In the summer of 1985, Quincy Troupe received a telephone call from Miles Davis. Davis had been thinking about writing his autobiography and had read Troupe's poetry and decided, with the directness that defined everything he did, that Troupe was the person he wanted to write it with. They met at Davis's brownstone on West 77th Street in Manhattan, a house so filled with art, music, and barely contained energy that Troupe later described walking into it as entering another dimension. Davis was fifty-nine years old, had survived heroin addiction, a near-fatal car accident, and years of physical deterioration that had kept him off the stage, and had returned to music in the late 1970s with a restless ferocity that silenced anyone who thought he was finished. He greeted Troupe in paint-splattered clothes, having been working on one of the canvases he produced with the same improvisational intensity he brought to music. The collaboration that followed produced one of the most celebrated musician memoirs ever written. Davis died before it was published. Troupe has been living with the experience and Davis's extraordinary presence ever since.
Widely considered one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century, Miles Davis (1926–1991) was a transformative force in jazz whose influence extended far beyond any single style or period. A gifted trumpeter and composer, he was above all an innovator who refused to stand still long enough to be categorized. He created the nine-member nonet that introduced unconventional instruments, including French horn and tuba to jazz, invented the cool jazz style characterized by softer and more subdued tempos than traditional jazz rhythms, and went on to pioneer modal jazz, jazz fusion, and electronic experimentation in a succession of reinventions that left his contemporaries alternately bewildered and inspired. Each time the music world thought it had placed Miles Davis, he had already moved on.
Few people have come closer to the man behind that restless genius than Quincy Troupe, award-winning author of ten volumes of poetry, three children's books, and six works of nonfiction, and recipient of the American Book Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in 2010. His bestselling works include Miles: The Autobiography of Miles Davis and his memoir Miles and Me, soon to become a major motion picture, both of which draw on years of intimate access to one of the most guarded and charismatic figures in American music.
In the conversation that follows, Troupe shares his insight into the life and work of Miles Davis, reflecting on the man he knew, the music that defined an era, and what it means to spend years in close proximity to a genius who was, by every account, as difficult and as extraordinary in person as he was on the bandstand.
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