Miles Davis and Bill Evans: Miles and Bill in Black & White

September 2001
Ashley Kahn
They were musical brothers separated by skin tone. The brief, nine-month partnership of Miles
Davis and Bill Evans yielded some of the most sublime and enduring jazz ever recorded. Yet it
could not survive the rigors that tested the creative union almost nightly: the road, their own
career momentum and, most of all, the racial forces of the day.
Had either been more laid-back, thicker-skinned or same-skinned, whos to say further modal
excursions might not have followed their ultimate cooperative statement, Kind of Blue? Then
again, without the unique blend of their sensitivities perhaps such a masterpiece would not
have been possible in the first place. Perhaps the same heart-on-the-sleeve vulnerability that
colored their respective musical signatures fated their association to such a short life.
Or perhaps Miles might have tempered his habit of hazing his new recruits.

Davis dubbed him Moe, a button-down name that fit Evans horn-rimmed, serious
appearance. It was 1958: Davis had just hired the pianist for his on-fire sextet and the taunting
began. But this time, there was an uncommon twist. After years on the short end of the
American racial equation, the trumpeter found himself leading one of the worlds most popular
black jazz bands with a lone white sideman.
Sure, Miles had rubbed shoulders with white jazzmen in other group situations, but most had
been recording efforts or one-off gigs, and none were as high profile as the Miles Davis band of
58. Even his legendary The Birth of the Cool nonetcomprised of a white majorityhad spent
more time in rehearsals than on stage. Gil Evans? That was a purely in-the-studio pairing, far
from public view.
But in Davis powerful 58 lineupfeaturing John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul
Chambers and Jimmy CobbEvans was in the spotlight night after night, a minority of one.
And Miles was not about to let him forget it.
Miles used to mess with him. Not about his music or anythinghe just used to call him
whitey, Adderley reported. Cobb also witnessed Davis teasing Evans. Bill would say
something and Miles would tell him, Man, cool it. We dont want no white opinions. They were
close but Miles would just fool with him. It was good-hearted.
Davis and Evans were close, all teasing aside. Musically, Davis was more in tune with his new
pianist than anyone else in the fabled sextet. Both were masters of minimal gesture, speaking
so much with so little, manipulating their respective instruments to enhance their distinctive
styles. The fragility with which one worked the Harmon mute paralleled the others delicate
facility with the soft piano pedal.
Both were explorers, immersed in jazz tradition yet channeling classical and world music
influences, seeking a greater freedom of expression and spontaneity in a music Miles
described as thick with clichd chord runs.
Independently, both had been been dabbling with more flexible improvisational paths, implying
root structures rather than locking into long-established harmonic patterns.
Their partnership far exceeded the leader-sideman paradigm. Evans influenced Davis outlook
and guided his taste, introducing him to a host of modern classical composers. He then played
catalyst toand co-composer of much of the material onthe modal-jazz masterpiece Kind of
Blue. I planned that album around the piano playing of Bill Evans, Davis admitted in 1989.
The story of how they grew together and then apart is all the more poignant given the time and
place they lived in. In the late '50s, America was witnessing the civil rights movement in its
early maturity, awakening to the complexities of race relations in modern times. Black leaders
were finding their voice and testing strategies for self-empowerment, pushing for voter
registration and integrated education. White America was figuring out its role in the struggle,
finding a place to stand on the immediate events, while considering more far-reaching issues.
The few images that caught Miles and Bill side by sidelooking so different in style and skin
yet so familiar and at easeseem to defy the tenor of the time. But outside the photo frame, in
the jazz world of 1958, Davis decision to offer Evans the piano chair forced to the surface
sentiments, beliefs and preconceptions that continue to generate debate today.

