The Miles Davis Reader

by Frank Alyker (Editor)

DownBeat magazine (est. 1939), the bible of “jazz, blues, and beyond ” proudly launches the first book in its DownBeat Hall of Fame Series. DownBeat has documented Miles Davis's career like no other journal in the world. From Davis's first DownBeat interview in 1950 to his death in 1991, the magazine captured each nuance and phase of his career through cover stories, features, news items, and reviews. This book is a long-overdue compilation of everything DownBeat magazine has written about Miles Davis, a book packed with glimpses into the artist's career as it happened – from the polite young trumpeter making a name for himself, to the bombastic innovator, to the near mythic legend. It's a must-read for anyone interested in perhaps the most enigmatic and enduring star in jazz history.

Genres: Music, Jazz

356 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally essential primary source material if you're at all a jazz fan: every news item, feature/profile/interview, and review about Miles Davis from Billboard. Bits are predictably stiff, and there are a lot of missing pieces of biography, but the quality of the criticism is pretty high (if ultra straight). More, one really gets a sense of jazz-in-progress -- the arguments, the musician-to-musician dialogues, the sense of development, and eventual collapse of anything resembling a mainstream.

[C.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of articles and reviews relating to the jazz legend.