Miles Davis: A candid conversation (1962) | Hacker News Reader

Miles Davis: A candid conversation (1962)

erenkrantz.com

134 pointsTomte72 comments

> Why I sometimes walk off the stand is because when it's somebody else's turn to solo, I ain't going to just stand up there and be detracting from him. What am I going to stand up there for? I ain't no model, and I don't sing or dance, and I damn sure ain't no Uncle Tom just to be up there grinning. Sometimes I go over by the piano or the drums and listen to what they're doing. But if I don't want to do that, I go in the wings and listen to the whole band until it's the next turn for my horn.

I wrote about this exact thing in here last week:

https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/the-art-of-leadership-le...

But he was Miles. He did it his way. No disrespect at all from me on that. He probably launched as many big stars as Blakey, if not more.

I was enjoying this article but when you got to the importance of character, asking ChatGPT to define it seemed - at least to me - a bit of a cop-out. Would have liked more personal perspective there.

Increasingly, when I ask someone for their opinion, they just tell me they've put that question into ChatGPT and this is what it said.

Well, okay, but if I wanted to hear that I would have asked ChatGPT directly, no?

As a counterpoint, isn't it implied that the person has read what ChatGPT wrote and by forwarding it, agrees that it's a roughly similar phrasing of their feelings on the issue? One would hope so, anyway.

Indeed that's what I thought, but I think it's fair to say, "I don't want to read ChatGPT's answers."

More precisely, I did get lazy and think, "well, I don't know what he meant, exactly, but he'd probably pick out one or two of these points, at least. ChatGPT tends to include everything, including the kitchen sink."

Plus, to me, "I don't know" is also an answer - I use it to gauge how niche a topic might actually be. LLMs do that at all.

Why not cut out the middleman then?

People who "agree with what ChatGPT wrote" are redundant in a discussion if they're merely relaying it.

If you're an expert in X and I'm not, you can easily google "intro to X" and skim the first handful of pages and send me the best one. This is the same idea IMHO.

Telling me that ChatGPT's answer is not horribly wrong could be a very useful data point.

OK, I'll accept that, thanks.

I spent a lot of time on the rest of it. For this part, I didn't think I had anything particular to say about "character" that wouldn't take me days to compose, and might not be what Blakey meant by it anyway.

But yeah, this device has worn out its welcome.

Why is the top ranking comments in this thread not even about the original article?

This is so typical in the HN comments.

This is a comment thread about 1962 interview of Miles Davis, not Albert Cory...

Because I wrote about something Miles said in that interview.

This is still not about your writing and shouldn't be at the top of the comments.

And its definetely NOT about programming, OR leadership.

You don't get to decide what should be at the top of the comments.

>And its definetely NOT about programming, OR leadership

Never had to be. Perhaps you took the name "Hacker News" too literally?

Albert's comment wasn't about himself, but about an article he wrote that I found quite relevant to the Miles Davis article.

He compares Miles' onstage behavior when another musician is soloing with Art Blakey's very different approach.

It's worth reading them both, and I am glad they were both called to my attention.

To answer your question about why it's at the top of the comment thread, I'm sure you already know the answer: multiple people like myself found it interesting and upvoted it.

Complaining about that won't change anything.

> Why is the top ranking comments in this thread not even about the original article?

In short: Because it got the most upvotes.

Sounds trivial but there is a deeper point to it. "Top comment" isn't about who gave the most praise or the harshest crisicism or the best summary or the most controversial take on the topic. It's about what the collective HN hivemind found was moving the conversation forward in the most interesting way. That's what's getting upvoted. If that happens to have mentioned another article, well, so be it.

Because discussions thread in various directions. It's not a school exam.

It does seem a little lazy and jarring to quote from ChatGPT, but technically is much the same as if he had added a named quote directly: "Merriam-Webster dictionary defines character as.." or "Albert Camus once said that character is..."

> But prejudiced white people can't see any of the other races as just individual people. If a white man robs a bank, it's just a man robbed a bank. But if a Negro or a Puerto Rican does it, it's them awful Negroes or Puerto Ricans.

We've come a long way in 60 years. It's Muslims and Mexicans now too. (/s)

I mean, we've made strides in equality. Nowadays, depending who you ask, it's white people as well!

edit: Honestly though, that said, reading this article gives me a ton of respect for Miles Davis. He's really candid while at the same time being very explicit that he's just talking about what he himself has seen, and why he's deciding the way that he does. A lot more people could stand to think like that.