Jazz integration had once been a matter of revolutionary stance and major risk-takingthink of
Benny Goodman performing and recording with Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton in the 30s.
By the late 50s, it had become a simpler matter of choice. Fewer social barriers hindered
integrated jazz bands; hotels and performance venues were opening their doors, even their
front doors, to blacks. Audiences, too, appeared more racially balanced. Though mixed-race
couples were still seldom seen publicly (and might prove a risky venture in certain locales),
most urban centers seemed comfortable with the idea of mixed crowds patronizing jazz clubs
whether downtown or up. A paying customer meant more money in the till: drink up, brother!
But other, subtler forms of segregation remained. White musicians still held a lions share of the
best-paying, union-protected gigs in TV orchestras, Broadway shows and recording studios.
And as the locks of racism loosened and lowered, so a riptide of resentment swept in,
expressing itself more openly than ever before. Restricted economic opportunities drew much
of the newly vocalized ire.
Take cool jazz, for example. The spate of subdued sounds that blew in from the West Coast in
the mid-50selevating the careers of Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Shorty Rogers and Dave
Brubeckseemed to the black community one more instance of white musicians profiting from
black cultural invention. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of alternative to bebop, or
black musicbut it was the same old story, Miles maintained in his autobiography, black shit
was being ripped off all over again.
Gerry Mulliganactive in both East and West Coast scenes of the daylater came to
acknowledge the black perspective on the situation. I suppose it was later on that I realized
that there was some reaction among the musicians themselves, some of whom resented the
success of cool jazz in California, and that broke down into the white guys against the hardblowing black guys in New York.
It was a deep rift that became deeper as the decade wore on, a rift Bill Evans could never have
known he would eventually be straddling. His approach to jazz had begun innocently enough in
his hometown of Plainfield, N.J. Still a youngster in the 40s, Evans fell under the spell of Nat
Coles piano and later found he could actually improvise on the sheet music before him. Music
took him through high school and, like for Miles, was his ticket to college. But unlike Davis
who came to the big city ostensibly to study, and then dropped outEvans traveled to the
Deep South and diligently finished four years of music courses at Southeastern Louisiana
College.
Davis had already been in town for 10 years when Evans first stepped into the New York jazz
scene in 1955. Evans immediately discerned a stiffer, more formal code of cross-racial
communication than he had experienced in Louisiana. Contrary to the general assumptions of
Southern racism, Louisiana had been a pocket of racial ease.
There was a kind of freedom down there, different from anything in the North. The intercourse
between Negro and white was friendly, even intimate. There was no hypocrisy, and thats
important to me. I told this to Miles, and asked him if he understood what I meant. He said he
did. Some very horrible things go on down there. But there are some good things too, and the
feel of the country is one of them.
New York City helped snap Evans back to a black/white reality. He immersed himself in jazz
culture, taking a variety of sideman gigs. He dabbled in third-stream projects, recording with
forward-looking groups led by George Russell and Charles Mingus. His lifestyle also took a
turn away from the mainstream. His first long-term romance was with a black woman named

Peri Cousins (for whom Peris Scope was named). He experimented with narcotics and by
the late 50s was hooked on heroin.
But no fanciful aspirations of achieving white Negro status (as Norman Mailer dubbed the
cross-racial identification common to many wanna-Beats of the mid-50s) had him hoodwinked.
Evans was not looking for a ghetto pass, and felt disdain for those who romanticized the jazz
life: They live their full lives on the fringe of jazz and yet miss its essence entirely. They take
the neuroses that are integral in every art and blow them up to where theyre the whole thing.
In early 58, George Russellat Davis urgingdrove Evans over to the Colony Club in the
black, Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to sit in with the sextet. Evans knew it was an
audition and that if he played his cardsand the pianoright, one of the most prestigious
positions in the jazz world could be his. Davis and Adderley had already spoken of the pianist
the former had heard him at Birdland and the latter had witnessed him sitting in with his
brother Natand had agreed he was well worth a listen.
By the end of the night, Miles told Bill that hed be playing their next engagement in
Philadelphia.
Evans was swept away in a flurry of gigs, the majority in black nightclubs like the Colony.
Though Evans had begun to make a name for himself in New York circles, it was a tough and
unwelcoming audience he encountered on the road. Red Garland was a tough act to replace.
The dynamic pianist had been one of the popular (though often tardy) sparkplugs in Davis
hard-charging rhythm section for almost three years. Jazz enthusiastsmany of whom
followed band lineups as closely as sportswriters knew pro team rosterswere aghast: Who
was this white guy, and where was Red?
He looked like a Harvard professor on a Harlem street corner, is how one witness of the day
described Evans. His bookish looks, white skin and quiet demeanor exacerbated the problem
of ushering him into the fold. Davisnever accused of being a gracious hostwatched from
the wings, tossing in barbed comments when it amused him.
Evans more subdued playing style did not help ingratiate the young pianist to Davis following
any more than his appearance did. He lacked the drama Garland had delivered and had
generously supplied behind the other soloists in the band. Davis adored Evans contrasting
sense of space and subtlety, but a noisy, packed jazz joint was not the ideal location for crystal
notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall, as the trumpeter later
praised the pianists sound.
With mixed emotions, Evans persevered. He felt intimidated, though challenged and ecstatic: I
thought I was inadequate. I felt the group to be composed of superhumans. But the band
began to find a new, smoother groove, as Adderley noted. When he started to use Bill, Miles
changed his style from very hard to a softer approach.
By the end of May, on Miles 32nd birthday, the sextet recorded a number of sides that leaned
heavily on ballads, and revealed a certain tension within the band.
Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb were getting edgy having to hold back and wanted to cook
on something, Evans recalled. After recording rather hushed versions of Stella by Starlight
and On Green Dolphin Street, Miles turned and said, Love for Sale, and kicked it off.

