Q 01/05

Miles Davis was born in 1926 in Alton, Illinois, and raised in which nearby city?

A) East St. Louis

B) Chicago

C) Springfield

D) Kansas City

Answer · why

A) East St. Louis

East St. Louis, Illinois, where the family moved a year after his birth. It was a prosperous home: his father was a dental surgeon, and his mother, a ...

Q 02/05

Davis's boyhood teacher Elwood Buchanan would not let him play the trumpet with what?

A) a mute

B) heavy vibrato

C) his eyes closed

D) too much volume

Answer · why

B) heavy vibrato

Heavy vibrato. Davis recalled Buchanan rapping his knuckles for it at a time when the fashion was to shake every note, and the clear, straight tone he...

Q 03/05

Davis moved to New York as a teenager to study at which institution, dropping out to play jazz full-time?

A) Berklee

B) Manhattan School of Music

C) Juilliard

D) Columbia University

Answer · why

C) Juilliard

Juilliard. By day he took classes in theory and piano; by night he combed the clubs of 52nd Street for his idol Charlie Parker, who became his roommat...

Q 04/05

Whom did the teenage Davis replace as the trumpeter in Charlie Parker's group?

A) Fats Navarro

B) Clark Terry

C) Freddie Webster

D) Dizzy Gillespie

Answer · why

D) Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie. Davis's first records with Parker, in the restrained mid-register style that became his signature, were panned by reviewers, who hear...

Q 05/05

Which pair of instruments, unusual in modern jazz, did the Miles Davis Nonet use in the late 1940s?

A) French horn and tuba

B) Harp and oboe

C) Banjo and accordion

D) Sitar and tabla

Answer · why

A) French horn and tuba

French horn and tuba. With them the band's arrangers built a thick, almost orchestral blend meant to imitate the human voice, though the nonet's only ...