Miles Davis

Miles Davis is considered as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He was an African American Trumpeter and was at the forefront of jazz music. In 1944 he moved to New York City, the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. Davis is known as having the "birth of the cool" which has the objective was to achieve a sound similar to the human voice, through carefully arranged compositions and by emphasizing a relaxed, melodic approach to the improvisations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Davis greatly influenced acid rock (example here) and funk artists such as Jimi Hendrix. Rolling Stone's Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll noted that:

Miles Davis played a crucial and inevitably controversial role in every major development in jazz since the mid-'40s, and no other jazz musician has had so profound an effect on rock. Miles Davis was the most widely recognized jazz musician of his era, an outspoken social critic and an arbiter of style - in attitude and fashion - as well as music