HORROR BARBECUE

You've always believed in playing exactly the way you wanted to at all times?

Course. I want to see if I can do it.

There was the period when you seemed to be using the mute quite a lot.

I use it if I want to play something, here and there. Not because some people said to me : "Miles, you sound good with a mute." I know it sounds good, else I wouldn't pick it up.

On a lot of the records that were very successful, tracks like "All Of You" and "Bye Bye Blackbird", when you played with the mute close to the mike, you had what came to be known as the Miles Davis sound.

I got it from Dizzy.

I don't remember hearing that sound from Dizzy.

Listen to `Ko Ko". But, you see, all my ideas of a tone come from listening to trumpet players who play round—with no tag on the end of the tone. I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone—for me.

It's too sort of creamy, I suppose.

What you call creamy and what I call creamy may be two different things. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music.