Miles Davis was an American composer, bandleader, arranger and trumpet player who is regularly regarded as one of the most important and influential jazz artists of all-time. Through his nearly fifty year career, Davis experienced countless transitions in the jazz world and always managed to adapt--at times more successfully than others. He was born in Illinois in 1926 and grew up in a St. Louis suburb, where he began taking trumpet lessons at the age of 12. After graduating high school, Davis found himself performing around local clubs, often sitting in with the likes of future jazz greats such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. A move to New York City threw him right in the midst of the bebop scene of the mid-to-late 1940s, where he would begin to establish himself as an trumpeter to keep an eye on. For the next several decades, Davis helped usher in and popularize a wide breadth of jazz genres, including hard bop and cool jazz. As his prominence grew, so did his ego and enigmatic personality, ultimately causing him to become a polarizing figure in the public eye. Jazz purists would scoff and turn their backs on him in the 1970s, when albums such as Bitches Brew and On the Corner introduced a psychedelic and experimental jazz fusion style that pulled from rock, funk and eventually even hip-hop. Davis died in 1991 at the age of 65, but his influence on jazz and popular music of the 20th Century in general cannot be overstated.
