Miles Davis

When Miles Davis, the son of an affluent dental surgeon, was growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, his mother wanted him to play the violin. On his 13th birthday, he got a trumpet instead. Two years later he was a card-carrying professional musician performing around St. Louis with Eddie Randall's Blue Devils.That was the start of Miles Davis' incredibly inventive musical career which was aptly summed up by jazz authority Leonard Feather, "You can really say he turned the whole jazz world around.

I REALLY need more space. But until I get a bigger place, I need to figure out a way to organize the thousands of CDs and growing number of music DVDs that dominate my living room. But the avalanching stacks haven't stopped me from bringing more discs home every week. The industry is trying to help me out, though, by putting the audio and the visual on one disc. In the mail last week, I received two DualDiscs: Rebirth, the new set by Jennifer Lopez, and Kind of Blue, one of my all-time favorite albums by Miles Davis.

Jazz and rap? To a lot of jazz listeners, the combination seems about as appealing as a peanut butter and honeybee sandwich. So don't be surprised if many of Miles Davis' older fans discount or ignore the trumpeter's last recording, a jazz-rap fusion album entitled "Doo-Bop" (Warner Bros. 26938).Admittedly, you'd think they'd be used to this sort of thing by now. Davis spent most of his career shaking up the jazz establishment, and given the soulful slant of his last decade, during which he sat in with everyone from Cameo to Quincy Jones, a posthumous rap album would hardly seem out of character.

NEW YORK -- Way back in 1968, on an avant-garde album called Congliptious, trumpeter Lester Bowie slyly asked, "Is jazz as we know it dead?" Then, after taking a blazing solo, he replied, "That all depends on what you know, heh, heh, heh." If Bowie were still alive, he might not find the question so funny. Jazz is not dead, but few would call it healthy. Americans spend $13 billion a year on compact discs, but jazz CDs account for less than 3 percent of those purchases, according to the Recording Industry Association of America -- and this has been the case, consistently, for the past decade.

Two artists known primarily for their work as musicians are on view at Reality Room Art Gallery in Washington, in a show that includes 24 pen and ink drawings by former Beatles member John Lennon and 10 oil paintings by the late jazz great Miles Davis.The exhibition, titled "The Art of Democracy," runs through July 31 and commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Chinese student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.Reality Room Art Gallery is at 1010 Wisconsin Ave. N.W., in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood.

Although most people associate the sound of jazz with sultry saxophones and darkly thumping double basses, it's really the trumpet (along with its siblings, the cornet and flugelhorn) that should stand as the style's pre-eminent instrument. After all, jazz was essentially invented on the trumpet, back in 1922 when Louis Armstrong stepped forth from the ensemble in KingOliver's band to deliver its first improvised solo; the instrument's bright, brash tone and extraordinary melodic flexibility made it a natural leader.

FEW JAZZMEN are ever identified with even one major innovation in the music. Miles Davis, who died Saturday at age 65, was associated with at least four.In the late '40s, he played as a sideman to Charlie Parker in the midst of the be-bop revolution. In the early-'50s, Davis headed up the nonet that recorded "The Birth of Cool," a series of sessions that were indeed the genesis of the cool-jazz school. In the late-'50s, Davis paved the way for the modal-jazz movement, and in the late-'60s, he led the jazz-rock fusion breakthrough.

When jazz legend Miles Davis died Saturday after a stroke suffered in a Santa Monica, Calif. hospital, virtually every obituary said the same thing of the 65-year old trumpeter: that he was an original, an innovator, a trendsetter. And, of course, he was.But in the hype-strewn morass of American media culture, such praise comes cheap. Anyone can be an "innovator," from mall developers to shoe designers, and as such, the obits may have given the wrong impression of why Davis mattered.Because Miles Davis wasn't just an innovator -- he was one of the two or three most important musicians jazz has ever seen.

DURING the long weekend of mourning for Miles Davis, somebody said it had seemed like Miles would be here forever.Well, of course, he will be.Miles played trumpet solos that made you bleed from the heart. He made you swing and he made you think and he made you weep.But he rarely made you laugh. His mood, his mode, was melancholia. His tone was mournful. His time was 'round midnight and those bleak hours into the dawn when you run out of everything you need and there's no place to get it.Miles played as if death waited in some empty room down the hall.

I REALLY need more space. But until I get a bigger place, I need to figure out a way to organize the thousands of CDs and growing number of music DVDs that dominate my living room. But the avalanching stacks haven't stopped me from bringing more discs home every week. The industry is trying to help me out, though, by putting the audio and the visual on one disc. In the mail last week, I received two DualDiscs: Rebirth, the new set by Jennifer Lopez, and Kind of Blue, one of my all-time favorite albums by Miles Davis.

