I think cool originates with the jazz culture in the '40s. There was probably cool before that, but that's when people started talking about cool - Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and a bunch of other early, cool jazz folk.
Alissa Quart
If I want to hear a voice, Lana Del Rey is very soothing, and I could just listen to her on repeat, but my real go-to that's been very consistent for at least the past ten years is Miles Davis.
Antoni Porowski
Miles Davis is my go-to for music. There's something so relaxing and ambient about it, and it can be a little manic in a good way.
Everything musically, for me, there's two kinds of music. There's Prince and Jimi Hendrix and then Miles Davis and everything filters through that.
Ato Essandoh
I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.
Barry Hannah
My dad is Jean-Paul Bourelly, a really prestige guitar player in Europe, and he toured with Miles Davis. I was always surrounded by the most prestige kind of musicians from Senegal, Trinidad, Poland, Nigeria, and all around the world.
Bibi Bourelly
Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn't consider himself part of a tradition.
Bill Laswell
Miles Davis turned his back to the audience when he came out on stage, and he offended people. But, he wasn't there to entertain; he was all about the music. I kind of do that.
Bobby McFerrin
One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.
Branford Marsalis
I don't think we listened to any rock n' roll at all in the early days. It was Miles Davis and John Coltrane 95% of the time.
Butch Trucks
See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
Carlos Santana
Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.
Cassandra Wilson
Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.
I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.
Charlie Trotter
I saw Al Foster with Miles Davis the other week. It was beautiful. But, the whole thing was, Al Foster played as well as everybody else, but all of them were quite brilliant under Miles Davis' direction.
Charlie Watts
Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.
Chick Corea
My first ambition in life, I made up my mind I was going to become Miles Davis. I studied music, music theory. I played trumpet for nine years. One day, my mother explained, 'You can't be Miles Davis. There's one, and he's got that job.'
Chris Gardner
Prince, you never knew what to expect from him from one album to the next. Miles Davis was like that. You know, once you get used to one style, boom, he switched it and, you know, switched gears on you. So those artists are very exciting to me, very exciting to follow their path, you know, and their journey.
D'Angelo
I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.
Dave Brubeck
I made an a capella cover of Kesha when everyone else was listening to Miles Davis and people didn't like it. They imitated me.
My favorite artists are able to take things to the edge or just over the edge. Miles Davis and Duane Allman, for example. It's about not playing too many notes. Those guys had lots of phases to their careers, but they always played with economy and intelligence.
My musical selections are a reflection of how I grew up. Because, back then, you could see Miles Davis and Ravi Shankar on the same stage. And nobody thought anything of it, other than the fact that it was great music.
Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.
We're trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.
I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music.
I love music, and a lot of it. Jazz is probably on the top with guys like Miles Davis. But I even enjoy music from the '60s and '70s.
I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.
I usually go to secondhand stores and find what I can. I like finding interesting things: vests, blazers. I tell the band, 'We got to look good when we're up there.' I learned it from Miles Davis. I read about his suits in his biography. Suits mean you're getting paid, and I like the idea that he looked good in his suits.
It's called 'Miles Davis, Prince of Darkness,' and it's about Miles Davis, the genius, and why he was the way he was, and how he changed music so many times. He changed music six times. So, I'm excited about that movie.
Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.
I just really liked those trumpets and horns - Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie - and I honed in on that. I always looked for those big horn lines.
Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.
Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, 'We're done.' After tons of great records and tickets sold, he said, 'Now I'm going to grow my hair out and play my horn through a wah-wah pedal.' Rather than play it safe, he went on.
I like to listed to the adventurous guys - the Coltranes, Miles Davis, the guys who just let it loose.
I got a chance to work with Miles Davis, and that changed everything for me, 'cause Miles really encouraged all his musicians to reach beyond what they know, go into unknown territory and explore. It's made a difference to me and the decisions that I've made over the years about how to approach a project in this music.
Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own identity, and that happened with me, when I was with a great teacher - Miles Davis.
So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.
If I'm going to be a jazz player, I need to understand Miles Davis.
Miles Davis, his parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois, where he had the luxury of being able to practice for hours upon hours. He never would have been able to do that in the cotton country of Arkansas.
The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It's all working towards the same destination - the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I'm still taking the subway.
I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I've worked out why this is - unsociable hours, plus general creativity.
Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.
I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.
I first met Miles Davis about 1947 and played a few jobs with him and Sonny Rollins at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. During this period, he was coming into his own, and I could see him extending the boundaries of jazz even further.
Miles Davis and Felonious Monk, they're both great artists who enhance things.
Chopin or Billy Eckstine or Miles Davis - that stuff helps me, more when I've already written and I need a little energy to keep editing.
Miles Davis himself, I discovered him when I was 15, and he rocked my world.
People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis' record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row - there's just too much to get through.
When it's all said and done, jazz with a capital J is where I'm coming from. Dexter Gordon, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk - that's what I really studied when I was a teenager and what really fueled my passion.
