"Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis

1959

James Baldwin felt a personal affinity with jazz trumpet virtuoso Miles Davis, who visited Baldwin in his home in the South of France. In a 1987 interview with poet Quincy Troupe, about one month before Baldwin’s death, Baldwin describes a spiritual connection between him and Davis. He implies that feelings of vulnerability as African American men and as living legends brought unique challenges and that dual identities related to public and private life induced feelings of entrapment. Both used art as an outlet for internal struggles and to articulate identity. “Miles has got his horn and I’ve got my typewriter. We are both angry men.”