Ian Carr, Miles Davis biographer


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Miles Davis by Ian Carr

I just read that musician and writer Ian Carr has left us.  His book Miles Davis had a great influence on me when I read it in 1985.  It is a big, detailed, long look at a big, long, intense career, but it maintains your interest just like the music and the man did.  I recommend it highly, and just yesterday was telling a buddy of mine to check it out (instead of Miles — his autobiography!).

If you love jazz, music, or are a fan of Miles Davis, you must check out Ian Carr’s book.  He was also a trumpeter on his own, which probably explains why he was able to get such a great handle on Miles’ music and life as a composer and innovator.  I just heard a podcast from Sony where David Amram touches on Miles’ thought process, and how he was determined to move his music forward, and change it into something else that people didn’t expect.

Of all artists, he was the one who rested on his laurels the least.  He never really repeated himself, and his inate “cool” was unassailable up until the end (Honda ad and quasi hip hop album “Doo Bop” notwithstanding).

And I haven’t even mentioned the Odetta memorial I attended the other night at Riverside Church.  Amram, Maya Angelou, Oscar Brand, Harry Belafonte and many others paid tribute to the woman, her voice, and what she did with it.  Similar to Ian Carr, these people took you back to a time and place where the world was very different, but would be changed by their singular presence.

Miles was such a person, and Ian Carr did a great job explaining did a great job explaining the unexplainable.  Here’s a bit of him playing with his band Nucleus in a reunion show.   While why he is not part of what Max Roach referred to as “the continuum of black creativity,” Ian Carr definitely had a great talent in explaining it (especially to other white people like myself!).

We should all hope to have as important a role in interpreting culture (which is part of culture itself — look how big Dixie Whately’s old show ET has become) as Ian Carr did.  His voice and thoughts will live on as long as people want to learn about the music of Miles Davis.  And that will be a very, very, long time.

I am going to re-read the Miles book sometime soon in tribute to them both.  If you want to hear some good spiel about Miles, please take a listen to the Sony podcasts on this page.

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