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New light on Miles Davis autobiography


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1 hour ago, romualdo said:

went to Amazon site via link but getting "This title is not currently available for purchase" - maybe it has something to do with an out of US customer (I'm in Australia). Anyone from the states having the same issue??

I can't even get into the "sample' info

Same problem here (from Germany), though I opened the page on the (US) amazon.com site. Of course when I open the page on amazon.com the site recognizes I am not in the US (I have bought through amazon.com before) but I find this odd. Is it a kindle issue? 

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4 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

John Szwed's "So What: The Life of MIles Davis" (2002) is my go-to Miles biography. It might not be the only Miles book you'll ever need, but it's the best written one I've yet found.

Szwed is perhaps better known for his definitive biography of Sun Ra, from a few years earlier (late 90's).

The Szwed is excellent. Ian Carr's is also very good--he was also a professional trumpet player, and he gives more pages than perhaps expected to the electric Miles.

F

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Swed & Carr are good for data. Chambers writes a good "fan book", the only problem being is that the music loses him around 1968 or so, and the writing follows suit. In it's time it was indispensable (at least Vol 1 ws), but today....eh....

Whatever your poison, supplement it with these two:

516YKP4VTEL.jpg kirchner1031.jpg

 

But hell, ead the autobiography anyway. It gets the desired results: https://www.thedailybeast.com/miles-davis-penned-popular-musics-best-autobiography

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Some interesting suggestions (I guess I'll keep an eye on the Szwed, then ...)

And how about THIS (below) to complement all of the above for the "early" years? ;)

https://www.amazon.com/Miles-Diary-Life-Davis-1947-61/dp/1860741592/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=Miles%27+Diary+Ken+Vail&qid=1561477075&s=gateway&sr=8-1

 

 

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1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

My take is that any fan of Davis would enjoy the books by Szwed, Chambers AND Troupe.  (If you haven't read any of them, I'd recommend reading them in that order.)

Plus the books Jim lists above. 

Another one to consider: 

514KPYW0T-L._SX358_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I was underwhelmed by Cook's Blue Note book when I read it several years ago.  Is this better?

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8 minutes ago, felser said:

I was underwhelmed by Cook's Blue Note book when I read it several years ago.  Is this better?

I liked Cook's Miles book better than the Blue Note book.  I'd say that the Miles book is more comparable to Cook's contributions to the Penguin Guide to Jazz.  Naturally, I don't always agree with Cook's assessments -- and I often strongly disagree with them.  But it's still worth a read, if only to stir the pot, bring another perspective to the table.

 

Edited by HutchFan
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Don't think anyone's mentioned Paul Tingen's 2001 book "Miles Beyond: Electric Exporations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991", which I seem to recall also has some on-line updates via his website (been a while since I've last looked), or many some unpublished interviews, and such.

Can't vouch for the veracity of all of it, but I seem to recall Tingen's book being BY FAR the best coverage of Miles post-'67 output -- light years deeper than anyone else dared venture into his electric output.

Probably if push came to shove, I'd nominate the Szwed and Tingen books as my top-2 Miles books -- though the latter one clearly because of its specialized focus.

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I did enjoy the Tingen book for dealing with that music as music, for looking at what WAS going on instead of what WASN'T. He wasn't the first to deal with it from a reality-based perspective, but he certainly wrote a good book about it. The only groan I had was that he also included some Sri Chowhoundy type of MacroCosmicUnity about the philosophy of it all, and a little bit went a long way, especially since I do not share the same concept of how much is a little bit. But thankfully, that stuff was segregated away from the musical part.

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Talking of the Troupe book (‘Miles and Me’, not the autobio) at the time it came out I remember attending a book launch/concert at a very nice auditorium in the LA area with Mr Troupe doing the intros with a stellar Miles tribute band including Bennie Maupin, Adam Holzman and Patrice Rushen. They played some of the Bitches Brew era stuff and it was great to hear Maupin in that context.

10 minutes ago, felser said:

Ordered the Tingen book.  Another $9.50 shipped.  This is getting to be an expensive thread for me!

The Paul Tingen book is an excellent read ! Particularly good for the period up to ‘Agharta’. For the later period, I like George Cole’s ‘The Last Miles’.

Edited by sidewinder
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Just for fun :

Someone who remembers this one ?

