A Centennial Salute to Miles Davis

The jazz master was born on this day 100 years ago

May 26, 2026May 26, 2026 Ron Hart 0 Comments 100th Birthday, Bitches Brew, Centennial, Darryl Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Kassa Overall, Miles Davis, Prince, Sly Stone, Vince Wilburn Jr.

Miles Davis on the cover of *Tutu*. (Image: Warner Records)

Just wanted to post a salute to the great Miles Davis, who was born on this day 100 years ago in Alton, Illinois.

Very few musicians can lay claim to transforming the way the rock music construct was filtered into the sound of jazz the way the trumpet giant did when he began amplifying his compositions with his second great quintet in the late 1960s with albums like Files De Kilimanjaro and In A Silent Way. Inspired by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, Miles took the experiment a step further with 1970’s Bitches Brew, whose influence continues to resonate in not only jazz, but rock, metal, punk and electronic music to boot. Hip-hop, too, if you listen to the new MIKE/Earl Sweatshirt collaboration, no doubt (well, at least theoretically if not literally).

“I went back and listened to it last night, and it’s funny how the ear evolves,” drummer Kassa Overall told JazzTimes’ Jim Macnie in 2024. “It was like, ‘Yo, this album was extremely ahead of its time.’ The whole concept of looping improvisation and chopping up samples definitely shed a light on hip-hop. Miles was the first artist doing that. When I was younger, I didn’t even know that part, but listening to it now, it almost sounds like they want you to notice. I can hear the air in the room when the loop point comes around. And it’s almost part of the music for me; I hear it as part of the rhythm. You have a chaotic improvisation, but at the point they loop, it gives it an anchor, like an arrangement, something to lean on. I’ve always known that’s what Teo Macero was doing, but I never really noticed it on an editing level like I do now. That’s exactly what I’m doing with my music.”

AUDIO: Prince and Miles Davis “Can I Play With U”

Upon the loss of Prince in 2016, I had the opportunity to speak with several of Miles’s friends, collaborators, fans and family members about how the Purple One played a pivotal role in the trumpet player’s sonic shift in the 1980s for Pitchfork.

“Miles Davis was listening to a lot of Prince at the time we were recording 1984’s Decoy and 1985’s You’re Under Arrest,” Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones told me at the time, having worked with Davis on those aforementioned albums. “Miles was pretty fascinated with him. He was listening to everything, and definitely at that time a lot more funk music, pop and whatever was on the radio. And Prince was all that. Obviously he wasn’t listening to the jazz stuff that was going on at the time, he wouldn’t need to. The music that moved him was new music — music he was unaware of — and Prince was at the top of his list. Ultimately, I think Miles’ connection to Prince was through Prince’s connection to James Brown. From what I remember, Miles really dug that single-note guitar stuff that you’d hear with James Brown. Miles would be onstage playing those kinds of riffs on his trumpet. Like during a funk groove, he’d break out something very similar to a guitar lick. So when I think he heard Prince, he immediately recognized that James Brown influence, and that’s what drew him in. And, of course, you can’t deny how funky Prince’s music is, and that was a real deep thing for Miles. If there was music that moved you in a funky kind of way, he was all over it.”

The music of Miles Davis encapsulates everything there is to love about music, from the cool to the chaotic to the canonical. Whether you got into him through Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew or Tutu, there’s no wrong entryway into his catalog. Just recognize that whether you’re entranced by the Bird-esque swing of Birth of the Cool or the mellow modality of Seven Steps to Heaven or the frenetic funk of Dark Magus or the hip-hop gleam of Doo-Bop, you’re hearing the same man crouched in position at the center of the swirl “like a cat,” his nephew Vince Wilburn Jr. once said.

May the next 100 years continue to see new directions in music rooted in the artistry that Miles Davis accomplished in his 65 short years on Earth.