The architect of the bestselling jazz album of all time, 1959’s Kind of Blue, trumpeter Miles Davis is a towering figure in the history of the genre. Possessed of a piercing tone, innate melodic sensibility and a singularly uncompromising approach on the bandstand, Davis spent his five-decade career presiding over numerous stylistic shifts: bebop to “cool” jazz, modal jazz, electronic fusion, jazz funk and even hip-hop. Always honing his ear for fresh talent, he turned his bands into incubators for rising artists, providing early starts for the pianists Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, saxophonists Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, and drummers Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette.
With 2026 marking the centenary of Davis’s birth, I asked several of his surviving collaborators to select his greatest recordings and discuss his enduring influence, including the 95-year-old Rollins, who played with Davis in the 1950s; the guitarist John Scofield and the saxophonist Bill Evans, who both played with Davis in his 80s fusion groups; and several contemporary jazz stars.
Sonny Rollins: ‘‘We know that with Miles you better not make any mistakes!’
I met Miles as a young man and we soon became very good friends. He moved to uptown New York, where I was living, and he’d come by my house to talk about music and the state of jazz. One day, not long after we started hanging out, we were in a cab and he turned to me and said I looked like the great baseball player Don Newcombe. From then on he would call me “Newk”, and the nickname stuck.
He was very sincere and very serious about the music. When we started playing together, we would practise for hours and hours, and even though everyone in his bands liked and admired him, we knew that when you played with Miles you better not make any mistakes! He would hear every note each person played, and we all took something different away from his wisdom. He didn’t want to be like the other guys leading bands and he didn’t want to look backwards. He has a character to his music that is the sound of that constant change.
The composition of his that I love the most is Four. It was recorded early in Miles’s career with a great quartet of Horace Silver on piano, Percy Heath on bass and Art Blakey on drums. It’s a composition that set the pace for jazz to come since it started the trend of tunes with a similar tempo and 32-bar structure. It was one of the first tracks that took on the attitude and swagger that Miles became known for. He truly was one of the best people in jazz and he taught me so much. I still hear him in so many young guys today – they play like Miles if they can.
Terence Blanchard: ‘He didn’t bow down to jazz history’
Miles didn’t play the trumpet like a trumpet; he produced a personal sound. He was really into melody and phrasing rather than playing licks with lots of notes to show off technique, and he always played the moment, since it’s what was happening at the time in the music that would dictate what he expressed through his horn. That’s ultimately what has kept all of his music fresh.
One of the first jazz records I ever got was the live Miles Davis album Four & More when I was 15. From the very first trilling high note that he plays to the ballads he performs with a straight tone and no vibrato, it was different from anything I’d heard. The more I learned about the history of jazz, the more I realised how different this guy was, since he came from a tradition of Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, guys who were blowing the bell off the horn, and he even played with Bird [bebop pioneer Charlie Parker]. But rather than play fast or loud, he chose to play soft. He came from the history of the music but didn’t bow down to it – he was my first indication that jazz should never stand still, it should always be growing.
I got the chance to meet him backstage at a festival in Perugia, Italy, in the 80s, and he called me over to him. I was amazed he knew who I was. He had that signature raspy voice and just said: “Terreeeeence, keep doing what you’re doing, motherfucker.” I’ll be playing some tribute concerts to Miles this year, but I won’t be trying to sound like him. Instead, the best way to honour him is to play like myself, as that’s exactly what he always did. He was so fearless.
John Scofield: ‘Sometimes he would call you up the next day to talk about your playing’
I joined his band in the early 1980s. It was an honour to learn from him. He loved to discuss all the ways we could play jazz or the mindsets to allow yourself to improvise and create magic by simply letting go. My main takeaway from Miles was noticing how he played with the band and how fierce a bandleader he was. He would record every gig we did and sometimes he would call you up the next day to talk about your playing – he led us all fearlessly.
His groove and rhythm are perfect; he could play rhythmic jazz so well and he was great knowing exactly where to place each note. He always talked to us about leaving space for the music to gel and breathe and move forwards in our soloing. When I listen to him now, his music never feels old.
Melissa Aldana: ‘You hear one note and you know it’s him’
I love So What: a genius composition because it’s built on only two minor chords. As jazz musicians, we’ve all played So What over the years and it’s one of the hardest tunes to play effectively because there’s so much possibility over those chords and you have to choose in which direction to go. He set the tone for modern jazz by creating such a sense of space and silence in his sound.
When you hear his great quartets, especially with Wayne Shorter, you can hear how he allows people to express themselves without fear of the unknown – they all have a certain telepathy and it takes a true leader to bring it out. There’s no ego in the music despite Miles’s strong character. They’re all invested in the bigger picture of how they’re telling the story of the music together.
Also, you hear one note and you know it’s Miles. You can’t play like that and not be spiritual; you have to be in touch with something higher to have that sound.
