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Prelude: the Head 37005_ch01.qxd 06/10/2008 5:42 PM Page 1 PRELUDE: THE HEAD I think it was the beginning of another level of expression in this music. —rashied ali for many, miles davis and john coltrane were the last ma- jor innovators in jazz. Decades after their deaths, their shad- ows linger over modern music, affecting genres from soul and hip-hop to the experimental wings of European concert music. Within the world of jazz there has been no musician since whose influence runs as wide and as deep. The only artists whose contributions are comparable, in the sense of affecting the way other musicians think and play, are the great pace set- ters who came before them—Louis Armstrong, Duke Elling- ton, Charles Parker, Billie Holiday, and a handful of others. And, like these giants, both Davis and Coltrane have become icons far beyond the world of jazz—indeed, beyond the world of music. In six years, Davis and Coltrane created a band that dis- played a perfect mix of form and content, an ensemble that pro- vided an aesthetic model for its time period while also providing artistic answers for the future. The balance between hot and cool playing, between head-spinning innovation and toe-tapping 37005_ch01.qxd 06/10/2008 5:42 PM Page 2 familiarity, the new feeling articulated by the band, all spoke to the times and to the necessities of black life in midcentury America. Both Coltrane and Davis, known to musicians simply as “Trane” and “the Chief,” were artists whose approaches to their instruments inspired others not only to imitate their musical ideas, but also to mimic the minutiae of their personal techni- cal mannerisms. These include everything from material changes, such as the widespread use of Harmon mutes for trumpets on ballads or the preponderance of alto and tenor saxophonists who now double on soprano saxophone, to sound production, such as Trane’s hard edge or the Chief’s squeezed notes, and extend even to styles of melodic ornamentation. In an art form that reveres the improvisations of outstand- ing soloists, their ability to create memorable statements places them in select company, and their solos are the normal entry point for appreciating their artistry. However, Trane and the Chief were innovative in other ways as well. They were leading improvisers, yes, but they also have become canonical as composers, bandleaders, and musical thinkers who never rested upon their laurels but continued to invent and try out new ideas. Although this is an impressive array of achieve- ments with expansive implications for American music in gen- eral, their musical excellence alone does not exhaust their importance in our culture. Coltrane and Davis have iconic stature in American culture not only for their music, but for the examples they set as men and particularly as black men during one of the most socially dynamic periods in our history. 2 CLAWING AT THE LIMITS OF COOL 37005_ch01.qxd 06/10/2008 5:42 PM Page 3 Both the ways in which they navigated their art form vis-à-vis its artistic and social contexts and the ways in which their per- sonas spoke, and continue to speak, to our culture remain im- portant parts of their legacy. Miles’s public persona, among other things, expresses the confidence and hipness that became so important to American masculinity, and did so in a way that was genuinely cool, virtu- ally free of the predictable affectations of pretenders. The ways in which the Chief spoke and dressed inspired those for whom style mattered. When many of the great bandleaders required their musicians to wear uniforms, or at least suits, in order to be considered presentable, Miles wore richly colored sports coats made of fine fabric, and he expected his band mates to be equally well dressed. He attended to sartorial details such as the type of stitching on his shoes. His personal affect was direct and pointed; there were no gratuitous smiles or any of the pretenses of the entertainer. Miles’s manner seemed to say: “The coon show is officially over; we are here to play.” While the Chief was savvy enough to capitalize upon his status, he didn’t have to fake the funk. Miles Dewey Davis III was raised to be a confident black genius; sustained achieve- ment had been a matter of course in his family for generations. He came into the world with a long pedigree and surrounded by flesh-and-blood examples of how to maintain dignity and to successfully maneuver the world even in harsh, racist envi- ronments. Breaking barriers, superb intellectual achievement, and financial success were all legacies bequeathed to Miles not only by his father’s generation, but by his grandfather’s as well. 3 PRELUDE: THE HEAD 37005_ch01.qxd 06/10/2008 5:42 PM Page 4 His frank