Happy Centennial, Miles Davis! (born May 26, 1926)

Charles Mingus and Miles Davis smooching. Frances Taylor Davis in the background. Date, location, photographer unknown.

Although they made few recordings together, Miles and Mingus shared a long history with each other, beginning with their first encounter in Los Angeles in 1946. Miles Davis had traveled to the West Coast to perform with Charlie Parker’s band that year, and the ensemble stayed there for an extended period. This allowed Davis to pick up additional work around Southern California with other groups, including one led by a young bassist then known as “Barron” Mingus.

Several years later, Mingus moved to New York and worked as a sideman for Davis, Parker, and others while re-establishing himself as a bandleader on the East Coast. In 1953, during a recording session for Miles Davis’s Blue Haze album, Mingus stepped in on short notice to play piano on a song. Mingus also contributed the composition for that track, titled “Smooch” for Blue Haze but more commonly known as “Weird Nightmare.”

Two years later, in 1955, Miles and Mingus assembled a group with Teddy Charles, Britt Woodman, and Elvin Jones to record an album titled Blue Moods for Mingus’ Debut Records. Several months after the Debut date, Mingus also penned a widely-read open letter to Miles Davis in DownBeat magazine, challenging some comments made by Davis in an interview for the magazine’s previous issue. The two bandleaders remained close and later featured prominently in each others’ autobiographies.