Summer of 58 found Evans increasingly comfortable in the group. He was no longer the
youngest memberJimmy Cobb had been called in to replace Philly Joe Jones a month after
Evans joinedbut he remained the only white musician. Miles continued to tease him, but he
had stood the trumpeters skeweringcertainly a rite of entry to the bandand earned Davis
respect.
But the unease Evans faced in certain venues grew. It was more of an issue with the fans. The
guys in the band defended me staunchly. We were playing black clubs, and guys would come
up and say, Whats that white guy doing there? They said, Miles wants him therehes
supposed to be there.
Reverse or not, it was a form of racism, and Davis and Evans were of one mind about it.
Miles: Crow Jim is what they call that. Its [got] a lot of the Negro musicians mad because
most of the best-paying jobs go to the white musicians playing what the Negroes created. But I
dont go for this, because I think prejudice one way is just as bad as the other way.
Evans: This is an age-old disproven theorythat white men cannot play jazz. What people
who are talking that way might be saying is they want to get credit for developing the music as
a tradition.
Years later, Evans opened up a bit more, adding: It makes me a bit angry. I want more
responsibility among black people and black musicians to be accurate and to be spiritually
intelligentto say only black people can play jazz is as dangerous as saying only white people
are intelligent. But in 58, the pianist held his tongue, while the pressures of touringthe
constant travel, the long hours, the persistent questioning of Evans presence on the
bandstandmounted.
Takes one to know one goes the old schoolyard retort. By the end of the summer, Davis knew
Evans well enough to recognize, and identify with, certain personality traits. Bill was a very
sensitive person and it didnt take much to set him off; a lot of people were saying he didnt
play fast enough and hard enough for them, that he was too delicate, Davis recalled. Evans
was fast approaching his professional limit; a decision to depart seemed imminent.
Davis sensed that there was another factor propelling Evans to leave the group. On top of all
this shit was the thing about wanting to form his own band and play his own music. In an ironic
twist, Evans personal resolve and musical vision had been steeled in the fire of derision he
faced almost nightly. Though he felt exhausted in every wayphysically, mentally, spiritually
it did a lot of good, he would say, a great deal for my confidence.
But it went deeper than mere self-assurance. Evans immersion in an integrated setting,
surrounded by incredibly strong, creative individuals, forced a change that transcended
questions of white or black. Being with the band and the real honest personalities involved
really helped confirm my own identity, made me realize that being myself was the only place to
be.
After a few festival and special appearancesrecordings of which contradict Evans alleged
inability to play fast [or] hard enough and a few more weeks with the band, he departed in
November.
To Miles, their joint destiny remained unfulfilled. A few months later, despite having hired
Wynton Kelly to take over the piano spot (after considering another white pianist, Joe Zawinul),
Davis called Evans and set up studio time at Columbia Records 30th Street Studio. In August

1959, the evidence of their final effort together, and one more compelling argument for a colorblind approach to jazz-making, was delivered: Kind of Blue.
Jimmy Cobb notes that Davis famous sextet was so talent-packed that it was fated from the
outset to fracture into a series of powerful, genre-defining bands. Within a year of Evans exit,
thats exactly what happened, each splinter group led by a soloist initially hand-picked by Davis
while still young and largely unknown: Coltrane, Adderley, Kelly (with Chambers and Cobb)
and, establishing his own trio format and returning to chord-based explorations, Bill Evans.
History did, and continues to, look upon the nine-month Davis-Evans union through the lens of
race. Down Beat, in a 1960 profile on Evans, reported of the rumbles in some quarters that
the color of Bills skin automatically depreciated his value to the [Davis] group. And recently, in
PBS 10-part opus Jazz, the voluminous Ken Burns compressed Evans significant
contributions to a few moments focused on the white guy in Miles band.
Even Davis, writing on his former pianists choice of sidemen after their split, saw Evans
famous Scott LaFaro-Paul Motian trio not in musical terms, but as a return to a less-thanprogressive, all-white situation. Its a strange thing about a lot of white playersnot all, just
mostthat after they make it in a black group they always go and play with all white guys. Bill
did that, and Im not saying he could have gotten any black guys better than Scott and Paul,
Im just telling what Ive seen happen over and over again.
Davis did not balance his comments with the fact that among many black jazz musicians whom
Evans hired over the years, Philly Joe JonesMiles own longtime drummerconsistently
reappeared. Nor did he mention that Jack DeJohnette figured prominently in one of Evans
most powerful lineups, alongside bassist Eddie Gomez, before joining Davis in 1969.
But then the issue of raceas Evans learned while onstage with Davisis often fueled by
what appears, and seldom by what is. And Mileswhose penchant for self-contradiction is
legendaryoften approached the truth in an oblique way.
He is a very paradoxical, many-sided person, Evans once commented, waving away not
Davis veracity, but the tendency to hold him to the exact letter of his words.
If you were to take any number of things he said out of context, you could be completely on
the wrong track. Because he could say one thing today, and the opposite tomorrow for reasons
that have to do with momentary response or defense mechanisms or who knows what.
For one who never hesitated being outrageous or outspoken (to the point of almost losing his
voice following throat surgery), Davis must have been atypically talked out (but accurate) when
he confided to Playboy in 1962: This black-white business is ticklish to try to explain.
As the 60s played out and musical fashion rocked n rolled, the pair kept in touch sporadically.
Davis kept himself abreast of Evans music (and certainly his sidemen), while Evans noted how
apart they were drifting musically. Davis new mid-60s quintetWayne Shorter, Ron Carter,
Tony Williams and young pianist Herbie Hancock, one of whose primary influences was Evans
increased its reliance on modal structures, unlocking and recreating the jazz vocabulary.
Meanwhile, Evans reembraced functional harmony (as pianist Brad Mehldau calls it),
retracing his steps to and then from bebop. Over the years, he created, and continued to
explore, a nuanced, texture-rich sound that became his signature, most often within an
acoustic trio.

