Althouse: Don Cheadle as Miles Davis.

October 9, 2015

Don Cheadle as Miles Davis.

"It’s just a brief clip, but Cheadle’s got Davis’ husky speaking voice down pat, and the trumpet lessons he took in preparation for the role seem to have paid off...."

31 comments:

Bob Ellison said...: Don Cheadle is a better actor than Miles Davis was a musician/composer.; 10/9/15, 12:52 PM
JackWayne said...: When is Hollywood going to move beyond these stereotypes? I think that Gwen Paltrow would make a better Miles Davis than Cheadle.; 10/9/15, 1:04 PM
CJinPA said...: “If somebody told me I had only one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.” -- Miles Davis

I'm not crazy about the lyrics but it has a good beat.; 10/9/15, 1:12 PM
Nichevo said...: Bob,

Wut?!; 10/9/15, 1:48 PM
Paul said...: “If somebody told me I had only one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.” -- Miles Davis

Yet he hired white musicians and told saxophonist Bill Evans that if he was a sax player himself he'd want to sound like him.

I think he said things like that just for effect.

I'm sure Hollywood will bollux up this story like they do for every musician.; 10/9/15, 2:15 PM
Lance said...: @Paul

Bill Evans played piano.; 10/9/15, 2:40 PM
Paul said...: Lance, Google is your friend. There are two musicians named Bill Evans.; 10/9/15, 3:37 PM
trumpetdaddy said...: Don't confuse Gil Evans and Bill Evans, both of whom worked with Miles.

Don Cheadle is a great actor and this is his personal project. This isn't a "Hollywood film" in any sense of that term. "Hollywood" doesn't make movies about jazz musicians. Any film about jazz musicians past about 1955 has been a pet project of an individual director, such as Clint Eastwood's bio-pic about Charlie Parker.

Miles Davis changed American pop music in fundamental ways at least 3 times. Moreover, he established the idea for black people that a black musician could be something other than a "steppin' fetchit" stereotype. He showed that black musicians can be in control of their career and the choices they make. Ray Charles did much the same thing a few years later in the R&B arena.

And yes, he worked with whomever could play, regardless of race, while still loving to say intentionally provocative things just to get a rise out of people. Miles Davis is one of the truly great American musicians of all time.; 10/9/15, 4:13 PM
who-knew said...: I don't think trumpetdaddyhas it quite right. Just one example, Duke Ellington was never a Steppin' Fetchitt; 10/9/15, 4:23 PM
Michael K said...: I've liked Don Cheadle since "Devil in a Blue Dress."; 10/9/15, 4:26 PM
Paul said...: One Gill Evans. Two Bill Evans. OK? I am very familiar with all three as I've studied and played this music for years.; 10/9/15, 4:27 PM
Bob Ellison said...: It's nice to think Miles was great and all that. He's black. He was cool. He was after bebop. But frankly, his stuff was mostly shit.; 10/9/15, 4:40 PM
trumpetdaddy said...: True that Ellington was never a "steppin' fetchit" but his was in many ways a public persona created by himself and his manager to be "safe" to white audiences. Elegant, tailored, soft-spoken, dignified, all those things that were the opposite of the 1920s and 1930s ideas of black musicians.

Ellington had an image that was very easy for mainstream white audiences to accept. Davis took a different tack. Very different from Armstrong and Gillespie, as well. He didn't act either "safe" or "fun." He demanded that he be treated as an artist worthy of respect on a level with serious white musicians, not a latter-day vaudeville performer. Irving Mills did his best to sell Ellington that way, too, but there was always the undercurrent of "respectability" to his promotion of Duke. Miles didn't give a shit about "respectability."

This was something new in the history of pop music for a black artist.; 10/9/15, 4:48 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Oh, G, nobody in the history of pop culture has ever tried to appeal to an audience. Thank you for telling us that, trumpetdaddy.; 10/9/15, 4:59 PM
William said...: I had a surgical procedure that required OxyContin post op. I was never a fan of Miles Davis, but his music sounds much better if you're zoned out on drugs and slightly depressed.......It's said that the best revenge is living well. Louis Armstrong, I presume, had his bad experiences but his music is cheering, and he apparently found life quite enjoyable. He would probably have a better reputation if his life were more tragic. But the fact that he found a way to make it work should not be held against him. Rather the opposite.; 10/9/15, 5:32 PM
Bob R said...: So who has the highest ratio of (greatest artist):(worst person)? Miles is way up there. Picasso, Stan Getz, Sinatra are competitors. Still, Kitty Kelly never wrote as vicious a hit piece as Miles' AUTObiography. That's got to count for something.; 10/9/15, 6:28 PM
Bob R said...: @William. Read Armstrong's autobiography and Teachout's biography. Hard to find someone with a more tragic life. Miles' was a piece of cake by comparison. I'd bet Miles knew this.; 10/9/15, 6:31 PM
Bob R said...: Armstrong was the NORK with a bushel of frozen potatoes.; 10/9/15, 6:32 PM
Nichevo said...: Salvador Dali

but I really don't see how an objective mind can deny the greatness of the music of Miles M************ Davis. That's really ideological. How can you say that on artistic or technical grounds? He invented five different genres of jazz. Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one. Interesting that Android voice to text censors mother f***** but not assholes.; 10/9/15, 7:02 PM
Beldar said...: "Be wrong strong!" That's a great line, high point of the clip.

