Miles

Herbie Hancock said people always remember the first time they heard Miles Davis. For me, it was late September 1987, over a pair of headphones in Stafford Public Library. And I didn’t even know I was listening to Miles Davis. Newly back from a four-month stint in the south of France, where I’d stayed with my long-lost friend, Dean - writing a hopeless novel called She Was Only The Comedian’s Grand-Daughter - I was surprised to discover that the third album from one of my favourite bands, Scritti Politti, was sitting there, waiting for me to find it in, of all places, the library. The track in question on Provision (entitled Oh Patti) contains a haunting solo from Miles, drifting away in the background of a wistful lyric from Green Gartside. I listened to this album for years without realising that this was Miles Davis. Miles Davis would have been 83 today, but he died when he was 65. I do remember what I was doing around the time he died, but I don’t remember his passing. Why would I? Miles Davis meant nothing to me. Only in the past few years has my discovery of jazz been prefaced by his work, alongside the bossa nova rhythms of Stan Getz and A C Jobim. For me, as I sit inevitably at the centre of my own universe, Miles Davis will always be my ticket to a whole planet of music that might have passed me by. And, in the retrograde motion that has been my forties, I thank him for that. As I travel to London this morning, to run a writing workshop, I’ll be sure to play my favourite track, appropriately titled Miles.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk