38 – I Made This
So, Miles Davis wrote a bunch of tunes. Miles Davis also didn’t write a bunch of tunes.
Actually, that second one is debatable…
A few tunes that are commonly credited to Miles Davis and maybe were just a teensy weens little bit written by not Miles Davis are:
Donna Lee
Nardis
Blue In Green
Tune Up
Four
Solar
Dig
Walkin’ (added by Eric in the comments below)
Seven Steps to Heaven (added by Gary in the comments below)
Footprints (added by Josh in the comments below)
Do you know of any others?
This blog post helped me flesh out my little list and has an interesting story about trying to sort it all out.
Also, the layout for this comic is partially inspired by a comic I made Anthony “Nedroid” Clark made. Check it/his website/him out.
The Internet – by Anthony Clark
I was reading Miles autobiography and he said (ok, He said that, but I don’t think he would lie), he said that he wrote Donna Lee for Charlie Parker, but the publisher credited it as been Birds tune.
Yeah, I remember reading that too. It’s interesting how all this stuff went down. It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal at the time but it leaves the rest of us wondering and searching for many years!
Miles also did not write “Walkin'”. It was written by Gene Ammons.
Seven Steps to Heaven was written by Victor Feldman, according to Leroy Vinnegar, if my memory is correct.
I actually wrote a paper on this in college…
I’ve also seen people credit “Footprints” to Miles, as well as a general attribution of a lot of Wayne Shorter tunes to Miles.
Are you sure Nardis isn’t a Miles tune? I’ve always heard that it’s falsely attributed to Bill Evans since he recorded it so much but that it was written by Miles.
Bill Evans and Miles actually had a really good relationship, they were of one mind in their endeavors in jazz at the time. Only real reason Bill left was because of the constant racism he faced… Miles wrote and arranged the band to play around Bill’s modal piano playing for Kind of Blue.
Four and Tune Up are by Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, so I have heard. MIles’ only contribution to Blue in Green was asking Bill Evans what he could do with with a Gmi7 and an A7(#5).
Solar is by Chuck Wayne, with Miles’ only contribution being a C minor chord on the first bar, rather than Wayne’s C major. The C minor has never made any sense to me, except through sheer repetition
The beginning of Jazz Fusion
It isn’t a song, but rather an entire genre that Miles is accredited to that many dispute in saying Tony Williams was actually the creator. Of course with Genres it can be hard to say one person started it. Genres are almost always a gradual causality of many factors in culture and Art.
As I understand it, “Donna Lee” was Miles’s work. Compare the phrasing to another Miles tune of the time, “Sippin’ at Belles,” and then compare it to almost any other Bird tune. Rhythmically, it doesn’t really resemble anything else Parker wrote. On the other hand, the first “Milestones” (the one Miles played with Bird), often gets credited to Miles, but was written by John Lewis.
Miles didn’t write All Blues.. I don’t remember who did, but, I remember Adam Nussbaum and his bassist say who really did once during a performance.
I would like to use this comic as part of my musicological research. Please could I have an email address to contact you and liaise copyright permissions?
Cool! Contact me with the details at dusty@musicomic.com