Miles Davis

Miles Davis I associated with Miles Davis quite a bit in the fifties. Miles was a student at Julliard, but he said he learned more from Charlie Parker than he did at Julliard. One time, I asked him to show me some changes and he replied, “Don’t worry about it; you’re from Bird’s home town.” I first met him in 1950 when I was still in high school and he came to town, barnstorming as a single. They were advertising that Miles Davis was coming to play at the Boulevard th Room at 12 & Paseo. Back at that time these guys would travel around and barnstorm, travel to different cities and play as singles with whoever the local rhythm section was in that particular town. He played a week or two at the Boulevard Room and around Kansas City and Leavenworth. A high school friend and I found out that he was staying at the Streets Hotel at 18 th & Paseo so we skipped school and went up to his hotel room to visit him. I had my horn, my friend had his trumpet. We went to the desk and asked what room Miles was in. This was 8:00 in the morning. We went up and knocked on the door…knocked and knocked, and finally Miles came to the door, naked. He said, “What do you little (famous Miles expletive) want?” We said, “We come to see you, man.” He looked at us and said, “Come on in.” We went in and sat down, and he went back to bed. We were still sitting there, watching him sleep when, around noon he woke up and said, “Are you m-f-ers still here? Are you hungry?” He gave us some money and told us to go across the street and get some salami and crackers and a pickle. We did that. But we made the mistake of getting a hot pickle. He bit down into this pickle and started cussing, “What are you trying to do? (yang, yang, yang)”. You know, he cussed us out bad.

I would later tour with Miles. My college was the streets. I was learning improvisation on the bandstand. One time on the band stand they were playing a tune that I didn’t know. I was trying to learn the tune while Miles was taking his solo, I was fingering the keys. Evidently, I was making too much noise, so Miles turned around and told me to stop it. But I knew that my solo was coming next so I kept on trying to learn the tune. This time Miles turned around, he didn’t say any thing, just punched me in the jaw. Later in 1968, after Coltrane died, I was told that Miles was looking for me, but I wasn’t interested because I was a member of the Nation of Islam.

Richard Davis leaned back in a trumpet solo, While Alaadeen, aka Richard White, saxophone listened. They are part of the K.C. Chicago Trio Plus Two. Kansas City Star, 1965. x