In 1987, he was invited to a White House dinner by Ronald Reagan. Few of the guests appeared to know who he was. During dinner, Nancy Reagan turned to him and asked what he'd done with his life to merit an invitation. Straight-faced, Davis replied: "Well, I've changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?"

Miles Davis: his wardrobe, his wit, his way with a basketball [The Guardian] (via Reddit)

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Bob Webb

You’ve got to admit this about Miles Davis: he sure did blow his own trumpet.

wah wah waaaaaaaaah
bo1n6bo1n6

To her credit she did say ‘NO’
niktemadur

Ooooooh ZING! But yeah, he did overstate matters a bit, I’d say he did it twice (Kind Of Blue, Bitches Brew).
Which is kind of like the guy playing chess with his dog, somebody walks up and says “That’s incredible!”, the guy says “Not really, he only beats me once every ten games or so.”
- http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson
  
  Well, he may be taking some credit for bebop (he was there at the beginning, though it wasn’t his baby), plus the “Birth of the Cool” album which was another direction too. And arguably he was doing the same stuff as Ornette when he recorded the “Lift to the Scaffold” soundtrack, but unlike Ornette he thought it was a musical dead end.
  - http://twitter.com/ErnestValdemar Ernest Valdemar
    
    1) His pre-LP work with Charlie Parker (1945). Donna Lee, etc.
    2) Birth of the Cool (1949). Also pre-LP, but later released as an album.
    3) First quintet (Cookin’, Steamin’, Workin’ etc.) Early 50s.
    4) Kind of Blue (1959).
    5) “The Quintet” (early/mid 60s).
    6) The Gil Evans collaborations — Sketches of Spain, etc. (60s)
    7) Fusion — Filles de Kilimanjaro thru Big Fun (incl. Bitches Brew).
    
    I used to say, “It’s no accident that Alan Freed invented Rock ‘n’ Roll at precisely the moment that Miles Davis stopped smiling.”
http://twitter.com/wi_ngo wingo shackleford

This is why, if you were to ask who my heroes are, I would put Miles as #1. Because of statements like this and 1 million other things and then also the small matter of some of the greatest music ever.

@niktemadur I think he prob changed music 5x with Bitches Brew alone…
- niktemadur
  
  I think he prob changed music 5x with Bitches Brew alone…
  
  Kind of like the german band Neu! with their first album, but c’mon dude, each album counts once.
  
  But you know who I’d put as my #1? John Coltrane, I play “A Love Supreme” slightly more often than “Kind Of Blue” (on which Coltrane also played, WTF). Oh, and “Coltrane’s Sound” when I get the itch for that classic bebop.
  
  The other Miles Davis album I absolutely love is “Sketches Of Spain”, another work of insane genius. I’ve also got, but haven’t yet gotten around to listening to, “Filles De Kilimanjaro” and “In A Silent Way”.
  - gws
    
    Listen to “In a Silent Way” first, then “Filles.” Just one man’s opinion.
    - niktemadur
      
      Will do, thanks for the tip.
http://www.facebook.com/dan.l.warren Dan Warren

That may be the best thing I ever read.
bbctol

I’ve heard a couple versions of this story, usually one where he says to an anonymous white woman “I’ve changed the course of music 2 or 3 times. What have you done, besides be born white?” So… not sure if legit.
- penguinchris
  
  Someone on Reddit agrees, and found the source: Davis’ autobiography.
  
  edit: scooped, shoulda kept scrolling in the comments :) I went straight to google because this sounded both interesting and made-up.
- noah django
  
  your version is the one he recounts in his as-told-to bio, the posted quote is made up.
irksome

Fucking Reagan; a dirty job but I guess someone had to do it.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500921150 Izzy Jaecks
  
  no… no one HAD to do it…
  - Brainspore
    
    We were at the brink of Nuclear holocaust as it was. As a general rule, you don’t want the paranoid lunatic a the finger on the button to be more stressed out than he has to be.
    - IronEdithKidd
      
      Reagan’s brinksmanship has long been lost in the fog surrounding the Cult of St. Ronnie.
D. Nik Andjam

this is not true, check
http://www.amazon.com/Miles-Autobiography-Davis/dp/0671725823/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337339249&sr=1-1
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Having seen Nancy Reagan close up, I’d be surprised if she had spoken to him in the first place.
- http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075
  
