Of course, this is because in most ways Davis was apparently
immensely unpleasant, whether beating Cicely Tyson during
their marriage, exploiting his godhead among sycophants to
casually damage the careers of the likes of Cecil Taylor,
Ornette Coleman, and even John Coltrane.
John "Dizzy" Gillespie, by all accounts a genuinely kind
gentleman, was famously reading the Davis memoir on an
overnight plane flight, during the RHYTHMSTICK orchestra
tour, and was moved to shout "You lying m-f-!" at one point
while doing so. So perhaps not for all does MF imply European
descent so much as, well, a Nero-esque approach to the
world.
The single most overrated figure in jazz, despite being a
genius, and it's notable how much the "unhip" 3rd Stream folk
(Dave Brubeck, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Chico Hamilton) reached
out to and fostered the free-jazz players, while Davis
retreated into often self-indulgent fusion, presumably the
sterling counter-example to Coltrane, et al.'s,
"anti-jazz."
Are any of Artie Shaw's novels remotely hardboiled/noirish,
btw?
-----Original Message----- From: John Williams [mailto:
johnwilliams@ntlworld.com]
Mark Sullivan wrote:
> Didn't Miles Davis also do some pimping (and
heroin)? Does he write
> much about it in his autobiography?
>
MIles' autobiog is a very tough read, and makes no attempt to
portray the author as remotely likable. There's certainly
plenty of heroin use. I don't recall out and out pimping,
though it's a tough call as to whether Miles was more a
misogynist or simply a misanthropist. One interesting
linguistic sidelight is that Miles makes abundantly clear
that the word 'motherfucker'
(possibly the most used word in the book) is at root a
synonym for 'white man' which kind of explains it's enduring
power.
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