Miles Davis and Mid-Century Modern Music

Inthe mid-20th Century, there were unprecedented modernist influences on architecture, furniture, graphic, and industrial design.

Midcentury modern is still a sought-after period for collectables because these designs were practical, functional, and beautiful. Designers created new forms of furniture, buildings, homes, logos, and products.

Designers such as Eero Saarinen, Russel Wright, Alvin Lustig, and Charles and Ray Eames created vases, chairs, book covers, and homes that combined innovation, practicality, and beauty. Forms became sleek and streamlined and stripped of superfluous ornament.

The great architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe proclaimed “Less is More.” That aphorism succinctly defines the modernist ethic and aesthetic.

Creativity, exploration, and innovation flourished.

Miles Davis is the musical equivalent of mid-century modern design. His compositions, playing, attitude, and style were distinctly modern.

The story of Miles’ career is the story of the golden age of jazz. It is the story of the transition from big bands to small ensembles. It is the story of developing and exploring improvised music in small combos: trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets. Miles was at the forefront of every major style and genre of jazz that took place over a rapidly maturing arc from just after World War II through the sixties. This period was twenty-five years of explosive creativity and accelerated musical development.

Creative and artistic periods don’t have clear boundaries. They are like clouds; from a distance, you can grasp the form, but the closer you get, the more the boundary blurs. With Modern Jazz, the period boundaries blur, but there are distinct aesthetics and centers of gravity to the movements such as bebop, cool, hard bop, modal, and post-bop.

The name attached to creating all these genres and forms of music is Miles.

Jazz is the only truly American art form, and no one has had such a profound and wide-ranging impact on jazz as Miles Davis. As a bandleader and composer, Miles Davis has influenced most, if not all, notable musicians and bands from all genres of music.

One could make a good case for dividing jazz into two categories: BM and AM, Before Miles and After Miles.

Actually, the main category of jazz is DM, During Miles. Miles’ tenure represents the golden age of jazz music. Everything else is a series of footnotes.

Many visionary artists are so ahead of their time that their impact is only recognized after they are long gone. Miles’ impact and talent were recognized and celebrated while he was alive. He has also been posthumously honored around the world.

He operated in a racially divided society and had to bear the burden of having his talent slighted, and his achievements obscured. But he was an undeniable force of nature that changed that society and helped open it up.

Artists are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and Miles was a revolutionary. He had a political impact and consequence while remaining aloof from politics.

On December 15, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing and commemorating Miles’ album Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary, “honoring the masterpiece and reaffirming jazz as a national treasure.” Kind of Blue was one of many inflection points in musical history perpetrated by Miles.

I encourage you to listen to Miles’ music and the music of all the other jazz musicians and albums from the 1950s. We live in a magical time where all of the tunes and albums mentioned in this book are available through streaming services and on YouTube. On YouTube, you can listen to the entire records. Take advantage and listen along.

The breadth and depth of Miles’ impact, influence, and creative output are staggering.

I hope you check out his music and find the journey fascinating and entertaining and that it leaves you with a sense of this incredible artist and the art form he was so intimately involved in creating.

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