Miles Davis The Definitive Biography

The acclaimed classic biography, fully revised, becomes the definitive.

“Davids’s story is one of the most fascinating in 20th -century popular culture and Ian Carr has told it brilliantly. This book is an update of Carr’s 1982 biography and its claim to be definitive is entirely accurate. It is a superb piece of work that is unlikely to be bettered. Research,writing and critical evaluation are uniformly excellent … Davis came of age during the jazz upheavals of the 1940s when he partnered the wayward and brilliant alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. He soon developed into the immensely influential pioneering spirit he remained for the rest of his life … His music has been constantly reissued and repackaged and endlessly analysed. But nobody has brought as much insight to it as Carr whose magnificent biography should be on the shelves of anyone who has ever enjoyed Miles Davis’s music.”
ANDREW VINE, 'Yorkshire Post'

“All of [Davis’s musical] activity is elegantly capped by the publication of Ian Carr’s indispensable 'Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography'. Fifteen years after he brought out his “critical biography”, Carr brings the story comprehensively up to date … The music is the real story and Carr brings a true insider’s knowledge to the telling of it”
CLIVE DAVIS, 'Times'

“This excellent biography provides a smartly considered appreciation of Davis’s life and work, from early acclaim to neglect and back again”
MAIL ON SUNDAY

The acclaimed classic biography, fully revised, becomes the definitive.

The revised edition of Ian Carr’s classic biography of Miles Davis throws new light on his life and career from the early days in New York, with Charlie Parker, to his Birth of the Cool band, through his drug addiction in the early 1950s, and the years of extraordinary achievements, 1954-1960, during which he created a whole series of masterpieces on record, and drew to his band such unequalled talents as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly and Cannonball Adderly.
Carr also gives a detailed description of Miles’s dark reclusive period, 1975-1980, and his descent towards disintegration. He also tells how the events of one single day forced Davis to turn back to life and return slowly to music.
The incessant activity of his last ten years – the music-making, his painting and art exhibitions, his extraordinary trumpet playing, his marriage to and divorce from Cicely Tyson – is recounted with fascinating insight. Miles Davis, whose work has been called ‘one of the greatest musical legacies of the twentieth century’, remained controversial until the end, and this definitive biography examines the controversy from all sides.
With access to the inner circle of Davis’s friends and associates, Ian Carr includes new interviews with such jazz greats as Max Roach, George Russell, George Avakian, Ron Carter, John Carisi, John Scofield, Bill Evans and Jack and Lydia DeJohnette, and revisits those who contributed to the first edition, including Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, Joe Zawinul and Paul Buckmaster. This new, revised edition is an essential source for those who want to understand Miles, his music and the ‘jazz life’.