Miles Davis and John Coletrane Miles, The Autobiography, this book, written by Miles Davis, is the autobiography that he wrote a few years before he died. In this book one finds how Miles Davis first became interested in jazz. It also explains how he became one of the best jazz players of all time. Miles was born in Alton, Illinois in 1926 and grew up in eastern St. Louis. He learned how to play trumpet while in high school on the trumpet that his father gave to him for his 13th birthday. He was a big fan of jazz and said that the thing that made up his mind to be a musician was when he first heard Billy Eckstines band with Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, and Charlie parker playing the sax. He then moved to New York looking for Charlie Parker and to study classical trumpet at Juilliard School of music. After a while parker's drug problem began to take over his life, and this also affected Davis. Davis took some time to get over that, and by the late 50s he was a much bigger star than he had been before due to some of his recent recordings. In 1969, Davis started to record more electronic music, which was the start of the jazz-Rock. Later on, when he came out with the albums A Tribute to Jack Johnson, and On the Corner, fans were disappointed, and thought it was a terrible portrayal of the jazz they knew. Miles then sort of disappeared from the view of the public eye between 1975 and 1981, but even when he came back, he wasn't as into playing anymore as he had used to be. He played again a couple times before he died in 1991 at 65 years old. As for the author's description of the book, it was all first person, because he wrote the book himself with the help of Quincy Troupe. Miles Davis is still a very widely known artist.