Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM. The feature traces a trumpeter who kept tearing jazz down and rebuilding it, decade after decade.

It moves from his comfortable boyhood in Illinois to the New York clubs where he stood beside Charlie Parker, then through the cool sound he shaped in the late forties, the modal hush of Kind of Blue, and the electric storm of the seventies. Actor Carl Lumbly voices Davis himself, reading from the musician's own memoir. Around the archival footage sit candid interviews with people who knew him: Quincy Jones, Wayne Shorter, Carlos Santana, plus family and bandmates.

Director Stanley Nelson refuses to polish the man. The film is as blunt about the breakdowns, the drugs, and his violence toward the women in his life as it is about the records that changed everything — hence the tagline, "You don't know Miles." It works for listeners who own every album and for newcomers looking for a way in. Stream Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019) online on iFILM.