DISGRACELAND - Miles Davis (Pt. 1): Blasting Bebop, Blasting Racism, and a Devastating Heroin Habit

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Miles Davis is jazz’s first and only rock star, with the rap sheet to prove it. He did enough cocaine to run down the entirety of 52nd street, and pimped out women when performing wasn’t paying the bills. At one point, his heroin habit was so public that clubs who had once welcomed his brilliant bebop instead froze him out completely. When he wasn’t vying to keep his rightful spot in jazz’s upper echelon, he was doing time at Rikers Island or dodging racist cops on the prowl for any junkie they could find. Miles Davis invented cool, but nearly destroyed himself in the process. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners and includes descriptions of domestic violence. This episode was originally published on May 3, 2022. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. Motherfucker. Say, motherfucker. Say, motherfucker. That motherfucker over there, and this motherfucker over here. Motherfucker!

I can't say it. Can't say the word. Not like Miles Davis. The word motherfucker was without a doubt Miles Davis' favorite word. He used it liberally in his autobiography and everyday conversation in nearly every quote of his from stories that his friends recount in documentaries. And of course, Miles Davis was a motherfucker. One of the baddest motherfuckers of all time.

As a man, a musician, a friend, an enemy, a junkie, a role model, an artist, a rock star, straight, motherfucker. To hear Miles Davis use the word motherfucker is, like, listening to his music, a wholly unique experience. Nobody did it like Miles. But like countless others who've come up in Miles' influence, I'm going to try. So get ready, motherfuckers, because this episode is a lot of motherfucking motherfuckers fucking up this story like a motherfucker. Stories about Miles Davis are insane. He did time at Rikers Island. He was the victim of police brutality at Birdland.

He did enough Coke to run down the entirety of 52nd Street. He pimped out women to fuel a devastating heroin habit and then devastated his Lamborghini after slipping himself a sleeping pill. He made himself into jazz's first and only rock star. He blasted racism by blasting his bebop. and when his lips weren't pressed against his trumpet, they were mouthing the word motherfucker to whoever was unlucky enough to be passing by.

Miles Davis also made some of the greatest jazz of all time, some of the greatest music of all time. And that music I played you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my Melotron called Bibbop a Woe Nelly. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to rock around the clock by Bill Haley in his comments.

And why would I play you that specific slice of Tuscadero cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on July 15, 1955. And that was the day that Miles Davis first took the stage at the Newport Jazz Festival and introduced the country to a new, unprecedented, unheard-of kind of cool. In this, part one of a special two-part episode, blasting racism, blasting bebop, devastated Lamborghinis, and the inventor of Cool, that motherfucker, Miles Davis. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Woods out beyond the property line of his family's East St. Louis, Illinois farm, gave young teenage Miles Davis enough distance,

away from the smell of cow manure, away from the sight of his father's filthy, prized pigs, and away from the sounds of violence. domestic violence, the sound of his father beating on his mother, closed fist to the face, flying teeth, screams, more scrapping. It didn't happen all the time, but when it did, it was best that young Miles beat on out of the house and get lost. His father's anger was not to be taken lightly. Though he was the second wealthiest man in all of Illinois at the time, this was still 1939, and despite whatever gains Miles Davis's father had made in his personal life, there was plenty for him to still be angry about. Money solved a lot of problems, but the

sting of societal racism in the early part of the 20th century was not one of them. So Miles Davis's father, the successful dentist and entrepreneur, his anger got the best of him, and that meant, unfortunately, that it got the best of Miles' mother. So when the fist started flying, Miles had a little spot in the woods he'd hide out in. He'd bring his trumpet, and at first he'd listen, listen for quiet. But there was little, not even in the thick of the woods. There was life, change happening all around him. Nature moves swiftly, and nature also moves like a snail. In each case, nature inspires awe. Miles was not ignorant to the incremental but inspiring change and natural beauty happening all around him.