Watching as Davis introduced amplified instruments and rock rhythms into his sound, and
added more and more sidemen, the pianist shook his head. Evans missed his lyrical buddy,
and blamed the change on considerations of commerce.
I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master, Evans commented in the late
70s. But I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on
his material. Its tempting for the musician to prejudice his own views when recording
opportunities are so infrequent, but I for one am determined to resist the temptation.
It just doesnt attract me. Im of a certain period, a certain evolution. I hear music differently,
he confessed, adding: I mean, for me, comparing electric bass to acoustic bass is sacrilege.
Davis felt as strongly as Evans. But to the trumpeter, blasphemy was the idea of remaining
static stylistically. He singled out the modal jazz he had pioneered with Evans.
So What or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it
happened. Its over, Davis told Ben Sidran in 1986. He further declared, What I used to play
with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and
we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymoreits more like warmed-over turkey.
When Shirley Horn insisted in 1990 that Miles reconsider playing the gentle ballads and modal
tunes of his Kind of Blue period, he demurred. Nah, it hurts my lip, was the excuse.
And yet, the Davis/Evans dialogue never ended. As saxophonist Dave Liebman recalls from
his days with Davis at the height of Miles electric period: He said Bill was really the guy who
opened the doors for him musicallyBill was very special to him. He said to me, I used to call
Bill up and tell him to take the phone off the hook. Just leave it off and play for me because I
loved the way he played.
As tempting as it is to sum up their joint efforts with Kind of Blue, Davis and Evans were not all
about melancholy and moodiness. On Jazz at the Plaza, a simple four-song album Miles
sextet recorded live on Aug. 9, 1958, theres a 10-minute version of My Funny Valentine
featuring Davis and Evans as the sole soloists; Trane and Cannonball both lay out. Muted
trumpet and brightly stroked piano are alone to spar, at moments halting and punchy, then
playful and flowing. Its a lighthearted conversation between two masters totally familiar with
one another, enjoying the composition and the company. It blasts apart any misperception that
the two were only capable of creating sounds somber, serious and bittersweet.
Blasting misperceptions. Of the essential effects of the black-white, Miles-Bill brotherhood,
thats as accurate a definition as any. For Davis, the motivation to exposeand explode
stereotyped notions of race powered much of what he created. Having Bill Evans as his pianist
only furthered his cause. As Davis once testified:
If I hadnt met that prejudice, I probably wouldnt have had as much drive in my work. I have
thought about that a lot. I have thought that prejudice and curiosity have been responsible for
what I have done in music.
In a less oppositional way, Evans drew strength from the same source; he certainly had ample
opportunity once he hit the jazz front line in Davis group. No matter the racist salvos that were
lofted in 58 or later in his career, Evans, like Davis, had his eye on the prize: aspiring for those
moments onstage or in the studio, when creative inspiration strikes and true and honest
expression freely swings. For Miles and Moe, and for those who play and live the jazz life, it
goes to the heart of why they do what they do. Evans summed it up well:

Jazz is the most honest music Ive come across. The really good jazz musicians only respect
musicians they feel are worth respecting. There, there are no racial barriers.
Originally published in September 2001