The Miles Davis Story (2001)
Channel 4

Description

Ten years after his death in 1991, legendary trumpeter Miles Davis remains the best-known and most influential jazz musician of the last 50 years. The Miles Davis Story explores the music and the man behind the public image, from Miles' middle-class upbringing in racially segregated East St. Louis to the last years when he traveled the world like a rock star. Miles Davis' career intersected with every major development in jazz since the 1940s, and this critically-acclaimed film covers each and every key event: Miles teaming up with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie when he was a 19-year-old student at the Julliard School of Music; his influential Birth of the Cool recordings in 1949; Kind of Blue and his classic collaborations with Gil Evans; his landmark 1950s quintet featuring John Coltrane and his 60s quintet featuring Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter; the making of Bitches Brew and the groundbreaking development of fusion and funk.

The Miles Davis Story interweaves rare interviews with Miles himself with the insights and memories of his family, friends, and many of the great musicians who played with him during his long career.

Tags

Jazz, Trumpet

Collected reviews and ratings

8.0 The Independent | Sholto Byrnes

As Davis cultivated his image, it hardened, becoming a shell that few could see beyond. In time that shell was him, as far as his public was concerned. But those who knew him paint a very different picture.
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8.0 Los Angeles Times | Don Heckman

... there is something different about Davis, something about the elusive, enigmatic qualities of his personality, which – surfacing through his music – add a mysterious, indefinable appeal to his art. Many – but not all – of the root sources of that personality are present in an extremely compelling new DVD, “The Miles Davis Story.”
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8.0 All About Jazz | Jim Santella

Recommended, The Miles Davis Story DVD deals with the trumpeter’s life in a manner comfortable enough to bring the viewer into the picture with him for eternity.
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8.0 allmusic | Lindsay Planer

The Miles Davis Story (2002) stands as the most honest biopic assessment of his life and career that has ever been assembled. Even as the primary focus remains on the music, none of Davis' skeletons are off limits, with plenty of first-hand accounts of him at his best and worst.
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7.0 Amazon user reviews

For Miles fans the big frustration will be in seeing every performance clip shown for only a few seconds before there is a voice-over or cut to the next segment. However, in trying to cover the life of an artist who was artistically productive for most of his adult life, one has to accept that Davis' story cannot be told in two hours without moving quickly through each period of his career.
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7.0 All About Jazz | Colin Fleming

For anyone who's read Davis' autobiography, this biopic is chiefly notable for its images rather than its information.
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6.0 BlogCritics | Ed Driscoll

As a musician, Miles' timing was impeccable; both in his trumpet playing, and his regular ability to seemingly invent new genres of music from thin air. Too bad the same can't be said of the time this documentary spent analyzing the man, which could have been better balanced between his music and his muse.
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6.0 PopMatters.com | Marshall Bowden

Though a few true career highlights, such as the first quintet and the '50s comeback at Newport, are missing, those unfamiliar with Davis' career could do worse than starting here.
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