were changing, the weather too, slowly bending in step to the will of the turning season. And of course, the birds, like everything around him, growing, moving, changing. The birds were his teachers. The woodthrush with its syncopated scat. The round yodel of the loon, the lonesome holler of the blue jay. Young Miles would sit in the woods with his horn, listen for the birds to call to him, and then he'd blow his trumpet and respond. The woodthrush would scat, Miles would scat back. The loom would yodel. Miles would yodel back. The Blue Jay would holler. Miles would holler back. The birds would change their sounds depending on the time of day or even the time of the season, and so Miles would change his sound too. Change was a necessity. Miles Davis would later

say, if anyone wants to keep creating, they have to be about change. Among other things, he learned, this from his father whose entrepreneurial instincts forced him to evolve and diversify and thus survive and thrive and he learned this from growing up surrounded by nature that was forever changing in both small and giant steps and as mentioned he learned this from the birds whose songs change depending on the time of day depending on their wants needs their desires the woodthrush loon and blue jay were all functional teachers but it would be a different bird altogether who would teach Miles Davis more than any other force of nature. The man they called bird.

Saxophonist Charlie Parker. You and your whole fucking band, you fucking muck! Those were the last words big band leader Billy Eckstein heard before he was out on his ass, literally, on a St. Louis street curb outside the famed plantation club. Because despite his best efforts, the only way the dapper frontman was getting through the front door was by getting thrown out of it, on his ass. He stood quickly and started shouting back at the low-level mafioso who threw him out, and who is now heading back into the club ignoring him. Bandleaders, like horrors, came cheap, relatively speaking, and Billy Eckstein and his entire

big band, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sarah Vaughn among them were out. Billy Eckstein shouted some more, kicked and punched the air, flailed about indiscriminately. His tight, processed hair, and sharply manicured mustache remained perfectly in place, though the tails of his starched shirt escaped the backside of his high-waisted pleaded pants. It was a minor inconvenience, given the injustice he and his bandmates were just forced to endure. They could headline the motherfucking club, but the inbred pillow game mobster wouldn't let him or his band walk into the front door. His name was on the fucking marquee. Right there, look, in lights, it said Billy Motherfucking Eckstein and his big motherfucking band.

Didn't matter. Billy was black, light-skinned, but still black. And so was his band. That meant backdoor, motherfucker. So said the plantation club muscle. But Billy Eckstein took no shit, off nobody. He was still pissed. But after about 30 seconds, he collected himself.

Remembered where he was, St. Louis. What that meant, racism. Who he was, Billy motherfucking Eckstein. And what that meant, Benny was a man who got shit done, and right now booking a gig needed doing or he and his band weren't going to get paid, so what that meant was. He needed another club. Good thing he was Billy X-time. A new gig at a moment's notice in a jumping music town like St. Louis for a musician with his reputation was no problem.

So fuck the plantation club. It was over to the Riviera club instead. Billy's band was setting up in their new digs for the night. Another new problem. Billy's trumpet player got sick, puking his guts out in the woman's bathroom. Couldn't even make it to the men's room, shitting his pants, too, they said. At the same time, Billy didn't panic. His other trumpet player, Dizzy Gillespie, did.

Dizzy needed that balance in the sound. Not really, but he thought he did. Needed that mirror horn riding shotgun to free him up to blow ballistic like Billy's temper. Diz tore ass off the bandstand in search of a local trumpet player, a St. Louis solution. Before he even hit the street, in through the front door, 18-year-old local trumpet phenom Miles Davis confidently strolled into the club. He was there to check out Billy Eckstein.

Dizzy recognized the trumpet case in the kid's hand, and he also recognized a damn quick solution to his problem. You play trumpet? He asked Miles, the kid, without even introducing himself. Miles just looked at him as if to say, you a fucking idiot or something? You see this here case in my hand, don't you? Dizzy didn't wait for an answer.

Are the trumpet sick, you want to sit in? Miles smiled. The next thing he knew, he was on stage, and when the dude with the high and tight dew, who breathlessly recruited him, began to blow his horn, Miles was knocked out. Dizzy Gillespie could play, far beyond anyone Miles had heard locally.

But what really blew Miles Davis' mind was the saxophone player, the one they called Bird, Charlie Parker. Billy Eckstein gave him eight bars to solo, and in those eight bars, Charlie Parker gave Miles Davis his future. If this was how cats from New York City played their instruments, then wherever they were from was where Miles Davis needed to be. Fuck St. Louis. Hello, New York City.

Change was necessary. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends. either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?

Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head. with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises.

