MILES DAVIS Biography - Musicians

 
 

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MILES DAVIS

Name: Miles Davis                                                                 
Birth name: Miles Dewey Davis III                                                 
Born: 26 May 1926 Alton, Illinois, USA                                             
Died: 28 September 1991 Santa Monica, California, USA                             
                                                                                   
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 25, 1926 - September 28, 1991) was an American jazz     
trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.                                               
                                                                                   
Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century,       
Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World   
War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one     
of the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development   
of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the     
late 1960s and early 1970s.                                                       
                                                                                   
Davis belongs to the great tradition of jazz trumpeters from the Southern United   
States that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis     
Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. His greatest achievement as a         
musician, however, was to move beyond being regarded as a distinctive and         
influential stylist on his own instrument and to shape whole styles and ways of   
making music through the work of his bands, in which many of the most important   
jazz musicians of the second half of the Twentieth Century made their names.       
                                                                                   
Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13,   
2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, Big Band and     
Jazz Hall of Fame, and Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.