He’s been dead for over a decade, and he’s still ruffling people’s feathers. He’d probably dig that.
Miles Davis is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Miles Davis – Jazz – Music – New York Times
The program essay for tonight’s induction ceremony does not acknowledge the oddness of Davis’s induction; it simply describes his accomplishments. But the view of Davis as rock star is not unanimous. Ahmet Ertegun, chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said in a telephone interview on Friday that as a member of the nominating committee he did not vote for Davis, because he felt that his most significant work had nothing to do with rock.
Mr. Ertegun, a cofounder of Atlantic Records with a lot of jazz in his past, said he did vote early and strongly to put Davis in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, where he thinks he belongs.
“I love Miles Davis,” he said, referring to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. “I also love John Coltrane and Jack Teagarden, but I’m not voting for them either.”
Do you ever get the feeling that music, like race relations, would be better off if we quit trying to segregate things to make ourselves feel superior?
If I want to take my kids to a place to expose them to the history of American music, it would be cool if it was ALL there.
Son: It says here that Miles was into Jimi Hendrix.
Me: yeah, he was, but we have to go to Cleveland to see the Jimi exhibit. The jazz folks wouldn’t let him in here, and the rock folks wouldn’t let the jazz guys in there.
That’s a scary possibility.