A lot of forehead. As a very visual person this is the kind of things that get stuck in my head. That's what I remember from the album cover. Remember album covers? Carton? Big? Square? (and take the appropriate 30 seconds to reminisce and 15 more seconds to be brought down by the realization you are indeed old now.)
I like people with forehead.

True, might be the most efficient way to chose musicians, but in this case it works. It's the frenology  of thinkers. (yes, I am as superficial as pol pott and think people with glasses are intellectuals. Arent we lucky I am not a dictator?)

But there is something there. The thinker, the philosopher. And miles was indeed one, and this is what elevated his work. Not only the genius of the playing, the smooth emotions and the cool white heat radiating from him when he played. It was in the themes, in the punctuation and the ideology behind the notes. It was in the arrangements and the structural logic that made it all sound so irreverent and effortless.

I want to talk only about two pieces of miles.
the first one I was exposed to is TUTU.

This is one of his pieces that overcame the jazz boundaries  and entered mainstream, mainly by using what was then a relatively new thing, the invention of the eightees,  called big jackets with shoulder pads. I never understood if they were supposed to enhance the funkiness of the music or were just meant to distract from that eightees big hair. It did help miles popularity (maybe because of the contrast of the big hair and the big shiny black forhead, amplified by the shoulder pads, but something worked)

TUTU was a Tour de force for miles, and what an excellent exemplar it was. In the first ten seconds of tutu you can find the whole secrets of the universe jammed into bursts of pure concentrated energy, deliberate phrasing and beat beat beat , all caressed with the smoothest, almost mythically melodic ,coming from the distance, touching but not touching trumpet.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there."

The second piece is KIND OF BLUE with john Coltrane.
Not only because Davis and Coltrane is always a good combination, but because here miles is at his best playing the doomed romantic, the eternal walk an autumn park, that sweet sorrow of tales untold, of dreams that are still to come.

The haunting melody is uplifting in its simplicity and whirling you around realms of what ifs and why nots, without regrets, without restraints. It's so sad it's optimistic, and so optimistic it is sad.
And with john Coltrane as a travel companion? What can I tell you.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis."     It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it. "

just click the links below and close your eyes.

May the miles be with you.
Fingers black with ring of gold
Cool invented broken mould
A blow a horn a forehead
Like the parking lot of notes
Behind a pair of burning eyes
Showing way to bop our life
To open fields of sweet sweet brew
To touch the chords
of shadows left by
passing bird that flew.
Precise consice
and almost surgical
a trumpets' thought
so  philosophical
old truth in something new.

Some of my favorite miles.

Summertime http://youtu.be/N090STPx-2M
All blues http://youtu.be/vFTp2O0ywyw
Witches brew http://youtu.be/YLUJZUKJ1BM
So what?   http://youtu.be/zqNTltOGh5c