Miles Davis

The acclaimed classic biography, fully revised, becomes the definitive.


The revised edition of Ian Carr’s classic biography of Miles Davis throws new light on his life and career from the early days in New York, with Charlie Parker, to his Birth of the Cool band which brought together some of the most remarkable musicians of the time, through his drug addiction in the early 1950s, and the years of extraordinary achievements, 1954-1960, during which he signed with Columbia, created a whole series of masterpieces on record, and drew to his band such unequalled talents as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly and Cannonball Adderly.


Ian Carr illuminates Davis’s genius for growth and renewal during the 1960s and 1970s, with new interviews, information and insights. In perhaps the most engrossing pages of the book, Carr has produced a new long and detailed description of Miles’s dark reclusive period, 1975-1980, with first-hand accounts of his descent towards disintegration. He also tells how the dramatic events of one single day forced Davis, against his will, to turn back to life and move slowly back into music.


The incessant activity of his last ten years – the music-making, his painting and art exhibitions, his extraordinary trumpet playing, his marriage to and divorce from Cicely Tyson – is recounted with fascinating insight. The facts of his unnecessary death are made public for the first time. Miles Davis remained controversial until the end, and the controversy is dealt with in full detail. Graphic accounts of live concerts highlight his huge body of recorded work, which has been called ‘one of the greatest musical legacies of the twentieth century’.


With access to the inner circle of Davis’s friends and associates, Ian Carr includes interviews with the people who knew Davis best. He introduces new interviews with such jazz greats as Max Roach, George Russell, George Avakian, Ron Carter, John Carisi, John Scofield, Bill Evans and Jack and Lydia DeJohnette, and revisits those who contributed to the first edition, including Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, Dave Liebman, Joe Zawinul and Paul Buckmaster. This new and revised edition is an essential source for those who want to understand Miles, his music and the ‘jazz life’.