The Playboy interviewer is Alex Haley, who conducted many notable interviews for Playboy magazine. He had another memorable interview with George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell made sure Haley wasn't Jewish as they were arranging the interview, but was shocked to learn that the interviewer was black. He did seem to have a grudging admiration for Haley, as he continued corresponding with letters opening with "To my V.I.N." (N being the n-word).

Haley later went on to author many notable titles, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as ghost-writer) and Roots, which turned into a monumental TV series. Part of the show contains a reenactment of the meeting with Alex Haley and George Lincoln Rockwell, each played by James Earl Jones and Marlon Brando: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8SxzNdX1MQ

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is still a great book that everyone should read.

Thanks for pointing this out. The interviewers name isn't on the page, but this is an important detail, given that it's Alex Haley.

If you found this interesting then check out Davis’ autobiography. It is absolutely fascinating and with a music streaming service you can listen to all the music he talks about as you read. One of my favourite books.

The story an about him in a cab with Charlie Parker with Parker getting a blowjob from a prostitute while eating fried chicken was a particularly memorable anecdote.

And only one of many. The book obviously never went near a PR person. Highly recommended for anyone with the slightest interest in jazz.

The Bird anecdotes are legendary, but I also enjoyed his commentary on Coltrane. Even though Trane has achieved saintly status today, Miles certainly didn't regard him that way (though he did respect his talent).

A great conversation. Some actual honesty. Would like to see more of that these days.

This 1962 interview was published in Playboy Magazine. Somebody simply needs to convince Pornhub that they should spice things up with interviews of jazz musicians.

Am I the only one that visits PornHub for the articles?

Why yes. I believe you ARE the only one.

PornHub has articles? Why didn't I hear about this? Next thing you'll be telling me: they do reviews of Scotch, cigars, and cool Scandinavian furniture.

I'm going to use this should I ever let Pornhub into my history and get caught.

"I go there for the articles"

i was there. as a young aspiring jazz artist attending conservatory near NYC, i took jazz lessons with Eric Dolphy and others close to Miles. Met him a couple of times at his gigs. i grew up about a mile from the legendary Van Gelder studio where many great jazz albums were recorded. i used to go hang out and pick up the vibes by osmosis.

of course you don’t disturb an artist when they’re working. that’s just so obvious to anyone with musical experience. even listening to music at a high level requires unbroken concentration. what kind of idiot would disturb a world-class musician at a gig? yeah, critics.

surprisingly the article didn’t mention jazz artists’ spiritual interests. everyone in the scene in those days, including Miles, was reading and discussing original Vedic and Buddhist source literatures. like drugs, it was simply part of being a serious jazz player. spiritual interests and insights drove a lot of the innovation in jazz in the ‘60s.

i left the jazz scene to go to india for years of serious study. when i came back, so much had changed. a darkness had come over the scene. many of the best musicians and close friends had passed away before their maturity. it was so sad. i wound up going back to india and becoming a monk.

back in the ‘60s we believed that music had the power to change the world. unfortunately the corporate music business didn’t want to change the world, they just wanted profit. the road to hell is paved with gold, friends.

Woah what a story.

And then you ended up in tech?

i took an entry-level programming job as a way to earn money between trips to india. after documenting a test suite i worked on, my boss noticed i could write well. he gave me a good recommendation and i was able to fund my travel and study by contract tech writing. this was back in the days when software actually had manuals. but no, tech was just a passage to my real vocation: i ‘ended up’ quite intentionally becoming an internationally-known teacher of meditation and enlightenment.

Thanks, very interesting story. I didn't expect to find someone with your background here on HN.

Apropos of nothing, I just walked out of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in St. Petersburg, and Herb Snitzer has a few photos on the wall of jazz greats, including this shot of Miles shortly before his passing.

https://herbsnitzer.com/miles_davis3.htm

The museum is well worth a visit for anyone in the Tampa, Florida area.

Really a shame it's got that big watermark across it...

He's so sharp and clear on what he wants to say, especially wrt race. Ahead of the general conversation too.

> Ahead of the general conversation too.