As someone who's played the trumpet (as an amateur, but continually since, oh, 1969 or so, most recently in public about three weeks ago):

There's not enough of Cheadle faking playing the trumpet for me to critique him in detail, but I've seen many worse impersonations. He has at least a clue about the horn, and he's a gifted actor.; 10/9/15, 7:03 PM
trumpetdaddy said...: "Oh, G, nobody in the history of pop culture has ever tried to appeal to an audience. Thank you for telling us that, trumpetdaddy."

I didn't tell you that. But thanks for playing.

"Hard to find someone with a more tragic life. Miles' was a piece of cake by comparison. I'd bet Miles knew this."

Armstrong absolutely came up the very hard way. I think a lot of Davis' attitude came from a couple of situations in his life.

1. He came from a relatively quite well-off background in E. St. Louis, the child of a very prominent dentist. He had the best education and was initially attending Juilliard. That, however, didn't stop him from being assaulted on the street by a white cop, nor stop him from being treated as second-class and getting called "nigger."

2. Because he came from a wealthy background, I think he felt a need to be even "harder" to match up with guys with rough backgrounds, like Gillespie. IOW, he was caught between a white society that educationally and economically he was equal or better than (yet didn't fit into because of being black), and a music sub-culture where many, many of the top artists were black but from a poor background (and he wouldn't fit into if he stuck to his social class).

Clifford Brown threaded that needle a lot better than did Davis but he died young in car accident.; 10/9/15, 7:08 PM
Carol said...: One Bill Evans became Yusef Lateef.; 10/9/15, 7:16 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Carol said...
One Bill Evans became Yusef Lateef.

Although before that he had been William Huddleston.; 10/9/15, 7:32 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Bob R said...
Kitty Kelly never wrote as vicious a hit piece as Miles' AUTObiography.

My son read the autobiography and now won't listen to his music. I blame his mother.; 10/9/15, 7:44 PM
fivewheels said...: My impression as an amateur non-Jazz musician is that Davis was not anything to write home about on the trumpet, but as a bandleader and auteur, if that's the word? His name headlines an awful lot of the best albums of the 20th century (or my favorites, at least), even if he's rarely one of the best musicians on them. I don't know exactly how that kind of music is really made, collaboratively, but his presence seems not coincidental.; 10/9/15, 8:11 PM
Nichevo said...: if I could be bothered to reference the href syntax then I would post the link to Orwell's essay on Salvador Dali, describing him, to paraphrase, as possibly the world's best draftsman and worst human being.

--This being 1938 or whatever of course, I'm sure any schmuck today can be his equal, with technology but not really as an artist. Though again, this is what Damien Hirsts are gunning for, I think, and perhaps the Mapplethorpe aesthetic as well, and others such. Decadence, degradation, corruption, rot, blasphemy, obscenity, sacrilege, transgression- that's the word.

And the transgressive is the kind of thing that resonates with the professor, This is a more sophisticated way of saying what I often express as "Althouse likes that which is bad." She can rationalize points of merit if not excellence-looking for the best in a thing may be a moderate, motherly, adjectives part of her character which may positively inform her judgment; but Professor Althouse also enjoys the smell if not the taste of rotting flesh.; 10/9/15, 8:55 PM
Nichevo said...: if I could be bothered to reference the href syntax then I would post the link to Orwell's essay on Salvador Dali, describing him, to paraphrase, as possibly the world's best draftsman and worst human being.

--This being 1938 or whatever of course, I'm sure any schmuck today can be his equal, with technology but not really as an artist. Though again, this is what Damien Hirsts are gunning for, I think, and perhaps the Mapplethorpe aesthetic as well, and others such. Decadence, degradation, corruption, rot, blasphemy, obscenity, sacrilege, transgression- that's the word.

And the transgressive is the kind of thing that resonates with the professor, This is a more sophisticated way of saying what I often express as "Althouse likes that which is bad." She can rationalize points of merit if not excellence-looking for the best in a thing may be a moderate, motherly, adjectives part of her character which may positively inform her judgment; but Professor Althouse also enjoys the smell if not the taste of rotting flesh.; 10/9/15, 8:55 PM
Scott said...: It probably helps Don Cheadle that Davis couldn't play for shit.; 10/10/15, 7:35 AM
trumpetdaddy said...: This professional trumpet player of 30 years takes issue with the idea that Miles Davis "couldn't play for shit." He could play for shit good enough to get the fuck into Juilliard, couldn't he? He could play for shit enough to get Charlie Parker to hire him, couldn't he?

I'm not expecting to hear Maurice Andre when I put on a Miles recording. But both are equally valid approaches to playing the trumpet. Was he as technically gifted as Freddie Hubbard or Clifford Brown? No. But he had his own voice on the trumpet that is distinct and timeless. Miles produced some of the most sublime moments in jazz trumpet and changed the music in ways that are lasting and profound.

I've listened to some of his recordings hundreds of times and still hear new things in them.; 10/10/15, 8:40 AM
Nichevo said...: It's so daring, isn't it, for a certain type to bash famous dead people who, when alive, 'crapped bigger than you'.; 10/10/15, 12:59 PM
jg said...: Miles Davis sounds so much better than this clip. Cheadle's talented, sure.; 10/12/15, 12:42 AM