A wealthy teenager in East St. Louis had his knuckles rapped for playing with vibrato, and grew up to become the Prince of Darkness. This deep dive traces Miles Davis through every reinvention: dropping out of Juilliard after three semesters to chase Charlie Parker into Harlem jam sessions, building the nonet that produced Birth of the Cool, and a 1949 Paris trip with Juliette Greco, Sartre, and Picasso that made the return to American racism unbearable.

The episode follows his heroin addiction, a cold-turkey detox locked in a room at his father’s house, and the Sugar Ray Robinson ethos that armored his comeback. It explains the stemless Harmon mute, the 1955 Newport solo on Round Midnight that landed him at Columbia, the discipline that led him to fire John Coltrane and Philly Joe Jones, the modal breakthrough of Kind of Blue, the razor-blade tape editing behind Bitches Brew, the five-year retreat after a 1972 car crash, the 1986 Grammy for Tutu, and his final backward glance at Montreux in 1991.

• How the argument that shredded his post-surgery vocal cords gave him his famous rasp
• Why three semesters of Juilliard theory were a secret weapon in bebop’s chaos
• The Harmon mute technique that turned the trumpet into an intimate metallic whisper
• Modal jazz explained as an open desert highway versus bebop’s Manhattan rush hour
• How Betty Mabry, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Stockhausen fed the electric era