Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis

by Paul Maher, Michael K. Dorr

Overview

Miles on Miles collects the thirty most vital Miles Davis interviews. Essential reading for anyone who wants to know what Miles Davis thought about his music, life, and philosophy, Miles on Miles reveals the jazz icon as a complex and contradictory man, secretive at times but extraordinarily revealing at others.

 

Miles was not only a musical genius, but an enigma, and nowhere else was he so compelling, exasperating, and entertaining as in his interviews, which vary from polite to outrageous, from straight-ahead to contrarian. Even his autobiography lacks the immediacy of the dialogues collected here. Many were conducted by leading journalists like Leonard Feather, Stephen Davis, Ben Sidran, Mike Zwerin, and Nat Hentoff. Others have never before seen print, are newly transcribed from radio and television shows, or appeared in long-forgotten magazines.

 

Since Miles Davis's 1991 death, his influence has continued to grow. But until now, no book has brought back to life his inimitable voice--contemplative, defiant, elegant, uncompromising, and humorous. Miles on Miles will long remain the definitive source for anyone wanting to really encounter the legend in print.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641606011
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/15/2021
Series:	Musicians in Their Own Words
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Paul Maher Jr. is the author of Tom Waits on Tom Waits, Jack Kerouac's American Journey, and Kerouac: His Life and Work. He lives in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Michael K. Dorr is a poet, playwright, editor, former publisher, and founder of LitPub, Ink, a literary agency. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

What People are Saying About This

Jack Chambers

Here is Miles Davis's less familiar voice, his speaking voice. . . . Maher and Dorr gather together Davis's greatest hits in Q & A, and they make compelling reading. (Jack Chambers, author, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis)

Editorial Reviews

Davis was regarded by many as, in the words of one journalist, "the wickedest, canniest, deepest, slickest, baddest musician" of the last century, and Maher (Kerouac: His Life and Work) and Dorr, a poet and literary agent, have put together a collection of interviews covering the full spectrum of his career, from publicity materials linked to one of his earliest recordings for Columbia Records in the 1950s to a conversation two years before his death. Davis wasn't always the easiest person to talk to-"if you're going to shut up, man, I'll tell you" was his impatient response in one frustrating conversation-but when approached by the right person, someone with the perceptiveness of Nat Hentoff or Art Taylor, he could produce dazzling insights (in one 1987 interview, he spins intricate technical details on getting the right sound out of synthesizers). It's the little scenes that are most memorable: Davis at a birthday party for Louis Armstrong, or trying to persuade his "errand boy" biographer Eric Nisenson to make a late-night drug delivery. In some unfortunate cases, the interview is more about the self-important journalist celebrating his proximity to a jazz legend than about Davis himself, but even then it's impossible for anybody but Davis to hold the spotlight for long. (Nov.)

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