Miles Davis, the trumpeter whose lyrical simplicity often reduced his audiences to tears but whose demonic habits sometimes overshadowed his genius for jazz, died Saturday in St. John's Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica.
Davis, credited by many critics with broadening the appeal of modern jazz more than any other performer of his era, was 65.
Pat Kirk, a hospital spokeswoman, quoted Davis' physician, Dr. Jeff Harris, as saying his patient had died of "pneumonia, respiratory failure and a stroke."
He had been admitted to the hospital early this month.
The ailments that finally killed him were only the latest in a series of maladies that had permeated his life. They included a throat operation for polyps which subsequently affected his voice, hip surgery necessitated by sickle-cell anemia, leg infections and broken bones, ulcers, gallstones and addictions to heroin and cocaine.
He was called both jazz's only true superstar, for his wide appeal that cut across socioeconomic barriers, and the "Prince of Darkness," for the distant elegance that was his persona.
In appearance he was short and slender with a delicate, almost feminine face, yet he was an athlete, a skilled boxer and physical-culture enthusiast who also admitted to having been a pimp and drug addict.
Aesthetically he was a trendsetter who crossed over from the freneticism of be-bop to the era of "cool" jazz to the realm of fusion and rock 'n' roll. And unlike most of his peers, his recordings remained in catalogues four decades after they were issued--testimony to his ongoing popularity.
Although he never used the word "jazz" to describe his music, it was impossible to separate him from the genre.
From the flea-infested hotel rooms and heroin-laden saloons he shared with Charlie (Yardbird) Parker in the infancy of bop to the synthesized melding of Latin rhythms and Afro soul, Davis was a jazzman.
But unlike most of the struggling artists involved in the post-World War II spawning of modern jazz, Miles Dewey Davis III never needed the money.
He was born the son of a dentist and oral surgeon who owned acreage in Alton, Ill., and a mother who taught music.
It was that financial independence, said his sister Dorothy, that made her brother able to "turn his back on people he didn't like when he sensed a racial snub. . . . He always spoke his mind."
While his father hoped he would become a doctor, a 12-year-old Miles gravitated to the trumpet and lessons in St. Louis.
He was encouraged to emulate the grace of Bobby Hackett and not the heated virtuosity of Louis Armstrong. (He would one day be called by his friend, the arranger Gil Evans, "the first man to change the sound of the trumpet since Armstrong.")
"Play without vibrato," Davis said he was once told. "You're gonna get old anyway and start shaking."
From that he developed a lyric, often melancholy manner of phrasing with expressive nuances. It was a sound once described as that "of a man walking on eggshells"; critic Ira Gitler described the tone as "a diamond cutting into opaque glass."
Davis normally strived for simplicity, unlike the labyrinthine techniques of another of the trumpet's acknowledged masters, Dizzy Gillespie.
And as time passed Davis became even less a radical improvisationist and more a thematic entrepreneur, unafraid to repeat and polish his ideas during his solos. Because of that drive toward melodic perfection, he was sometimes accused of having composed his impromptu reflections.
Davis, however, was so dedicated to extemporaneous performances that one of his sidemen, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, once said that Davis "paid us not to practice our solos at home so as to avoid the polish that makes even some improvised music sound boring. He always wanted it fresh. . . ."
After graduation from high school in East St. Louis, Ill., Davis insisted on going to New York, where he met his idols, Parker and Gillespie. At the urging of his parents he enrolled in the Juilliard School but spent more time hanging out in 52nd Street nightclubs, where a new sound called "be-bop" was incubating.
"Up at Juilliard," Davis said, "I played in the symphony, two notes, 'bop-bop,' every 90 bars. . . . So I said let me out of here and then I left."
He sat in with the bands of Benny Carter and Billy Eckstine and made his first records with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. From his association with Hawkins, Davis developed a taste for expensive clothes that in later years evolved into polka-dot smoking jackets, plaid pants and oversized sunglasses positioned under a head of hair most male lions would have envied.
He spent three years with Parker and from 1949 to 1950 made a series of recordings for Capitol. The nine-man combo played arrangements by Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis and Davis. The records were reissued later as "Birth of the Cool."