And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships, or religion, or sex, or addiction, or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your Podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got two.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over. From hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. His father told him he'd support him in New York City, but school was a necessity. So Juilliard, the famed music school, was the answer. Miles would study music during the day, become a master trumpet player. But to fully do that,

he'd need to chase Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie around Times Square in Harlem at night. So he burned the candle at both ends. Keeping awake in class was sometimes a struggle. Some of the classes lit his hair on fire. Others bored him to sleep. Bebop, the new music, was Miles's obsession. Bird and Dizzy did their time in Billy Eckstein's big band playing pop tunes behind Saravan, taking it on the road to entertain black and oftentimes white audiences from coast to coast. But that was just for the bread. For themselves, back in New York City, Bird and Diz played.

And when they did, Miles made sure he was in attendance as much as possible. The two players were at the very center of the creation of the new music that was knocking the socks off of jazz fans. Bebop challenged everything. It challenged rules of music theory, rhythm, composition, harmony, all of it. Bebop took known pop tunes, counted them in, blazed through the familiar melodies up top at the head and a few bars, and then proceeded to lay waste to listeners' preconceptions of what their favorite songs were, replacing those preconceptions with unimaginable possibilities. for what their favorite songs could be.

B-Bop players like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie took those same pop standards from Billy Eckstein's big band and in their new small jazz combos played them at lightning speeds with virtuoso chops. Once settled into the familiar albeit fast chord progressions, B-Bop players tore the melodies apart with vicious, imaginative soloing. They turned the tune's rhythms inside out, disrupted their harmonic structures into shape,

shifting melodies and invented new modes of phrasing and composition that had more to do with the wild innovations of Russian classical composer Igor Stravinsky than they did with the mainstream jazz turf of Louis Armstrong. Each song was a chance for bebop players to take their audiences on a wild ride. The excitement of the playing was as mystifying as it was thrilling. It was transportive, and before listeners knew it, they were somehow right back where they started, in the familiar clutch of the recognizable melody that swept them up in the action to begin with. Bebop was an entirely new bag. 52nd Street got all the press as the place to be. The onyx, three deuses, the downbeat club, and Kelly Stable were all there, and heavily trafficked by hip jazz fans and critics, black and white

alike. White jazz critics wouldn't shut up about 52nd Street clubs, but most of them couldn't be found up at Minton's playhouse. Not that it was any great secret. Might have been that it was just too far north up in Harlem for most white cats to feel comfortable. Hard to blame them, though, as not a lot of folks were comfortable at Minton's. As a jazz player, if your shit wasn't tight, you'd get eviscerated, not only by your fellow musicians, bird and dizzy at the head of the pack, but the crowd would tear you apart too. It was humiliating. Miles saw some guys who never recovered, took their horns straight to the pawn shop. Miles sat at a side table at Minton's listening to Eddie Lockjawed,

Davis lead his band. Miles had his trumpet with him, at his feet. He was waiting, watching, hoping to be called upon to sit in. He was ready. Tonight was going to be a special night. He could feel it. But then, out of nowhere, this no-style-no-chops geek off the street with a horn, jumped onto the bandstand ahead of Miles. The dude was all about his women sitting at his table, winking at them and largely ignoring Lockjaw before kicking into the number Lockjaw had called out. The geek not only failed to impress his ladies with his subpar horn playing, but he insulted the audience as well. The booze came quick.

Miles smiled. And then, before the first solo even hit, Miles saw a fellow audience member, not a musician, just a local resident there to spend his hard-earned money and hear some hard-blown bebop, the real shit. This dude jumped on stage, grabbed the geek by his shirt collar and belt, and launched him off of the stage.

The geek rolled, the dude leapt down to the dance floor, began kicking the geek, who was struggling to get to his feet. The dude kicked some more, the geek crab crawled back toward the exit. The dude landed kick after kick, forcing the geek out of the club onto the sidewalk on his back. Once outside, the dude pounced and went to his fist. He pumbled the geek, bloodied his face, his clothes, and sent a warning to geeks all over 118th Street in Harlem, and the warning was this.

Don't waste our fucking time with no half-ass playing at Mintons. Minton's was no joke. Miles saw it as a bebobb laboratory, where a musical scientist went to invent, to create, to change the past into something new. Fifty Second Street was cool, but the music wasn't as hot as it was at Minton's because Minton's was where it first came alive

and nothing was more enthralling than that first time. Kind of like dope. Heroin. Bebop players, especially Charlie Parker, were compelled by heroin. It was the ultimate embrace. The perfect snug antidote to the adrenaline surge of a blistering set, the lost low note found just in time to anchor the dizzying high of improvisation.

Heroin, for Bebaw players, brought them down to Earth and then some. Submerged them underground until it was time to climb back up on stage and blast off into the stratosphere via their virtuosity and imaginations. But despite heroin's repetitive call, its response was never the same as it was that first time. Like the thrill of Bebop, you could chase that first high, but unlike Bebop, you'd never find it again. It would be a few years before Miles Davis would adopt the habit of his mentor, Charlie Parker, who was, by 1945, a full-blown junkie. For the time being, heroin could wait. Bebop was more than enough for Miles.

Once Miles Davis picked up Bebop, he couldn't put it down. Not in those early days anyway. not in the mid-40s. He chased that feeling and he chased bird and dizzy all over Manhattan, completely swept up in their playing, especially in birds. He was special.

Everyone knew it. Everyone except Miles' teachers at Juilliard. Miles took what he could from Juilliard, though. Unlike most of his fellow students who were also caught up in the excitement of bebop, Miles didn't askew music theory. He didn't buy into the myth that focusing on theory

prevented you from understanding feel. He saw theory for what it was, another tool, a tool to further dissect the existing jazz standards he was interpreting through his own trumpet playing, as well as a tool to apply to his own solos and compositions. Along with his wild improvised solos, Miles had begun playing his own compositions on New York City stages alongside his heroes,

Charlie Parker and Izzy Gillespie, who'd quickly, after he'd arrived in New York City, welcomed Miles Davis into their small combos. In 1945, Miles replaced Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet in Charlie Parker's band. There was no bad blood, though. Miles took up with Dizzy offstage, becoming tight friends with the older musician. Miles could play, no doubt about it. He understood what Bird and Diz were trying to do and was bringing his own style to the fast-emerging genre.

He had feel and he was studied. But that didn't mean. he fell in for everything his teachers were laying down at Juilliard. He sunk into his chair behind his desk, his eyes heavy with bags under them. Jazz gigs went all night and classes started early. Most times it wasn't bad, but this morning Miles wasn't about suffering this particular professor's bullshit. White, entitled, guilty, patronizing. Miles had seen her type a lot since arriving in Manhattan.

At least the racist niece St. Louis were obvious about it. Here in New York, it was more subtle, almost accidental, but gross nonetheless and enraging. The professor was laying down a musical history lesson. At the time, the lesson was somewhat new, but it has survived, to this day even. It's a narrative that academics have perpetuated, and for whatever reason, this narrative, despite its sweeping, simple-minded generalization, has lasted, despite the fact that young Miles Davis called bullshit on it immediately. The white professor told Miles and his julius,

are classmates that black people played blues music because they were poor and because they had to, quote, pick cotton. Miles punched his hand into the air. The professor called on him. Miles was quick to his point saying, quote, I'm from East St. Louis, and my father is rich. He's a dentist, and I play the blues. My father didn't ever pick no cotton, and I didn't wake up this morning and start playing the blues. There's more to it than that. Miles Davis wasn't playing along. He was playing a new tune. his tune, and quickly putting into practice what he innately knew, that if he wanted to survive as a musician, challenging norms wasn't enough. He needed to change the way things were done, even if that meant applying change to the game-changing genre of bebop.

We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And the entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that.

Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things. Tena, Mongeau, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude.

They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites.

New episodes drop every week on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Miles Davis took all he could from Bebop and applied it to a new and unique approach that was wholly his own. After his stint in Charlie Parker's band, Miles headed to Paris to perform in Tad Dameron's quintet. The romance of the city absorbed him. He fell in with the intellectuals, artists, and actors. actresses, Jean-Paul Satra, Pablo Picasso, and Juliet Greco among them. The city celebrated him as the great artist he had become,

a first-class jazz man capable of transforming a room with his interpretation of any composition, and increasingly with his good looks and new, cool, clean style of dress as well. The color of his skin was not a consideration at all. In Paris, you were who you were and that was that. When Miles returned to America in 1949, it was clear that that was still very much not the case, and it fueled Miles Davis' anger, which in turn fueled his creative drive. Being another great bebop player, which he was was one thing, but he would never be the greatest bebop player.

