“Cool Enough for School”

‘Miles Davis: The Jazz Musician as Dandy”
A Presentation by John Szwed
October 17, 2011
At the Cortelyou Commons on North Fremont Sreet.

By BLAKE GOBLE

Exactly who did Miles Davis think he was? Lady Gaga? Madonna?

Well, yeah. Except he probably did it (anything trendy or attention-grabbing) first, and he wasn’t necessarily seeking press like his accidental acolytes. Davis was fashionable as all get out, changing outfits almost as often as beats in his music. Fur coats. Unusually cut shirts. Huge sunglasses. Pants to accentuate his short height and slender figure. Davis was cool. Davis represented Dandy-dom in a way fickle enough to make the harshest music critics schizophrenic. At least, that’s the fair impression John Szwed wants to give his audience.

“He dressed like a model with a dancer’s grace” Szwed assures a crowd of over 60 enthused Jazz fans and academics.

On a cool Monday night in Autumn, Szwed is presenting at the Cortelyou Commons at DePaul University, speaking on Davis’s status as not only a jazz icon, but a pop cultural one, too. Szwed, a Grammy-winning, former Yale and Columbia University professor is here to re-evaluate just what Miles meant, not just for music, but for pop culture and celebrity-dom. Turning his back to the audience, perpetually changing wardrobe, taking old standards and making them seem too new, that was Miles Davis.

“’My Funny Valentine,’ is almost child-like” said Szwed. And yet, “he could make a song take on a poignancy… ‘Oklahoma,’ “Night & Day’. ” Szwed speaks of Davis and ability to do things, unusual, especially during his post 1940s to 1970s pop supremacy, and make them hip or trendy. Miles could take seemingly any piece of music, give it vibrancy that made it seem of that moment. It was Miles’ underappreciated gift. Szwed suggests, though, that all this verve and candor may have been the behavior of a shy man.

“Likes (Orson) Welles and (Frank) Sinatra, Miles set his body free by projecting through voice” according to Szwed. Miles was a terrific presence, through his appearance, stage abilities, and of course his music. All this might have been his fantastic way of expressing himself.

Art Blakey once even said “I hate to say he’s shy… but he is shy.”

Maybe that’s why Davis played his trumpet to the floor and turned his back to audiences and cameras, as seen in Szwed’s clips. Or maybe the lifetime of pain, including a wooden hip transplant that would rot, motivated his withdrawn behavior. Or all the different outfits, as now glamorized by the photos Szwed shares, show a man insecure about himself, looking for a set persona.

All this an more adds to the marvelous, complex Miles Davis that audiophiles know already. Davis was cool, and a dandy. But what did it all mean? John Szwed may be the best person to ask.

For more on Davis, visit Szwed’s site, johnszwed.com, and his book, “So What: The Life of Miles Davis” is available at Amazon.com.