Not ahead of the internal black conversation, which has actually regressed since. Giving an interview like this today would get you smeared as a Russian spy: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/1/24/misinformation-...

edit: tbh, giving an interview like that back then might have gotten you smeared as a Soviet spy, too.

There's a lot of great stuff in this interview, but what really floored me was the question, after Miles had talked so much and so eloquently about race in America and his experiences, "Have you always been so sensitive about being a N**?" Like nothing Miles said entered the reporter's skull.

It's also interesting to see how much he talks about the importance of representation in the media. Given that's something we've only started to see change much in the last 10 years or so, I wonder how his remarks were received then. Would it have seemed totally out of left field, like 'what is this guy even talking about'?

> Like nothing Miles said entered the reporter's skull.

> I know this interview is from 1962, but are you fucking kidding me?

Commenters might be interested to know that the interviewer in question was Alex Haley. I don't know why OP's version leaves that out.

(Haley did several Playboy interviews, including that with the Klansman; all that I have read thus far have been worth reading.)

It's 1962. "Negro" was the polite word, you don't have to asterisk it.

Oh, that changes the meaning of the sentence significantly.

It does.

Fwiw, Alex Haley was also black, so he was perhaps asking from a shared perspective.

I'm aware of the context and took no offense when I read it; I asterisked it for 2023.

For what it's worth, the asterix is confusing. Your comment gave me a wildly different (apparently incorrect) impression.

And "Black" was a pejorative.

Steven King used this in "Dark Tower" to show that members of ka-tet were from different times

Seems like a fair question. He wasn't suggesting that it was wrong to be sensitive, he's just trying to learn about a man's history and whether it was a lifelong thing or if some particular incident had made him sensitive to it.

Yep. Journalists' questions can be very direct, and very pointed. It tends to make them sound callous, but it's necessary to get the best answer.

> "Have you always been so sensitive about being a N**?"

Please don't. You severely misquoted by using the ** here. The original word was "Negro", not what many peoplr (including myself) might have thought when reading your comment.

The reporter was black himself, and well aware about the experience of blacks in America. He wanted to make a point and have Miles elaborate on that and his backstory with it.

> There's a lot of great stuff in this interview, but what really floored me was the question, after Miles had talked so much and so eloquently about race in America and his experiences, "Have you always been so sensitive about being a N*?" Like nothing Miles said entered the reporter's skull.

There are several points in this interview with archaic / anachronistic language that read a bit oddly to me, which is what I think is going on here.

My suspicion is that being "sensitive" has some kind of negative connotation to a modern reader than it mightn't have at the time. Note that Davis himself repeats the term and doesn't exhibit any inkling of having taken offense.

> Being sensitive and having race pride has been in my family since slave days

Try substituting other turns of phrases here to see how they feel. Like, "Have you always had such strongly held opinions about" or "have you always been so thoughtful about" or "passionate" etc. I think it's more telling about the modern reader looking back that we somehow find using "sensitive" here jarring - why should we do so?

Miles Davis is the personification of the term "cool"

It should be noted, from biographies we learn he wasn't always very nice, or kind. To his friends, to his family, to his fellow musicians. He was a hard taskmaster. People say the same thing about Monk, who was also the personification of "cool" and Mingus who was red hot, but also very cool.

All three were angry at times.

Miles himself would admit to not being very nice to several people. His autobiography includes many passages where he matter-of-factly recounts being cruel to people. Often these passages are him simultaneously voicing regret for his actions, but he doesn't shy away from what he's done. He owns it.

This happens several times throughout the years as he recounts events. And while he mostly takes responsibility for his actions, it seems to have been an ongoing behavior that he found himself unable to resolve completely.

I was watching a documentary on BBC about Davis (I think it was _Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool_) and was struck by one of his wives talking about his drug habits. She said that his heroin use wasn't a problem but once he started taking cocaine he began drinking more and became increasingly violent.

Check out Miles Davis critiquing some poor kid after a performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCTirrJ1Gms&t=1421s

It's not quite as bad as I remember it, but man he could be an ass.

I love Miles Davis' music... but that interview really turned me off him. All Miles had to do was show some kindness and empathy. I did wonder actually if simply Miles was autistic, and unaware how he actually need to behave. Miles could have given helpful constructive criticism at the same time as being warm , friendly , encouraging, but seemed unable to do that, or to empathise about what that kid must have gone away and felt.

