How Did Miles Davis Affect Health

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Throughout Miles Davis’ entire career, he was surrounded with heavy use of alcohol and drugs (most commonly heroin). Charlie Parker, one of Bebop’s finest and also a major influence on the career of Miles Davis was an avid user of heroin which affected his health greatly. In fact, his addiction affected his health so much that Parker sadly passed away at the young age of 35 to health related issues. For several years Davis was heavily involved with the use of heroin and was stuck in a pattern of dependency, making it extremely difficult for him to break his destructive habits. This not only affected his health but it also affected his ability to play music at a high level. In 1954, Davis was finally able to sober up from his heroin use (Miles Davis Biography). Even though Davis was able to get off of heroin during this time period, his …show more content…

During this time period he start to work with a pianist named Bill Evans, who collaborated with Davis to make the sub-genre of jazz know as Modal Jazz. Modal Jazz focuses on using scales that are different from standard major and minor scales. Another unique factor of Modal Jazz is that it often uses unchanging harmonies throughout the entire song (Yudkin, Jeremy. “An Analysis of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue.”). With the development of this style, Miles Davis and Bill Evans created one of the most famous jazz albums of all time called “Kind of Blue”. The song “So What” on this album fully encapsulates the characteristics of Modal Jazz that Davis and Evans were attempting to instill into the industry. My favorite song off of this album is called “Blue in Green” because of the fact that it has so many intricate details but still remains relaxing as well as soothing. “Kind of Blue” continues to be one of the top jazz albums of all time and still holds a place at the top of the