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Miles Davis

File:Miles_Davis_1987.png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Miles Davis

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Also known as Miles Dewey Davis III, Miles Dewey Davis, III Davis, Miles Dewey Davis Jr

American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer (1926–1991)

OverviewAI-generated

Miles Davis (1926–1991) was an American composer, trumpeter, bandleader, and conductor. Born in Alton, Illinois, he was educated at the Juilliard School. His musical work spanned jazz, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, funk, and classical genres. He performed on the trumpet, synthesizer, organ, and flugelhorn. Davis recorded for labels including Prestige, ACT Music, Capitol Records, and Columbia Records.

His notable works include *Miles Ahead*, *Siesta OST*, *Dark magus*, and *Eight classic jazz originals you can play*. He was recognized in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame collection and the Hollywood Walk Of Fame collection. Davis died of a stroke and pneumonia in Santa Monica and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.

Synthesized by Vinony from 48 facts across 10 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Wikiquote, Firecrawl, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
26 May 1926
Died
28 September1991
Works
33

Top works

  • Dark magus
  • Eight classic jazz originals you can play
  • Jazz at the Plaza (CK85245)
  • Miles Ahead
  • Siesta OST

via Open Library + Wikidata

Film & TV

Acting · Alton, Illinois, USA

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music.

Known for

  • Miles — himself2026
  • Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music — Self (archive footage)2025
  • They All Came Out to Montreux — Self (archive footage)2023
  • A History of the World According to Getty Images — Self (Archive Footage)2022
  • Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues — Self (voice) (archive sound)2022
  • Universe2020
  • Miles Davis - Live in Montreal2020
  • Prince: Live At Paisley Park - December 31, 1987 — Self2020
  • Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool — Self - Musician (archive footage)2019
  • Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes — Self (archive footage)2019

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
United States
Active from
1926
Active to
1991
bebopclassicalcool jazzfunkhard bopjazz

Discography

Member of

Official siteDiscogsStream

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
2,413,306
Total plays
86,316,772

Tags

jazztrumpetbebopFusionblues

Similar artists

John ColtraneMiles Davis QuintetCharles MingusWayne ShorterHerbie Hancock

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. In a career spanning nearly five decades, Davis was at the forefront of several major stylistic developments in jazz, including—but not limited to—bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, third stream, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, and jazz fusion. Davis's legacy extends beyond jazz into the realms of rock, funk, classical, and hip-hop. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Miles+Davis">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Miles Davis

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

  1. STAR: ultrafast universal RNA-seq aligner

    · 2012 · cited 51,051x

  2. Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology

    · 1989 · cited 45,495x

  3. <tt>edgeR</tt> : a Bioconductor package for differential expression analysis of digital gene expression data

    · 2009 · cited 39,686x

  4. Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology

    · 2000 · cited 36,896x

  5. User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward A Unified View1

    · 2003 · cited 31,091x

via Crossref · CC0

Music

Open in Spotify

Quotes

  • “I’ll play it and tell you what it is later.”
  • “I can't tell... All those white tenor players sound alike to me.”
  • “Is that what you wanted, Alfred?”
  • “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.”
  • “"You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played." and "I love Pops" (Louis' nickname) … Louis has been through all kinds of styles. That's good tuba, by the way. You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing. I also love the way he sings.”
  • “When they make records with all the mistakes in, as well as the rest, then they'll really make jazz records. If the mistakes aren't there too, it ain't none of you.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Official website

Home | Miles Davis Official Site

Miles Davis is one of the most innovative, influential and acclaimed figures in music history. Explore albums, songs, news, timeline, photos, more.

milesdavis.com →

Link to the official site · 40,000 chars · not written by Vinony

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Family name
Davis
Gender
male
Citizenship
United States
Place of birth
Alton
Place of death
Santa Monica
Spouse
Cicely Tyson
Occupation
songwriter
Languages spoken
English language
Native language
American English
Award
NEA Jazz Masters
Genre
jazz fusion
Instrument
flugelhorn
Record label
Fontana Records
Discography
Miles Davis discography
Official website
www.milesdavis.com
Image
Miles Davis 22.jpg
Show 20 more facts
place of burial
Woodlawn Cemetery
Commons category
Miles Davis
date of birth
1926-05-26
date of death
1991-09-28
topic's main category
Category:Miles Davis
cause of death
stroke
manner of death
natural causes
ethnic group
African Americans
Commons gallery
Miles Davis
name in native language
Miles Davis
on focus list of Wikimedia project
Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
start of work period
1944-00-00
social media followers
45302
writing language
English language
end of work period
1991-00-00
topic has template
Template:Miles Davis
copyright representative
Broadcast Music, Inc.
pseudonym
Cleo Henry
P8168
Fort de Flémalle
P12674
Ferdinand August Maria Franz von Ritgen
Sources (11)

via Wikidata · CC0

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. In a career spanning nearly five decades, Davis was at the forefront of several major stylistic developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, third stream, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, and jazz fusion. His legacy extends into rock, funk, classical, and hip-hop.

Born into an upper class family in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis started on the trumpet in his early teens. He left to study at the Juilliard School in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly afterwards, he recorded the Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, while addicted to heroin, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music under Prestige Records. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contract with Columbia Records, and recorded the album 'Round About Midnight in 1955. It was his first work with saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers, key members of the sextet he led into the early 1960s. During this period, he alternated between orchestral jazz collaborations with arranger Gil Evans, such as the Spanish music–influenced Sketches of Spain (1960), and band recordings, such as Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). The latter recording remains one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, having sold more than five million copies in the U.S. alone and 6.4 million copies worldwide.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Miles Davis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (14)

Available in 86 languages

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via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0