Kevin Greene’s Reviews > Miles: The Autobiography > Status Update

Davis dedicates some of this book to giving advice to other players. Again, as a musician myself, it is very cool and inspiring to hear such motivational words from one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.

At this point miles went back to talking about his own personal growth as a player. Having a good friend who is a pretty serious jazz trumpet player, I feel like I am easily able to connect to the methods and mentors that Davis had in his development phases.

Miles continues to talk about his opportunities as a player. It never gets old to hear about his stories that he has about playing with guys who are absolute jazz legends as if it is no big deal. Very cool stuff.

In the next portion miles went into a little more detail about the guys he played with and the opportunities he had as a player to perform as a young player. As a musician it is fun to see how he went about building himself up on the jazz scene because it is somewhat relatable, and I completely understand it.

Miles begins to go into greater detail about how he began to develop as a player. I found this incredibly interesting because his development style was not incredibly unique. He simply excelled at what he did and allowed himself to reach untouched levels.

After an intro on his music career, Miles dials it back to his life as a child. He was actually born in Alton, Illinois (not New Orleans), and named after his grandfather. He was by no means belonging to a wealthy family, and in fact lived without a father for most of his life.

In the beginning of this book we learn about Miles' early life as a player and when he moved to New York and started playing with guys like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie -- absolute legends in the jazz scene. This was cool for me to see how he actually began to interact with these guys.