clues to Miles’s future course.

According to Coltrane, during the years he was in the quintet, Miles was obsessed with complex harmonic progressions. But when he returned to the Miles group, the trumpeter was following a very different path. In a revealing 1958 interview, Miles told Nat Hentoff: “I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to an emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variations. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them. Classical composers—some of them—have been writing this way for years, but jazz musicians seldom have.… The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they’re full of chords. I can’t play them.”5

One of the classical composers Miles was referring to was the Armenian Khatchaturian, who uses scales that, as Miles said, “were different from the usual Western scales.” Khatchaturian was heavily influenced by Armenian folk music, which like much native music throughout the world is basically modal.

Miles could smell revolution in the air, but he was not ready to throw out the entire idea of tonal organization. In a way, Miles’s restraint was reminiscent of that of a prominent man from an entirely different sphere of influence: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt is portrayed by those on the right as virtually a socialist. But FDR’s New Deal reforms actually had the effect of preventing socialism from sweeping the nation. By making capitalism a little fairer, Roosevelt managed to prevent class revolution.

Like Roosevelt, Miles was an innovator but not a radical. Despite his supposed arrogance toward the audience, his aim was always to make jazz a more communicative art form. Miles did not want a revolution against all methods of tonal organization, although he realized that jazzmen were increasingly desperate for the freedom to improvise with fewer restrictions. So Miles needed to find a way to give musicians that freedom without resorting to the kind of musical anarchy that would, with the “new thing” movement, become a reality in the 1960s.

Miles was always lucky. Just when he most needed it, he found a wonderful solution to his problem, one that had been right under his nose for many years. The solution was the theory of a jazz composer Miles had known since 1944, George Russell. Not only was Russell an old friend, his theory had arisen out of a question that Miles himself had asked many years ago.