outspokenness, take-no-shit attitude, and self- confidence recalled the courage of politically minded artists like Paul Robeson. But, unlike Robeson—the outspoken ac- tor, athlete, singer, and activist—Miles was consistently able to capture the imagination of generations of black people as well as whites in such a way that his struggles against the un- thinking and unhip in our culture were constantly celebrated. (It should be noted that unlike Robeson, Davis was never seen to be a major threat to U.S. capitalism, so he escaped the gov- ernmental harassment that haunted Robeson throughout much of his life.) Saxophonist Carl Grubbs, who was Coltrane’s nephew by marriage, recalls of Miles Davis, “We were not trying to be like Pops. Nobody wanted to be that guy sweating with the handkerchief. We wanted to be musicians because of people like Miles. Miles was hip. The music was hot and he was clean, standing there in a suit...not even a suit, but a sports jacket. And he would look like this—” (Grubbs strikes a pose where Miles looks askance in an enigmatic way.) Davis biographer Quincy Troupe once admitted to the Chief that he and others in his generation who participated in the protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations of the civil rights movement looked to Miles as a model for how to think and behave under pressure. Troupe’s fellow St. Louisian saxophonist Oliver Lake, himself an innovative and stylish musician, recalls, “I wanted to dress like Miles; be cool like Miles.”1 Even in our own time, through advertising campaigns for products as various as Gap clothing, Hennessy, and Apple 4 CLAWING AT THE LIMITS OF COOL 37005_ch01.qxd 06/10/2008 5:42 PM Page 5 computers, we can see Miles Davis’s image used as a symbol for innovation and the courage to follow one’s conviction. All the ads emphasize Miles’s uniqueness as an artist and persona. In the Gap series, he joins James Dean, Chet Baker, Marilyn Monroe, and Steve McQueen—nostalgic icons of a cool sexi- ness. The Hennessy series features strikingly beautiful African American celebrities such as Pam Grier and Marvin Gaye, with the caption “Never Blend In.” The computer ad is part of a 1998 print and television campaign featuring portraits of cultural icons known for brilliance, creativity, originality, and courage; these include Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Ted Turner, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Thomas Edison, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Amelia Earhart, Martha Graham, Maria Callas, and others. The figures are not identified by name; the simple, if ungrammatical caption “Think Different” accompa- nies each image. According to Allen Olivo, senior director for worldwide marketing communications at Apple, “The prem- ise is that people who use Apple computers are different and that we make computers for those creative people who believe that one person can change the world.” By not identifying the figures in the striking black-and-white images, Apple execu- tives also sought to establish their consumers as people in the know, as part of the “cognoscenti.”2 Although mainstream culture may have taken to flattening out his persona for such ends, the Chief is still revered today among musicians as one of the people whose music and atti- tude really matter. Saxophonist Lake asserts, “Miles was always 5 PRELUDE: THE HEAD 37005_ch01.qxd 06/10/2008 5:42 PM Page 6 stretching...that has been an inspiration for me throughout my career: electric Miles, acoustic Miles, straight-ahead Miles, experimenting Miles....Thewealth of all his recorded music has been and will be an inspiration to the world.”3 Likewise, John Coltrane is revered not only for his prodi- gious musicianship, but also for who he was as a person and for the example he set for anyone in pursuit of mastery at his craft. He stands as a premier example of black creative genius and as a spiritual mentor who brought a decidedly secular music to the realm of the sublime. Once Trane reached his mature stages, it was as if he were dealing directly in spirit matter, with the medium of music serving as a material expression of a higher force. Like his mentor, the Chief, Trane was courageous enough to constantly experiment and grow beyond what he had done before. While Miles, in his changing musical styles, seemed to be exercising his savvy for music and for trendset- ting, Trane was clearly on a mission from God. He wanted his music to worship the Creator and to bear witness for his listen- ers about the beauty of life and creation. While Miles set trends for ways to play the music, Trane consistently risked critical and popular rejection of his music through his relent- less expansion and experimentation.
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