Miles and Me: an interview with Quincy Troupe.

A Renaissance man for the twenty-first century, author and poet Quincy Troupe is Professor of Creative Writing and American and Caribbean Literature at the University of California, San Diego. A nationally recognized poet and biographer, he has authored twelve books and won two American Book Awards, in 1980 for Snake-Back Solos, a volume of poetry, and for Miles: The Autobiography. He wrote and co-produced The Miles Davis Radio Project, for which he received a Peabody Award; served as Editorial Director of Code, a national monthly magazine for men of color; and has edited James Baldwin: The Legacy. Troupe is also two-time Heavyweight Champion of Poetry, a title he won at the World Poetry Bout, a national competition that draws distinguished poets to Taos, New Mexico.

Troupe's latest work is Miles and Me, a candid account of his friendship with the enigmatic trumpeter. In it Troupe offers a glimpse into the inner sanctum of jazz's "Prince of Darkness." The book also shows the power of music--in particular, the music of Miles Davis--on Troupe's own development as an artist.

On October 25, 2000, Troupe appeared on Return to the Source, a jazz show I produce and host on WJAB 90.9FM in Huntsville, Alabama. What followed was a freewheeling, wide-ranging, engaging interview that covered Miles and Me, the impact of jazz and Miles's music on Troupe's own artistic development, the role of the African American artist, poetry, and Troupe's latest projects, including his first screenplay, for an upcoming movie on Miles Davis.

Turner: Your new book is a much more personal account of your relationship with Miles, and in that sense it's as much about you as it is about Miles. We get a chance to see your background and your first exposure to jazz and Miles's music. What was your hometown, St. Louis, like when you were growing up?

Troupe: When I grew up there it was segregated. I remember we didn't have a television, and going to listen to Joe Louis fight on the radio. When television came in, it was downtown at the department store, and the black people, including my dad and other black men, would take me down to the department store to watch Joe Louis on television. There would be a whole lot of black people, and white people too, on the sidewalk looking at Joe Louis knock somebody out. Other than that, we would sit around the radio and listen to those boxing matches and baseball games. The only thing we really had to do was to listen to the music, go to the movies, and play sports.

My father was a great baseball player, so I grew up between St. Louis, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. He was the second greatest catcher of all-time in the old Negro Leagues. So in my house, we were listening to salsa and other Latin music. My mother liked Count Basie, Duke Ellington , Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker. So I grew up around a lot of different stuff. The second man she married, after divorcing my father, was a blues musician. He played all the blues musicians--B. B. King, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley.

Kids are always against what their parents like. I was listening to Johnny Ace and the Coasters ... the Platters. I remember going into this fish joint one day in St. Louis. I was about 15 years old, and I saw these four black guys. I had transferred by that time to an all-white high school, and it was so square at that school. They were listening to Pat Boone covering black songs. I just wanted to be around something hip. These four black guys were sitting in a booth in the fish joint and they were really clean. They had on dark glasses, ascots. I had never seen a guy with an ascot, and a beret. They had their hats up on the three-pronged poles and they were smoking cigarettes, drinking soda, and eating fish sandwiches. I said, "Let me sit behind them and see if I can catch something." They were talking about "the homeboy across the river from East St. Louis" who was playing on the jukebox. It was Miles Davis. I had never heard of Miles Davis. And they talked about the guy on alto who "sounded like Charlie P arker, Bird," Jackie McLean. I didn't know who Bird was. They played the record two or three times. I thought they were pretty hip. Then they got up and left.

I remember going up to the jukebox and finding "Donna," because I remember them saying Miles Davis's "Donna." I put my nickel in and sat down and listened to it. It was great. I put another nickel in and listened to it again, and when I walked out of that fish joint, my life was kind of changed at that moment, hearing that music. From that point on, I was trying to learn everything I could about Miles Davis.

Turner: In the book you describe St. Louis and East St. Louis as great trumpet towns. Why?

Troupe: Because we had these marching bands in St. Louis. We had all these German guys there who were teachers who were teaching the trumpet and the bugle. Out of that tradition came lead trumpet players like Clark Terry, Miles Davis, Shorty Baker, and a whole bunch of other guys; trumpet players are still coming out of St. Louis--Lester Bowie and Russell Gunn. A whole bunch of trumpet players have come out of St. Louis, and a lot of them were trained in those marching bands. The other thing was that East St. Louis stayed open all night long. People could go play in the bars on the weekends all night. You had this great musical milieu, and then you had the river where everybody was coming up in those riverboats and stopping in St. Louis. All those great bands, bringing Dizzy, Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong. They were all coming up from New Orleans. You also had people coming from Chicago and Kansas City. So at one time St. Louis was a hub where a lot of people were passing through from Oklahoma, from Kansas Ci ty, from the South, and from Chicago and New York. And St. Louis itself had great musicians like George Hudson, and my cousin Eddie Randall, who led the first band Miles played in. All this created a scene.

