TUNE IN FROM MIDNIGHT TIL 6:00 AM and join COUSIN JIMI, UNCLE AV CLUB, RANGER ROWLF COULSON, CHEF PETER, DR. KIPILMAN and probably other Miles devotees who drop by for our annual birthday celebration. Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois (just across the Mississippi River from St Louis) to a well-off family by those days' standards. His father, a successful and popular dentist, supported his son's drive to play music but always encouraged him to "don't ever be a Mockingbird, playing what everyone else does. Find your own sound". When he put up the money for him to go to New York to study music at the prestigious conservatory JULLIARD, he probably wasn't expecting what happened. After a short time at Juilliard, Miles dropped out and headed for 52nd Street and sought out and discovered the big boys (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk) who discovered the new revolutionary music called BE-BOP.
Miles proceeded to have one of the most varied and illustrious careers in modern music, constantly changing the sound of jazz and inadvertently changing the world many times, usually with a new batch of young players who went on to become giants on their own. Playing with Miles was a school unlike any other. Eventually, came the 1960s and the electric era, when miles continued to make music that could not even be defined. He left the word jazz way behind (calling it a white man's word anyway).
Listen to these DJs tonight (or whenever) as they take you through an insanely varied and exciting world -- the music of Miles Davis.
- KBOO