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Miles Davis · S1 E6
Leaving Home
Miles's mother wants him to go to Fisk University. His father buys him a ticket to New York to study at Juilliard. In September 1944, eighteen-year-old Miles Davis arrives in Manhattan with his trumpet and one name in his address book: Charlie Parker
A street corner in midtown Manhattan, 1953. Miles Davis, gaunt and broke, is trying to sell his trumpet to score heroin. The man who recorded Birth of the Cool four years ago can barely hold the horn steady.
Miles Davis, 'Round Midnight, live. Thelonious Monk's ballad becomes a vessel for everything Miles is feeling during the darkest years of his life: loneliness, regret, and a beauty that survives even when everything else falls apart.
'Round Midnight -- Miles Davis
Written by Thelonious Monk, this is the most recorded jazz composition in history, and Miles owns it. His version strips the melody to its emotional core: Harmon mute, middle register, long tones that hang in the air like cigarette smoke. Every pause sounds like a man deciding whether to keep going. The answer, eventually, is yes.
The Dark Years
Heroin swallows the early 1950s jazz scene whole. Miles watches Charlie Parker fall apart, then follows him down. He loses his contract with Prestige, gets dropped from club rosters, and pawns his horn more than once. His father sends money from East St. Louis. Miles takes it and spends it on drugs.
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Miles Davis finally get clean?
“I made up my mind I was getting off dope. I was sick and tired of it. I couldn't play, couldn't think, couldn't do nothing.”
— Miles Davis, from Miles: The Autobiography (1989)
Half Nelson -- Miles Davis
One of Miles's very first compositions, recorded for Savoy Records in 1947 with Charlie Parker's band. Named after a wrestling hold, it shows a young musician finding his own voice while still deep in Bird's orbit. A reminder of the brilliance that addiction nearly erased.
The Comeback
Miles walks out of his father's farmhouse clean, picks up his trumpet, and calls a young pianist named Red Garland. The first great Miles Davis Quintet is about to come together, and the next chapter will rewrite the rules of jazz all over again.
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To be continued
Season 2: 52nd Street
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