This past week, 99 years ago, Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois.
On November 12, 1989, on 60 Minutes, Harry Reasoner asked him if Black musicians were better at jazz and blues because of slavery. The question could’ve gone sideways.
What Davis said—quietly, precisely—was about rhythm, memory, race, and the meaning of swing. #music #Jazz #Histodons #history #blackmastodon #photography #blackandwhite
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Image: Miles Davis, Hackensack, New Jersey, 1954, photo by Francis Wolff.
He didn’t posture. Didn’t bristle. He laughed. “No,” he said, “it’s not that cliché.” But in the clipped shrug of that no was already an answer. Davis had been raised in comfort. His father was a dentist. He studied at Juilliard. He hadn’t suffered. And yet—he knew.
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Video excerpt: Miles Davis on Black vs White musicians
https://youtube.com/shorts/mLmMQ5vd_Jw?si=5YnMqDg6iOBD1EwY
There was power in that refusal. Davis rejected the idea that Black genius required Black pain. He’d heard it all before—that the blues was born in cotton fields and juke joints. He didn’t dismiss it. But he insisted: suffering wasn’t the source. Not always.
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Image: Picking cotton, Hopson Plantation, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi? Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990, photographer, 1939 Nov.
Then he said something quieter, sharper: white musicians played “behind the beat.” Four words. Not a critique, not even a judgment—just a truth. The beat wasn’t just rhythm. It was breath. It was swing. It was something lived, not taught.
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Image: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter’s “Speak No Evil” session, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 24, 1964.
That difference, Davis seemed to say, wasn’t about skill. It wasn’t about talent. It was about memory. Not the kind in your head—but the kind in your fingertips. In your hips. In the silence between phrases. Embodied memory. Cultural memory. Black memory.
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Image: Jitterbugging in a juke joint on Saturday evening outside Clarksdale, November 1939 (Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
Because blues isn’t just a genre. Jazz isn’t just a style. They’re languages born of survival—of migration, loss, prayer, and defiance. Even those who hadn’t suffered directly had grown up inside the sound. Davis had. He played from the inside.
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Image: Negro boys on Easter morning. Southside, Chicago, Illinois, Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, photographer, 1941 April.
White musicians could learn the chords. They could swing. But many were reaching for something that Black musicians already carried. In that difference—barely a breath long—was inheritance. Not superiority. Not exclusion. Just memory.
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Image: Jimmy Smith Complete Blue Note Session Feb 1957. Photo Francis Wolff.
When Miles played, he wasn’t just performing. He was remembering. Late nights. Dope sickness. Paris. East St. Louis. Velvet suits. The women who stayed. The ones who left. The sound of a world cracking—and the resolve to keep playing anyway.
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Image: Miles Davis, New York City, photographer, Tom Palumbo.
That’s what Davis was saying. He wasn’t gatekeeping. He was naming a pattern. A rhythm passed down. A sound shaped by centuries. If you’d lived close enough to it, you felt it humming beneath the floor.
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Image: Mississippi John Hurt, circa. 1950s, Photographer Unknown.
Primary Sources
Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.
CBS News. Miles Davis on Being Black and Gifted. YouTube. Excerpted clip from an interview by Harry Reasoner. 60 Minutes. Accessed May 31, 2025.
https://youtube.com/shorts/mLmMQ5vd_Jw?si=5YnMqDg6iOBD1EwY
CBS News. Miles Davis on Being Black and Gifted. YouTube. Complete interview by Harry Reasoner. 60 Minutes. Accessed May 31, 2025.
https://www.milesdavis.com/film/60-minutes/
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Secondary Sources
Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones). Blues People: Negro Music in White America. New York: Morrow, 1963.
Crouch, Stanley. Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. New York: Verso, 1993.
Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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More Secondary Sources
hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: New Press, 1995.
Monson, Ingrid. Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Amistad, 2004.
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@Deglassco It's strange that I can hear this depth in Janis Joplin. She exudes deep authenticity in her blues. Every time I listen to her, I wonder about this and how she's not Black.
I've been getting into earlier blues a bit lately, partly because of Janis. I've loved every Etta James track I've heard so far.
Thanks for this perspective!
just as some musicians don't "get" the feel of jazz, it's fascinating talking to brazilian musicians, who have been soaked in their own traditions and styles., and hearing their opinions of what is right and wrong when north american jazz musicians try to play brazilian music.
brazilian music is syncopated by tone and note, more than playing with exact timing. there is some percussion instrument playing every 16th note in every measure, so it's very precise in beat but the shift across different percussion instruments makes it "swing".
you don't have to have been born into a favela to sound "right", but you do need to be soaked in the music early on and thoroughly.
thanks for the thread on miles too. it took me a while to really understand his style but he's one of my favorites these days.
some, less fond of late Miles and jazz fusion, but that is me not him.
@Deglassco @wendinoakland I was in college when that interview aired. I was blown away by his total bad-assery.
I was also shocked to hear him say that he had to call the police every time before he took his Lamborghini out for a drive because driving an expensive car while black was enough to get you pulled over in Florida.
Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco
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