Turner: You describe the first time you heard Miles live and the incident in which Miles cracked the faces of a white couple who approached him in a way he felt was disrespectful. How much of Miles's surly nature was an attempt to live up to his reputation and how much was real?

Troupe: Miles was a very complex person. He didn't like anybody, black or white, invading his space. He felt that if he wanted to talk to you he would talk to you. If he was having down time, relaxing at the bar, he didn't want people coming up to him. I remember people from St. Louis were just standing back observing him because we knew, but nobody told this white couple that Miles didn't want to meet them, so they got cursed out.

Miles did that when I met him. I saw him curse a big black guy out on the street who had come up to him to talk about a movie he was making. He wanted Miles to be in it. That's how he responded to stuff because he didn't know how to navigate that kind of stuff intellectually. The first thing that came into his mind, a lot of the time, that's what he said.

Turner: In the book you talk about Miles and Wynton Marsalis and their relationship, or lack of one. You mention Miles's observation that there was the potential for Wynton to become comfortable with where he was. What was their relationship like?

Troupe: Wynton was influenced by Miles. When they first met, he was coming to Miles as a protege in a sense, a young guy wanting to learn. And Miles was giving him as much as he wanted. I think the unfortunate thing that happened was that they were at the same record company, Columbia. Wynton was playing classical music, and then he was playing jazz, and he was starting to get this reputation. So I think he started to feel himself in competition with Miles, as they both played the same instrument. After a certain point, Wynton started to make these disparaging remarks about Miles. He started to say things in the press about the music Miles was playing after Bitches Brew, and certain kinds of music he didn't like. I've never really had a conversation with Wynton about that, but I thought it was kind of stupid for him to do that.

First it was a great relationship, and then it started to disintegrate. The low point came when Wynton and Miles were in Vancouver after Wynton had said this stupid stuff about Miles, and after he had come under the guidance of Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray. (Stanley hated Miles Davis because Miles had cursed him out when he approached Miles in the same way that the white couple had done earlier.) After saying these hateful things, Wynton came up to Miles in Vancouver in 1987 or '88 where Miles's group was playing, and he walked up on the stage like he was going to sit in without asking Miles if he could sit in. So when Miles saw him he went up to him-there are photographs of this encounter-and said something to him that no one could hear. I asked Miles what he said to him and Miles said he told Wynton, "If you play one note I'm hitting you upside the head with this trumpet. Get off my stage." After that, the whole relationship disintegrated.

Turner: How do you define yourself as an artist? Do you see yourself as an African American artist, and if you do, what does that mean?

Troupe: I see myself as an artist and a poet. I'm basically influenced by and coming out of the African American, but American, tradition. I'm African American because I was born African American and proud of it. I don't run away from that. But as an artist, I see myself as a poet first, and then I see myself as a prose writer. I agree with Miles. He looked at himself as a musician and an artist. I don't hear white boys running around saying they're "white artists." I come out of St. Louis, the black culture there and the music there. I grew up in the church. I was a basketball player. I'm a poet. That's the way I approach myself.

Turner: Do you agree with Miles that "there is no honor in doing their..."

Troupe: Miles was talking in terms of classical music. He was saying that he didn't see any honor in doing that and that we should be creating our own stuff. I feel that we should be creating our own stuff, too. But as a poet, I write in different ways. I can write a villaneile, a sestina, a haiku. I can write in those different forms. But I am about trying to raise up in the United States whatever cultural forms that we can raise up here. If I do work in another form, I'm about putting my own stamp on the form. For example, if I work in the French villanelle form, a nineteen-line poem where you pick two lines and repeat them four times throughout the poem, usually it's a kind of bland form, except for one by Dylan Thomas. I wrote a poem m my last book called "Poem for Michael Jordan" using that form. I think I've innovated it just by the sound.

Turner: In Miles and Me you mention how you "came to know Miles as almost childlike, delicate, and much softer than [you] had ever imagined him being." Can you elaborate?

Troupe: Miles was a beautiful guy. When you got to know him, he was soft. Not "soft" soft. He was very sensitive. He was a very shy person. If he liked you a lot, he would do anything for you. He was generous. He would give you money. He was funny. He was a real guy, a human guy. He was always cracking on you, so you had to be ready. But I learned to crack back on him. He was childlike. He told me that great artists have to remain close to their childhood in order to let their imaginations flow, because as you grow older you become victim to all of these rules and regulations. But young children are not encumbered by all that, so their imaginations are free. They can create whatever they want to at that moment.

I agree with him. As an artist, if you can stay close to that sensibility without having all those rules and regulations, dos and don'ts, imprison you, then you're free to create a lot more. I think that's where he stayed in his imagination. That's why he was so fertile. That's why he was so protean.

Turner: I think it's hard for a lot of people to imagine Miles as being humorous. Most people could not see that in him.