Jay Phelps: ‘Being a superstar in that environment meant he wasn’t always the nicest’
I’ve heard a lot of people say that Miles doesn’t have as much technical brilliance as other players but the live recording of Lady Bird from 1951 is what I use to defend him. During these earlier years you can clearly hear that he got to a state of technical excellence and found his sound within bebop to play fast and high and that ultimately, as his artistry progressed, he actually chose not to continue with that sound. He’s like Picasso being able to paint and draw proficiently before going down another path.
Miles is one of the first musicians to utilise the trumpet not just for its staccato brilliance but as a melodic songbird. He showed trumpet players like me that we could shift down instead of up to find a beautiful quality that lies within the instrument. The more I transcribe his work into my older age, the more the idiosyncratic details of his playing become apparent to me. You realise how the melody is so paramount to him and he gives a lot more time to digest what he’s played rather than play a million notes all the time. He’s a deep thinker.
Playing alongside a fictionalised Miles Davis in the stage show I’ve recently been a part of [Miles.], I’m able to understand him more, and his life. I can appreciate the drive he had to overcome the racial tensions of the era he lived in. To become a superstar in that environment is so rare and it means he wasn’t always the nicest guy. Yet his music always feels so warm and human.
Bill Evans: ‘He taught me to trust my instincts’
Miles had a way of writing a song or putting a band together that felt like he was playing to just one person, it was very personal and it’s something I try to emulate.
I ended up in his band as his saxophonist Dave Liebman recommended me and then I in turn recommended [bassist] Marcus Miller, [guitarist] Mike Stern and John Scofield. He taught me to always trust my instincts and play the music I’m inspired to play and write. He told me: “You, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock – I don’t worry about you guys. There will always be a place in music for you. Be yourself.”
People love icons and Miles was a born leader; he was charismatic and he helped change the sound of the trumpet. Even though there were more trumpet players with better technique, Miles had his own sound.
Ambrose Akinmusire: ‘I love his leather-clad 80s period’
I don’t see Miles Davis as a composer but instead like a producer or conductor. He’s a great trumpet player but he’s also a guy who loves spectacle and changing himself and his band completely with each new era. He always looked and talked like his albums and it was hard to tell where the art ended and he began since it was all one thing. I love his later 80s period when he is wearing leather, embracing electronics, backbeats and hip-hop and giving his platform over to another generation.
The thing I love about Miles is the same thing I love about Dizzy Gillespie or Joni Mitchell or Björk, which is that they ask themselves daily if they’re the same person they were yesterday. It’s this constant questioning that is important and it’s what I try to implement with myself too.
I’ve played with a lot of Miles’s band members over the years, from Jack DeJohnette to Dave Holland, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter, and they’re all actively invested in the youth and the continuation of the music too. They don’t just play with their peers, they have a continued commitment to passing this music down and they’re ever changing. That’s Miles’s legacy for me, to keep moving and flip your whole shit if you need to.
Yazz Ahmed: ‘Jazz students still have a reverence for him’
I love Miles’s record Live-Evil because it’s an incredible mix of live tracks and studio compositions edited together. It’s so ahead of its time and the first track on the album, Sivad, is an incredible overture that sums up what’s about to come next. The rhythm and phrasing of Miles’s opening line on the track is reminiscent of early hip-hop, a few years before hip-hop was even in popular consciousness, while the whole album is also really inspired by Jimi Hendrix and so on that first phrase he’s using a wah-wah pedal to sound like a guitar. There is an exciting and beautiful contrast where he takes the pedal away and you hear his natural sound – it’s almost shocking. The second movement comes from a Keith Jarrett piano riff and then there’s a brutal studio edit that goes into a ballad-like piece, which is such a surprise again.
Miles’s melodic playing is so distinctive since he’s such a great, spontaneous composer: it’s a real skill to play melodic compositions on the spot. Whenever I’ve taught jazz students, there’s still a reverence for Miles and they’re very aware of Kind of Blue – they can sing all of his solos on it.
Brandon Woody: ‘The intensity is not in the volume. It’s in the intention’
Sorcerer is an album from Miles’s second great quintet, who produced some of my favourite music. I love the way that group played together and even though Herbie Hancock wrote the tune The Sorcerer, Miles breathes such life into the composition because the group was so locked in and vulnerable with each other after spending so much time touring and playing together. I love the way the melody feels like a sorcerer or a snake constantly moving around – it’s so connected to the energy of the song.
There is so much belief in every note Miles plays. The intensity is not in the volume of the sound, it’s in the intention behind it. I’m a 27-year-old player and it’s something a lot of us young cats had to learn early on. Miles would leave space for the rhythm section to support him and he would really allow the band to fly. His sound comes from the group, never from the individual.
Nobody else spanned so many genres as Miles, and his groups were always intergenerational – he was keeping the pulse of what was relevant. Even at the end of his life, his technique isn’t as good but the music never suffered for it: his sound and confidence is present in every note.
• Miles. is at Southwark Playhouse, Borough, London, from 4 February to 7 March