I want to say this was the only Miles Davis book around, when others didn´t exist. Actually it was also one of my first "jazz books". The author also had difficulties with Miles 70´s music but actually it was written when the latest Miles album was "On the Corner", so it must have been from 1972 and I think in 1977 I purchased it.

The strange thing is, Mr. Cole says about "On the Corner" that "it´s an insult on the intelect of people"..... can you imagine that.

So even when this book was brandnew, I had albums that even didn´t exist when the book was written: Aghartha, let´s say "Agharta" was the latest record that existed when we were teenies, we all tried to be cool like Miles Davis, to wear sunglasses and all that things, you could say we was "Children of Agharta". Nobody knew really much about it, there was no liner notes, and from the cover art some even thought that it was "recorded under water" since you see the NY skyline and some water plants and fishes and stuff.....

Anyway, I was the biggest Miles fan around even if I didn´t know more than two of his albums "Steamin´" from 1956 and "Agharta" from 1975 because that´s what was in the record store :D

imagesWIA60Q5C.jpg

Edited by Gheorghe
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9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

The strange thing is, Mr. Cole says about "On the Corner" that "it´s an insult on the intelect of people"..... can you imagine that.

 

imagesWIA60Q5C.jpg

I don't know that book at all (but my Miles Davis record collection ends with Sketches of Spain and Seven Steps to Heaven anyway .. excepting an early pressing of Bitches Brew bought very cheaply at a fleamarket a couple of years ago but reserved for "later" more intense listening because the spins I have given it since buying it have not at all found me "in the mood" for that ... ;))

Anyway ... I can very well imagine books as the one above with such judgments (that may read odd to us later-borns) do exist (and I do have a few such jazz books too) but I'd very much advise against dismissing them outright just because we may consider us blessed with oh so much "hindsight knowledge". Despite their flaws, such "contemporary" books often do serve a purpose to some extent IMO even today in that they show first-hand how events in history were perceived at the time. This does help in understanding history too. If you rely only on latter-day re-writings of history you are beginning to see things through an increasing amount of glasses tinted by other peoples' perceptions that may never have been yours. So do take those earlier source materials with all the grain of salt that is called for but do not dismiss them lightly. Often what was written much later needs to be taken with a fair grain of salt too IMHO because over time certain historical facts tend to be assessed there by criteria of what is considered "commonly acquired wisdom" and/or by people who do have an "agenda" of their own that does not aid in presenting an even-handed picture of that history either.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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I bought and read the Cole book back in the 70's.  You got what you could find when you found it back then.   Cole is hardly the only person who was jarred by 'On The Corner' and some of the other Miles releases of that time.  I was quite dismayed by it then, and while I've been able to make my peace with it over the decades, I still prefer both what came before and what came immediately after.   A lot of his releases back then were puzzling, with no personnel listings, different cuts from different years (we now know) etc.  The one that was really a breath of fresh air for me then was 'Get Up With It'.  For whatever reason, I took to that one immediately.   I also did OK with 'Big Fun' , which came out right before that.

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I had known Bill Cole from some really ideologically pissy Down Beat records reviews that I read while still in my teens (one of which I wrote a letter to the editor about, and it was actually published!), so his Miles book came as no surprise. It's just pissy, period (and his Coltrane bio was a lot better in that regard). But what DID surprise me was when he was involved in some some academic dispute a decade or so later that actually got a little something on the "tv news". Here, the guy came of as just a really whiny, sniveling, PISSY litle punk, and the footage of him playing with his student ensemble was beyond weak. Ideology does not justify incompetence, musical or intellectually, and the cowardice of standing behind it to posit that it does is a reprehensible practice. So, yeah, fuck Bill Cole.

As for On the Corner, it's long since become apparent that it either hooks you in from the first listen or it doesn't. It did me, although it was a total mystery why. After a few years, I got to hear it played loudly and clearly on a really good stereo system, and the fog began to lift. Now that it's been increasingly familiar and presented increasingly more cleanly (I don't think it can ever - or should ever - be made truly "clean"). I've been able to dissect, not just the elements, but the constructions that went into it. I think it's a landmark of both music and record-making, and in many ways (arguably) the most deeply personal music/record Miles ever made.

But hey, it got me from jump, and I can certainly understand why it might not do that for everybody.

But either way, yeah, fuck Bill Cole.

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