Opinionated, respected and quick, Dennis Miller was picked in 2000 to resurrect the blend of irreverence and insight last heard on ABC's Monday Night Football from Howard Cosell. Many sports purists disagreed with the choice of the acerbic comic. On talk radio and in sports columns across the country, Miller received a rocky welcome. Ratings for MNF ebbed, and this year they dropped to all-time lows. But Miller, 48, who admitted he had attended only one professional football game before taking the job, calls his time in the booth with announcer Al Michaels and commentator Dan Fouts, a Hall of Fame quarterback, a success.

Miles Davis On the Corner (Columbia/Legacy 63980) Get Up With It (Columbia/Legacy 63970) One week in 1970, Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" climbed to No. 38 on the Billboard albums chart, making it the most successful title of Davis' career. The album was an astonishing achievement. Commercially, "Bitches Brew" put Davis back on the map after a decade in which his angular, intellectualized approach to jazz was thought to have lost ground to the politically progressive black nationalism of John Coltrane and his disciples.

When the Miles Davis box set "Quintet 1965-1968" was released in 1998, critics referred to that group -- Davis on trumpet, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams -- as the second great Davis Quintet. The first, as the scribes pointed out, was the band Davis formed in late 1955, featuring tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. That was the group that defined the sound of late '50s hard bop, thanks to such classic recordings as "Milestones," "On Green Dolphin Street" and the immortal "Round Midnight."

Alto saxophonist Paul Desmond was often described as having a sound as dry as a perfect martini. If Desmond had a vocal counterpart, it would be singer and pianist Bob Dorough. An Arkansas native whose tart tone and wry wit has been entertaining jazz aficionados for more than four decades now, Dorough has always managed to be utterly cool yet totally accessible. Sure, his C.V. includes stints with both Miles Davis (recording the ultimate post-bop carol, "Blue Xmas," in 1962) and Ornette Coleman, but he was also the songwriter responsible for many of the tunes on the TV series "Schoolhouse Rock."

Two artists known primarily for their work as musicians are on view at Reality Room Art Gallery in Washington, in a show that includes 24 pen and ink drawings by former Beatles member John Lennon and 10 oil paintings by the late jazz great Miles Davis.The exhibition, titled "The Art of Democracy," runs through July 31 and commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Chinese student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.Reality Room Art Gallery is at 1010 Wisconsin Ave. N.W., in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood.

Over the course of his career, the late Miles Davis led a number of exemplary jazz bands. There was the nonet with Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan and J. J. Johnson he assembled for the "Birth of the Cool" sessions in 1949; the star-studded "Kind of Blue" sextet in 1959, with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans; the electrified ensemble with Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin and Billy Cobham that generated "A Tribute to Jack Johnson" in 1970.But,...

At the time, people thought he was crazy.Back in the early '70s, when Miles Davis was releasing the albums "At Fillmore," "Live/Evil" and "In Concert," a lot of his fans thought he had lost his way, if not his mind. Davis had become the avatar of new movement, dubbed fusion or jazz-rock, and the big question among jazz fans was whether this was a revolutionary move or merely revolting.It started in 1970 with "Bitches Brew," a moody, electric double album that quickly became the era's biggest-selling jazz album.

Over the course of his career, the late Miles Davis led a number of exemplary jazz bands. There was the nonet with Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan and J. J. Johnson he assembled for the "Birth of the Cool" sessions in 1949; the star-studded "Kind of Blue" sextet in 1959, with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans; the electrified ensemble with Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin and Billy Cobham that generated "A Tribute to Jack Johnson" in 1970.But,...

For years, it was the subgenre that dare not speak its name.Once considered the cutting edge of modern jazz, fusion brought a new sense of commercial vitality to the music. As epitomized by such early '70s stalwarts as Miles Davis, Weather Report and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, fusion's electric instrumentation and R&B-oriented rhythms attracted the sort of audiences normally found at rock concerts.For a moment, it looked as if the style might make jazz popular again. Then the backlash set in. Egged on by the screaming pyrotechnics of fleet-fingered virtuosi like guitarist John McLaughlin and synth wizard Jan Hammer, fusion became a wasteland of instrumental excess, beset with bands who saw it as an excuse to cram as many notes as possible into any given tune.

WHEN DID ''cool'' come to mean ''fitting in''?Christmas being one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar, my youngest boys plan to rise early that morning, steal downstairs in the coolness of pre-dawn, kneel reverently before the tree and pray that when they open their eyes, they'll see Old Navy shirts and Air Jordan athletic shoes. These are priority items on their annual gimme lists.I used to think it was just all-American greed. Actually, I still do. But I've also come to realize that what motivates my boys is more complicated than avarice.