the "great businessman" things are nice to believe. have any links to substantiate?
I "know" Miles from his younger days with Diz and Bird. A middle class kid from KC - one or both parents dentists who weren't planning on a musician for a son. Much talent at a young age - he toured w the creators of Be Bop, fer cripe's sake. Think he rescued Bird on the road more than once.
All of this is recalled from Phil Schaap's Bird Flight on WKCR. It'd be great to know Miles was a briliant businessman in addition, too.
Quoting from one of the last articles before he died (he was still working up until the year of his death):
"And the Prince of Silence is still being royally rewarded for doing it. His Highness's treasury is overflowing. Money is every bit as important to him as creativity. Or rather, they are inseparable. Obliging record companies, promoters and broadcasters to pay top dollar also commits them to saturation promotion, which encourages business and maintains the price. Money is a symbol of reality, even - especially - money for nothing.
Miles said he could put together a better rock band than Jimi Hendrix. He advised young musicians to learn rock, rhythm and blues and funk tunes rather than jazz standards. "I have to change," he said. "It's like a curse." Miles goes to the money, but it's more complicated than that: The money comes to him.
He has been paid millions to expand frontiers, to reflect the best of our urban experience, to do exactly what he wanted to do and did better than anyone else - to "play what's not there." The artistry with which he relates to money is an art in itself, an integral part of what makes him - whether he likes it or not - a living legend. His multimillion-dollar mansion in Malibu is one of his greatest hits. Miles Davis plays money with as much conviction as he does the trumpet.
After college, I worked in my family's business. Jealous of Miles for making money and music, I compensated by eating and drinking. Coming out of the Russian Tea Room after a three-martini lunch with Bethlehem Steel one afternoon, I crossed Miles stepping out of his Ferrari on the way in. Wearing a Savile Row suit, a Billy Eckstine shirt collar and leather driving gloves with belts on them, he punched me harder than playfully in the stomach and said: "You're getting fat, Mike.""
I "know" Miles from his younger days with Diz and Bird. A middle class kid from KC - one or both parents dentists who weren't planning on a musician for a son. Much talent at a young age - he toured w the creators of Be Bop, fer cripe's sake. Think he rescued Bird on the road more than once.
All of this is recalled from Phil Schaap's Bird Flight on WKCR. It'd be great to know Miles was a briliant businessman in addition, too.