Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography
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, through his drug addiction in the early 1950s, and the years of extraordinary achievements, 1954-1960, during which he 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.
Carr also gives a detailed description of Miles’s dark reclusive period, 1975-1980, and his descent towards disintegration. He also tells how the events of one single day forced Davis to turn back to life and return slowly to 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. Miles Davis, whose work has been called ‘one of the greatest musical legacies of the twentieth century’, remained controversial until the end, and this definitive biography examines the controversy from all sides.
