The Miles Davis century: The definition, and evolution, of cool

An icon, an iconoclast: Both terms apply equally to Miles Davis, who was born a century ago, on May 26, 1926.If that sounds like a paradox, it's just one among many in the life and career of this trumpeter, bandleader and composer, who looms as large in the popular imagination as any jazz artist you can name.

He means many things to many people, precisely because of the myriad things he embodied or articulated himself.Davis began his career during the explosive rise of bebop, cutting his teeth with its chief catalyst, Charlie Parker.But he was quick to seek out a less frenetic variation on modern jazz, finding it both in loosely drawn combo settings and in a more chamberlike contour on Birth of the Cool.

During the 1950s, Miles became the most persuasive avatar of cool, both in the cut of his Brooks Brothers silhouette and in the spatial and spiritual dimensions of an album like Kind of Blue, which stands today as the best-selling jazz album ever made, and an indisputable cultural touchstone.For many artists, that would be enough.For Davis, you could just chalk it up to his "Blue Period" — borrowing a term from the career of Pablo Picasso, one of the few other 20th century artists so compelled toward self-reinvention.

Miles would go on to streamline and supercharge small-group modern jazz in the 1960s, and then rupture its framework with funk rhythms and psychedelic effects in the '70s.His post-Woodstock album Bitches Brew is another landmark, and it served as a hinge, swinging the door open to an era of jazz-rock and other fusions.

For some, this is the Miles that matters.Whatever the case, it's clear a century after his birth — and some 35 years after his death in 1991 — that Miles Davis represents more than one set of coordinates.Take our word for it: Even if you home in on one particular point of origin, namely the public radio system, you'll still find dozens of takes on what Davis meant to jazz, to innovation, to reinvention, to influence and to leg...