This year marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Miles Davis, an artist whose life’s work was built on change.
Few people witnessed one of Miles’ last great transformations more closely than keyboardist and producer Jason Miles, who worked with him on Tutu, Music from Siesta, and Amandla.
When I spoke with Jason recently, I asked what the vision was behind Tutu.
“The idea is to get Miles back to playing great melodies and surrounding him with what we’re doing now,” he said.
That “now” meant synthesizers, sampling, sequencers, drum machines. Jason helped build those musical environments for Miles to play inside. When the album credits came out, Jason remembers seeing his own name alongside Miles Davis and Marcus Miller.
“I was like, wow. Somebody was paying attention.”
And for those who were paying attention, it was clear that Jason’s sound was shaping the music of the era. By the 1980s, he was bringing new synthesizers and sampled textures into sessions for artists ranging from Luther Vandross to Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan to Whitney Houston, and many more.
It was a role that often went unnoticed because it had barely existed before. Jason was part keyboardist, part arranger, part sound designer. And when Miles Davis saw what he was doing, he embraced it.
But Jason says the deeper story happened away from the studio. “We really became close with Miles.”
“We used to go visit him all the time… watching boxing, eating popcorn.”
He believes he and his wife Kathy gave Miles something rare. “We brought a sense of normalcy to him. With us, he felt like he could just be a normal guy.”
There was humor too. One night, after months of nonstop sessions, Jason fell asleep in the studio while Miles was recording.
“The next thing I know, I opened up my eyes and there’s Miles standing right above me.”
Miles looked down and said: “I sounded that good, huh?”
His memoir, The Extraordinary Journey of Jason Miles, was published in 2022.
Today Jason Miles lives thousands of kilometers away, in Lisbon, still making music, still reinventing himself.
He told me, “You have to establish and keep on reinventing yourself [...] Nothing stays in the same place forever. You have to go and you have to find your own way.”
His new album, 100 Miles for Miles is inspired by those years and those memories working with Miles Davis. It comes out this Friday, May 1.
“I got to prove that I need to freaking make some really good music still.”
