Tag Archives: Miles Davis

Cannonball Adderley and passion vs. what you do well

By Rob Fletcher | Published: November 28, 2011
The great alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley started out his music career playing in Dizzy Gillespie’s band, among others, when he was 21. Meanwhile, he was also going to college to become a teacher. As soon as he graduated, he began teaching high school and playing music on the side, using his school vacation time to [...]
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How Sinatra taught Lester Young and Miles Davis how to play ballads

By Rob Fletcher | Published: October 17, 2011
“At his home in Queens, a borough of New York City, Lester Young, one of the most original tenor saxophonists in jazz history, was telling me he never played a ballad without first learning the lyrics. I asked him his source for the lyrics. Pointing to a stack of recordings near his chair he said, “Frank [...]
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Freedom of limits – Miles Davis on Wayne Shorter breaking the musical rules

By Rob Fletcher | Published: October 3, 2011
“Wayne [Shorter] brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn’t work, then he broke them, but with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste.” -Miles Davis, in his autobiography Besides [...]
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