And who knew if the style would even survive? Miles needed his own bag, his own thing. So he did what he always did, changed. When it came time to record music, Miles Davis shifted away from Bebop's virtuosity and leaned into the romance of Paris and the cool image he'd begun to cultivate for himself. Bebop burned. Miles wasn't interested in burning. He was interested in smoldering and slowing things down, along with a racially integrated group of collaborators, a ranger and pianist Gil Evans and drummer Max Roach, chief among them, that would become known as the Miles Davis known.

Miles set about to create something new, a maverick take on jazz improvisation that focused on a voice, where the horn set about to drive the melodies with the intimacy of a romantic pop vocalist such as Frank Sinatra, or with the originality of actor Orson Wells. Miles mined both of their phrasing in style for his new approach. These recordings would later be collected and released as an album entitled Birth of the Cool, which was exactly what this music was. A refined evolution of bebop and pop. Miles' new style immediately impacted the world of jazz, contributing to the advent of West Coast or Cool Jazz out in California,

and directly influencing the approach of its greatest contributors to that scene, Chet Baker down in Los Angeles and Dave Bruback further up the coast. The birth of the cool recordings had Miles Davis flying high, but then, an old familiar foil to the jazz scene brought Miles Davis crashing down to earth. Heroin. Ebony Magazine. Shit.

Right there in print. Ebony, with none other than that motherfucking Cab Calloway talking shit about a habit. Others, too. But they put your motherfucking picture in the pages. The subheadline above your mug. Noted musicians involved in dope cases. As if that left any doubt the caption underneath your mug. Miles Davis, top trumpet player, was picked up by Los Angeles Police, recently

charged with having dope. God damn it! We were falling. Miles Davis immediately realized he and drummer Art Blakey have been tailed to the Los Angeles Heroin Connect's apartment to score. And before we could do anything, the cops swarmed

him. Fuck! The cops pulled no punches. Black junkie jazz men were a scourge. They shoved Miles up against the wall, ripped his shirt sleeves up to his elbows, spied the track marks perforating his dark skin, and that was enough. They hauled him and art.

in, kicked their asses straight into jail where the real bullshit began. Miles caught the vibe quick. Out there on the street, to these cops, you weren't human, you were black. But in here, you were somehow even less than that in their eyes. You were a fucking cockroach. They'd stop you out for the slightest infraction or for nothing at all, just to fucking do it, just because they could. Miles were treated to the corner of his cell and laid low. His old man would come through, and so he did. Within a short amount of time, Miles' father had called upon a prominent Los Angeles dentist to get Miles released. Miles bounced, Art Blakey, too. Miles headed back to New York City where the bad press awaited him.

Not just Ebony, Downbeat magazine as well. This article was practically worse than jail. In fact, it was its own type of jail. Club owners read Downbeat, and club owners didn't want it known that they hired junkies, so despite whatever shine the Miles Davis name had on it in 19, that article took it right off. Club owners stopped hiring them, and on the off chance they found themselves in a booking bind and did put Miles on stage, then he'd have to contend with the cops who were now making a habit of soft-rating jazz clubs and literally pulling jazz musicians off stage mid-set and checking them for track marks. It was fucking humiliating. Miles sunk deeper into his habit. Scoring consumed him. Harlem was a concrete pharmacy soundtracked by the

howl of addiction, short blast of euphoria and groaning desperation. Miles chased down his new muse. With gigs few and far between, Miles took up new employment. As a pimp, pimping didn't come easy. Pimping required drive, which Miles had little of at the time. Putting together a couple girls to run out for a trick or two brought in some cash, but Miles wasn't particularly good at it. In the end, he ended up relying on what he'd refer to as his bitches more than they would rely on him. But still, it was a means to an end, and that end was heroin. Miles ran it down night and day through the streets of New York, from Stillman's gym where he'd caught from the boxers he'd watched Spar, up to Bell's Bar on Broadway in Harlem, to the Edgecombe apartment of a friend and

fellow jazz musician and junkie, Sonny Rollins, with that junkie view up to the Bronx, all the way to Yankee Stadium and then down to the pool on Bradhurst, the square at St. Nick's, to Pee and Pino's Bud Powell's place to get stoned and listen to him groove, and finally, to Smalls Paradise, or over to Sugar Rays where it was always bumping and you could always score. Scoring was all that mattered now, not music, not even his family. In 1951, if you didn't have money, Miles Davis had no interest in you, and that included his girlfriend Irene and their two children together. They were of no mind to Miles at that moment. Paying child's support was the least of his concerns, but it was of concern for Irene, who had Miles arrested for non-support and thrown

in jail. Rikers Island Correctional Facility, 1955. Miles felt the withdrawals coming like quick blasts from an out-of-tune horn. Some geek off the street on his bandstand, fucking him up, blowing hard and wrong. It rated, itched, it scratched, it ached, it was endless. The screws left him alone to sweat it out. They'd seen this set before. Junky musician drying out in the Huska, the wrong man blew his wrong horn, and the more he did, the more miles sweat out the groove. He slept in short intervals. On the floor, on his cot, on a cold sweat trip.

Some screw rattled his cage, roused him, visitor. His attorney on the other side of the glass, words, no horse, just words. Miles listened. He heard the birds, the woodthrush, the loon, the blue jay. He heard them sing back into his consciousness, and then he heard what his lawyer was saying. He was dead. The other bird. Bird, Bird, The Bird, The Bird, Charlie Parker, Lobar pneumonia, worsened by a bleeding ulcer and a liver ravaged by advanced cirrhosis. Miles shuffled back to his cell, added grief to his cold turkey quartet, and sunk deeper into withdrawal. Three days later, his lawyer got him out.

Bird was buried and Miles was clean. His lawyer got him a gig. There was a new jazz festival about to launch in Newport, Rhode Island, founded by socialites, Elaine and Louis Laurelard, and programmed by George Ween, a white cat from Boston who, when it came to jazz, knew his shit. The bill filled quickly with Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Woody Herman, and Dave Brubeck.

These headliners were rounded out with a heavy-hitting undercard of All-Stars, Jerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Percy Heath, Connie Kay, and finally, Miles Davis. When Miles joined the All-Stars on stage to pay tribute to Bird with the song, Now's the Time, the Jazz World in attendance took notice, but when he leaned into the solo for Monk's round midnight, he changed jazz on the spot forever. Miles added his Harmon mute to the solo he blew from his trumpet and mesmerized the audience. It was pure romance. In the phrases for Miles Davis' trumpet, the Newport crowd vibed on the banks of the send

and within the walls of the Louvre. They felt the existential Neverland of Satra, sent the avon imagination of Picasso, and were juiced by the sparkle in Juliet Greco's eyes. They were sent to swoon by Sinatra, reassured by the gravitas of Orson Wells, and they saw quite literally before them, the birth of the cool. Miles, still, dapper, clean. Dark, handsome, moody, in a word. Badass. Another word. Motherfucker. This was 1955. This type of cool did not exist. Rock and roll was teeny-bopper bullshit and the movies were still, for the most part, fickle and cornball studio numbers.

James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause wouldn't hit until later that year in October, and Elvis Presley wouldn't fully capture America's imagination until 1956. Miles Davis was cool before both of them. he defined and personified the term. Cool. A new kind of cool. A perfect meld of style, tremendous feel and innovative technique, the likes of which the mainstream jazz fans

in attendance at the first Newport Jazz Festival had never heard before. In effect, Miles Davis took black jazz music and made it relatable for white audiences. When he got off stage, numerous record label men were at his feet, offering him deals on the spot. Miles, as well as the other performers, were fetid that evening at the Newport mansion of Elaine Lorelard.

When Elaine saw Miles, she brought some friends over to meet the young musician who stole the show she'd just paid for. She got right to it, saying to her friends, to Miles, and to anyone in the grand room who would listen, Oh, this is the boy who played so beautifully. What's your name? Miles just stared at her. The mere seconds of silence made the tension in the room on the same. bearable, Miles held his stare. Elaine was on the verge of embarrassment. Miles blinked first and unloaded. Fuck you. I ain't no fucking boy. My name is Miles Davis, and you better remember that you ever want to talk to me. And with that, Miles Davis left Newport from New York. I'm Jake Brennan.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yello-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tena Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple. podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor?

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