Troupe: Everybody that knows him knows that. I remember one time I got together with Santana and Miles's last drummer. We were sitting up there telling these Miles stories, and everybody was telling these funny stories and laughing. We laughed for about two hours. If he knew you, he was a funny guy. If he didn't, he had that mask up because he didn't want people to approach him.

Turner: I guess calling Miles "guarded" would be an understatement?

Troupe: That's right. He definitely didn't want people invading his space. When I first met him, he reached out and grabbed my hair. I knocked his hand away. He was shocked. He looked at me so crazy and said, "What are you, crazy"? I said, "No. Just because I'm here to interview you doesn't mean that you can invade my space. That's your space over there, and this is my space. Miles's space. Quincy's space." His respect for me went up immediately as soon as I said that to him. And it stayed like that until he died.

Turner: I especially like the section of Miles and Me called "Listening to Miles," your assessment of his music and how certain recordings were milestones in your development. What are some of your most memorable moments in terms of Miles's music?

Troupe: "Bag's Groove" blew me away. Then, when I first heard Kind of Blue, that blew me away. Two other memories. I had just started teaching at Ohio University when Bitches Brew came out. I remember going to the record store and I saw this album cover with this weird painting on the cover, and I said, "What is this?" I bought it and took it home. I didn't want to listen to it until I got my stuff together. So I got some food, some good wine, and I went in the front room. I put this record on, and it was so strange at first. It was kind of like an assault. I was stunned by it, but at the same time it was totally compelling. I listened to it from six or seven in the evening until after midnight. By the time I got up the next morning I was transformed. The same thing happened with On the Corner. A lot of my friends stopped listening to Miles after Bitches Brew. They said, "Man, that stuff's crazy." Then when On the Corner came out, the same thing happened. I was living in New York, and I put on On the Corner a nd had this amazing feeling about it. Miles was documenting the city and all those sounds and what those black people were doing up in Harlem.

Turner: It's interesting how music can impact a person's life. Most people think of music as background material, but music can have that kind of impact, can't it?

Troupe: Yeah, I think that music has had a compelling influence on me. If I had not heard Miles's music in that fish joint, I don't think that I would be sitting here looking at this beautiful view I'm looking at now. Miles set me on a path that is remarkable in a lot of ways. He's the one that set me on the path to writing and using my imagination, and being creative. I just finished a screenplay based on Miles and Me that the people who produced Hurricane will produce. I would not have written that screenplay if I had not gone to that fish joint. That's what fate is. Because I heard that music, he propelled me into this thing that I do now. The end result, besides all the poetry I've written, is that now we're going to do this movie.

Turner: Who are they considering to play Miles?

Troupe: There are a lot of names being thrown around. They've talked about Wesley Snipes, Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman. They talked about Danny Clover playing my character, and Forrest Whitaker.

Turner: Are you going to have any input into the final decision?

Troupe: When they optioned it I asked to be one of the executive producers. But this is the way it is: Hollywood is run by who gets the money, and they make the final decisions. I'm not going to have a problem with that. First of all, I'm a novice when it comes to Hollywood. Plus, I trust the producer, Rudy Langlis, who was my editor at The Village Voice and Spin. He just did a movie about the Atlanta murders, and he's doing one on the Tulsa riots. He's a great editor and great person. I'm not going to tell him what to do, but I am going to put my two cents in.

Turner: In the book you describe Miles as an "unreconstructed" black man. What does that mean, and what does Miles mean to American culture? Will he ever be given the recognition he deserves?

Troupe: By unreconstructed black guy, I meant that Miles was a black man who did not change for anybody. He was an African American man who came out of East St. Louis, and he wasn't going to kiss anybody's behind to get somewhere. He was going to be himself on all occasions. I think that in this country, because of the fact that we were slaves at one time, the dominant white culture feels that we have to become them. We have to talk in a certain way, dress in a certain way, talk calmly. We do that because we want to get ahead. I understand that. It's that middle-class thing. Miles was that unreconstructed black man who went on his own path.

I don't think people have to change. Picasso didn't change. The Kennedys don't change. Elvis Presley didn't change. Frank Sinatra didn't change. Why should Miles Davis or any African American guy have to change? We aren't running around murdering anybody. We aren't being like Jeffery Dahmer. African Americans are some of the most dedicated, loyal, patriotic people in the history of this country. Because of the fact that he didn't kowtow to a lot of white interests, a lot of people carry a grudge against Miles.

Miles Davis should have everything in this country. In the same way that France and Spain gave Picasso everything, Miles should have every-thing in this culture, because there's been no other person in this country that has changed the course of music six times. No one. And all the musicians respect him. He's absolutely an international icon. The cover of the January 2000 GQ issue in Japan read "Miles is God." We would never do that here.

Douglas Turner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Alabama A&M University, a freelance writer, and host and producer of Return to the Source and A Different Perspective on WJAB, 90.9FM, in Huntsville, Alabama.