Miles Davis: He Did Not Play With His Back to the Audience (+Bonus)

(Please see the Index for all my previous essays on Miles that are mentioned below.)

(Paying Subscribers, a critique of Miles from 1962 is at the bottom as a gift for you.)

As I said in my very first post about Miles, for unknown reasons fans and journalists love to talk about what “a bad person” he was. I've made it something of a mission to prove that many of the things blamed on him were not his fault at all. But every time I write one of these essays, there are a few people who write to me after reading the headline, but without reading the essay itself, to say, "But everybody knows he did that!" What “everybody knows” is often wrong—that is precisely my point. Please do not write to me until you have read this essay from top to bottom.

As you’ll see in the Index linked above, I have shown that he did not foolishly destroy his own voice by yelling. And I demonstrated that he did not steal tunes: Most of the tunes that people say were stolen by Davis are in fact owned by his record companies. They are the ones who assigned the credit to him, and they did it for financial reasons, which I explained in detail. It is significant that musicians who worked with him, and knew him far better than any fans or journalists did, pretty much universally loved him. If he was such a horrible person, why did they love him? In another post, I showed photos of him hugging his piano players over a period of about 30 years.

As I'm sure you know, it is commonly stated as an example of Miles's supposed rudeness, that he played with his back to the audience. These complaints date back to the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. But there are literally hundreds of photos of Miles from that era. Can you find one, just one, where he is playing the trumpet towards the back of the stage, and not towards the audience? Of course not! The very idea is laughable. Still, the false image is so ingrained that I have met several people who saw Miles in concert and they say “I’m pretty sure that he turned his back,” as though they were looking for him to do that but aren’t certain that he did. I saw Miles four times and he most certainly did not play standing backwards! (I should note that this accusation of turning his back does not apply to his long electric period, from about 1969 to 1975, and 1981 to 1991. By that time he had a wireless microphone, and he could wander around the stage without his sound being affected. Also, by that time nobody cared.)

So, you should ask yourself, how did this idea get started that Miles turned his back? And should you care? I will explain:

Many years ago, if you were a performer of any kind, you were never supposed to leave the stage, or turn your back, in the middle of a performance. If you were not featured at that particular moment, you were supposed to stand to the side, facing the audience—ideally, with a nice smile on your face. When Miles was not playing – and only when he was not playing – he tended to turn around and listen to the rhythm section, or even to leave the stage for a moment. In those days that was considered rude and unprofessional. But I ask you, does it bother you today, when just about all jazz musicians do that? In 2024, do you really want to continue complaining that Miles left the stage?

Here’s an example of what people didn’t like back then. On April 2, 1959, the Miles group with Coltrane (Adderley was out sick), filmed “So What” for CBS-TV. (It was aired the next month.) At the very end, while Paul Chambers repeats the bass melody, Miles walks off right in front of him and across the camera’s view, with what seems like a kind of “I don’t care” attitude, touching his lip. Audiences in those days expected him to stay where he was, and even turn to Paul and smile—or, at the least, to walk the other way. Please watch this 9-second clip:

Singer Eddie Jefferson knew and understood what was going on. In his words to “So What,” he says Miles “walked off the stage.” Notice that he does not say that Miles played the trumpet with his back to the audience, which would be ridiculous. And he says Coltrane left the stage as well, because he wants to make it clear that it was not only Miles, and he defends them both. Here is the beginning of Eddie’s original 1961 recording (you can hear the entire song here)—first the audio excerpt, then the lyrics (later on he changed the words slightly):

Miles Davis walked off the stage (singers reply “So What” to every line),
Soon as his solo was over.
Oh yes, he did leave the stage.
Clean out of sight, now.
Coltrane he walked off the stage.
That's what you folks are all saying.
Oh yes, he did leave the stage.
And that’s a fact, now.

Later in this recording he sings, “I never know why some people try to find some fault of this man and his horn.” And sure enough, back then, the objections came in. In the notes to Miles Davis at the Blackhawk (originally released in September 1961), Ralph Gleason reports that “His refusal to make announcements, his habit of leaving the stage when others are soloing, his occasional turning of his back to the audience are either vigorously defended or attacked, depending on one's point of view.” Gleason goes on to defend Miles. And as I have explained, Davis did indeed make announcements in his early days. For example, performing with Tadd Dameron in Paris in May 1949, you can hear him announce “Good Bait”:

Davis stopped making announcements after he lost his voice in the mid-’50s. Although it may be fun for us to imitate his raspy way of speaking, it was not fun for him. He was more than upset about losing it—he was devastated, and he considered ending his performance career. It affected his behavior offstage and in social settings as well. As for what he did at a gig when he was not playing the trumpet, today people don’t care. Do you?

One of the most sensible discussions of Miles “turning his back” is in John Szwed’s Davis biography, pp. 190-194. Here is a relevant passage:

The meaning of their reaction was clear: a performer – and a Negro performer, at that – was refusing to follow the fundamental etiquette of performance. He was declining to display graciousness and appreciation for the audience’s attention and applause, refusing to acknowledge the special nature of their relationship – refusing to show, in a word, humility.

This is not the only case in which people complained about Miles doing things for which today he would probably be respected. For example, Father Norman O’Connor, during the 1960s, was well known for hosting jazz events and writing about jazz. Here are his criticisms of Miles’s behavior (from The Boston Globe, January 21, 1962; the full article is below for paying subscribers):

Seriously? So, Miles didn't like annoying (I guess he means noisy) audiences, and he didn't like to work for people whose values he didn't respect. I ask you, honestly, today would you consider these to be good reasons for criticizing an artist of any kind? On the contrary, one might say that today we admire an artist who asks for quiet, and who stands up for his or her values!

If you’re still outraged that Miles Davis did not stand and smile when his sidepersons were soloing, feel free to indulge your anger. But for everybody else, please, try to understand Miles Davis before you join in with his critics.

I’ll be back soon with another essay. In the meantime, Have A Wonderful Week!

All the best,

Lewis