Yeah I remember when I was younger his sharp style really turned me off too. But almost 30 years later now I just see him as a hard, uncompromising guy. I'm not idolizing like, I'm sure he was many times toxic and abusive, but now that I'm ~40 his style doesn't bother me personally at all. Would I put him in charge of junior software engineers? Nah. Would I play in his band? A thousand times yes, if I could hang (I can't).

This is to misunderstand Miles Davis. The point is that he treated the trumpet player with respect, as if he was taking to a trumpet player, not a child. He was engaging with a group of peers. The evidence for this is that he went on the hire the keyboard player, who was 16 years old, to play in his band a year later.

I hear what you're saying. :). People need to hear home truths that's for sure. Its the only way to improve. However, a bit of humour and warmth wouldn't go amiss would it? When I was a kid I played in a wind band. One weekend we had an ultra-sarcastic military guy conduct us. We reacted first with , WTF? This guy is really rude. It soon became apparent though that he had a heart of gold and could make us play really well. He cared about us, and his brusque manner was only skin deep and/or put on / an "act" . It all turned out to be pretty funny. "You do read music, do you?" was a memorable quip. We were like "can't believe he said that", but I think the recipient of that remark rather liked him in the end. It seemed to me Miles appeared not to know the people need that warmth. Which makes me wonder about autism. I must say, Herbie Hancock, who seems like a nice person and full of the warmth that Miles seems to lack, speaks warmly of Miles. So, maybe I should go away and re-read what Herbie had to say about Miles. ;)

I other words, bullshitted them instead of being truthful.

If you play piano for Chopin they aren't going to give you a participation trophy. Give me a break.

My favorite Miles Davis album dates to seven years after this interview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitches_Brew

Although, my second favorite Mile Davis album is Sketches of Spain (1959), three years before this interview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketches_of_Spain

Perhaps the music matters more than the interviews do?

> Have you always been so sensitive about being a Negro?

I know this interview is from 1962, but are you fucking kidding me?

From the way Miles responded to the question, he wasn't in the least fazed by it. Why should you be? (BTW the term 'Negro' had an entirely different connotation and sound at that time than it does today, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Also, it may help to consider who the interviewer was).

Negro wasn't an offensive word even in the 90s from what I remember.

It would have sounded overly formal and a bit outdated but it wasn't a slur. I assume this just comes from Spanish so no more offensive than saying black in English. African-American was still somewhat new and certainly not as a widely used as today. Even in the mid 2000s people used the incredibly offensive term mulatto without a second thought as opposed to mixed race.

It would be like if latinx replaces latino completely in 20 years, latino becomes a slur and people in 2040 judging us now as racist for using the word latino. It is ridiculous and ignorance of the reality that language evolves in time.

It is also hard to put Miles in perspective. Kind of Blue was the second best selling album of all time at the end of the 1950s after Elvis Christmas album. Rebellious new heroin music as opposed to the high art we view jazz today.

The question definitely seems odd by today’s standards but it’s worth noting that the interviewer is Alex Haley, who was himself Black.

I have no idea what people are finding shocking about this sentence, unless it's literally that people now think "negro" is some sort of swear word rather than an anachronistic term for black people (that wasn't at all anachronistic in 1962.) Davis is almost entirely talking about issues that spring from him being black in America, and he's being asked whether he's always been so sensitive about it.

Aside from the fact that this is a black man speaking to another black man, the question wouldn't even be inappropriate for a white interviewer.

edit: Also, "colored" didn't refer to "people of color," it was just another name for black people. I've noticed that mistake lately from some shockingly ignorant wokesters trying to claim Jim Crow for their own.

It’s the word “sensitive” actually. In 2023 it would be really weird to tell someone that they are “sensitive” about being the race that they are.

Usually when you say someone is sensitive about something, you’re implying the thing they’re sensitive about is a defect. Additionally, you’re suggesting that they are insecure about that defect, which is its own kind of accusation.

Right, that's why the question sounded odd to me. "Have you always been sensitive about X" sounds very similar (to me) as "Have you always been a whiny little bitch about X". Apparently it was perceived different back then.

Once upon a time being sensitive was perceived as a good thing. As opposed insensitive.

"Have you always managed to avoid being insensitive about X?"

I fuckin love Miles Davis!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com