Miles to Go

Through anecdotes and personal recollections, narrator Patrick Lawlor presents Chris Murphy's remembrances of jazz great Miles Davis. Lawlor's voice is friendly and inviting, sounding as excited and delighted as if he were Murphy, getting the chance to go on the adventure of a lifetime, as techie, roadie, and personal assistant to the trumpeter. As a white man allowed into the mercurial Davis's inner circle, Murphy's view presents a more humane, less intimidating vision of Davis, very personal and perhaps somewhat skewed (if other accounts are to be believed), but never dull. While Lawlor's narration makes Davis seem a bit too ingenuous, he reveals a man who was openhearted and generous as well as depressive and unpredictable, a man who had "something unearthly about him." S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

December 24, 2001
In this thin memoir, an adoring fan and former assistant of Miles Davis makes a plea for the legendary musician's sainthood. Working as Miles's roadie and doting servant for two narrow stretches—1973–1976, and 1981–1983—the author recounts his sketchy memories and tales from the road in an effort to shine more light on the musician's later years. (In the mid-1970s, Miles quit playing music altogether and slid into a five-year depression, reemerging in the early '80s with a few inspired, if uneven, records.) Unfortunately, most of these fragmented anecdotes—like the one about Miles's pants repeatedly popping open on stage during a concert, or the "Spinal Tap" moment when he got himself wrapped up in the wires to his amp—tell readers little about the man. Murphy is also unconvincing in his attempts to correct Miles's own "self-hating autobiography." On Miles being a misogynist: "I never once saw him raise his hand against a woman"; a hater of whites: "No, he didn't." It all reads like vanity press and is likely to disappoint even the most obsessive Miles fans. They and newcomers will be better off with Miles: The Autobiography
with Quincy Troupe, and Ian Carr's Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography.