Friday, March 20 at Flushing Town Hall, a group of musicians led by Jimmy Owens will celebrate the centenary of Miles Davis. The all star band is made up almost entirely of NEA Jazz Masters -including Owens himself, Kenny Barron, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Donald Harrison Jr.
For Owens, the connection to Miles Davis isn’t just historical. His story begins in Harlem in 1958 when he was fifteen years old.
Owens grew up in the Bronx. His father worked nights at the post office, and one morning he came home with an idea.He told me, “My father says, listen Miles Davis is going to be at Smalls Paradise this next week. Why don’t you come with me to see Miles?”
They went to the Sunday matinee at Smalls Paradise. During the break, the teenager wandered up to the bandstand. Miles’ trumpet was sitting inside the piano. Then suddenly Miles himself sat down.
Jimmy remembers, “He says to me in his voice, ‘Hey kid — you play trumpet?’ … He grabbed the trumpet and said, ‘Play me something.’ So I put my mouthpiece in it… and I played Walkin’.”
And this wasn’t just any band. It was the Miles Davis quintet with Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Bill Evans, all filing back onto the stage. Owens, fifteen years old, standing among them on stage.
Stories about Miles Davis often emphasize his toughness, the reputation for being distant or intimidating. But Owens says the man he encountered that day was something different.
Even shy.“He was very shy,” he says, “And when you think about his life, the racial situation he was born into… the struggles he went through… all of that made him draw inward.”
And yet the music told another story.
“What came out of the bell of Miles’s horn was sweet,” marvels Owens.
That afternoon at Smalls Paradise happened nearly seventy years ago. This year, Miles Davis would have turned one hundred.
And next Friday night at Flushing Town Hall, Jimmy Owens will begin the tribute concert exactly where his own story with Miles began.
He says, “That’s the very first song we’re going to play… because I’m going to tell that story about how Miles gave me his horn and I played Walkin’.”
Jimmy Owens plans to open the concert with Walkin’. And though tickets are still available for the performance at Flushing Town Hall…I suggest you start runnin’ not walkin’ to get yours before they’re gone.
