Miles Davis spent his life searching. He changed the sound of jazz repeatedly, assembling generations of musicians around him and pushing constantly toward something new. Few artists loom so large over the history of the music.
To mark what would have been his 100th birthday today, I’m revisiting a rare 1986 conversation between Miles and my dad, Ben Sidran, recorded on the terrace of Miles’s Malibu home.
At a time when Miles was reticent about revisiting his past, in this interview he reflected on Kind of Blue, his early musical development and influences, as well as his ideas about creativity, individuality and what it means to make a meaningful artistic contribution.
To start the episode, Ben and I had our own conversation about the Miles interview, his memory of doing it, how it resonated at the time and how it resonates today. In the 40 years since it was recorded, the interview has become one of the definitive documents of Miles’s thinking during that period.
Ben’s original interview with Miles Davis was made for his NPR program Sidran on Record, and is now part of his Talking Jazz project. The full archive is available at https://talkingjazz.bandcamp.com/album/talking-jazz
Today’s episode image is borrowed from "Notes from the Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame" produced by Quoted Studios and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