  And it’s a story in the UK Guardian. Is there any more automatically doubtful literature than British newspapers?
  - Steve Taylor
    
    That’s true for British tabloids – but UK newspapers cover an incredible spectrum of quality. Guardian’s ok.
    - cdh1971
      
      I agree, the G is okay.
      - http://profiles.google.com/substancemcgravitas Substance McGravitas
        
        It’s okay in what it’s trying to do, but I don’t think the articles are any more accurate than any other British paper. It’s pretty remarkable how little fact-checking there is.
  - Joel Phillips
    
    I’d take most British broadsheet over most American ones. Three reasons:
    
    a) There’s no pretense at political impartiality, so you know where you are.
    b) They don’t feel the need to start otherwise perfectly interesting articles with a report of someone’s personal experience.
    c) If they start an article on the front page, they often finish it there too.
franko

true or not, it fits. what makes it extra delicious is that he’s saying it t Nancy Reagan!
http://twitter.com/strugglngwriter strugglngwriter

If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.
- noah django
  
  ＼（★´−｀）人（´▽｀★）／
  - awjt
    
    OK, wtf does that mean?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      It’s so embarrassing when one person doesn’t get the joke.
    - noah django
      
      from the film “Billy Madison,” the source of strugglingwriter’s quote and my photo.:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WCa5qOQ-DA
      
      the emoticon is a high-five
  - rodstewart
    
    Oh, I get it. An ANSI art high five.
    - awjt
      
      Oh, I see now. Mannnnnnn I thought I was obscure and obtuse, but this takes the cake. I have some improving to do.
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Good a time as any to wheel this one out; Nancy Reagan and Mr T:
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Just Say No to…..well, both of them, actually.
  - http://mjfgates.myopenid.com/ mjfgates
    
    Or even to each of them.
PaulDavisTheFirst

Really unfortunate that Cory did not read the comment thread on the Guardian article, in which this particular urban legend is partially (but thoroughly) debunked, c/o Mile’s own autobiography.
Mark_Frauenfelder

Totally unfair to Nancy Reagan, who was also an accomplished blowjob queen.
- Steve Taylor
  
  Strange stuff in that Village Voice article:
  
  (speaking of oral sex)
  “Those who perfect their technique are considered to have a power lock on men, despite–or because of?–the act’s association with homosexuality.”
  
  What?
- Steve Taylor
  
  Strange stuff in that Village Voice article:
  
  (speaking of oral sex)
  “Those who perfect their technique are considered to have a power lock on men, despite–or because of?–the act’s association with homosexuality.”
  
  What?
  - humanresource
    
    There was me thinking that blow jobs just feel great. How naive; I should have studied pop psychology.
    - EH
      
      Surprise, you’re gay!
- Repurposed
  
  It sounds like the US isn’t so averse to monarchs as I thought, just their selection criteria…
timquinn

What he actually said was “My policy, when asked if I am a heroin addict, is to just say ‘no.’

The rest is history.
http://twitter.com/ZekeWarren Zeke Harrington

Yeah this is quite inaccurate, the real quote isn’t hard to find and involves a much better dissection of privilege. Also, isn’t a funny coincidence that the fake quote is the one that makes the black man seem angry, crude and threatening to white women?
- corydodt
  
  Sigh. No. It’s the one that’s funnier.
- Albie Farinas
  
  The fake quote is totally apropos…… I’m so tired of the expectation of deference and fealty and the sanctimonious indignation when it is not expressed…. Nancy Reagan was a bitch….!
Mighty Blowhole

Soooo close to the actual quote… but not quite.

Still gotta be Reason # Infinity + 1 for loving Miles Davis…
Paul232

Does “what have you done with your life to merit an invitation” sound like a likely sentence to be spoken by a first lady, or anyone? More likely “so who might you be”. But awesome story anyway since he was mean to an old white Republican woman, I guess.
Tim Drage

Looking forward to a misspelt version of this, incongruously made using a ‘keep calm and carry on’/demotivational poster parody generator, being shared 12767313 times from a facebook account called ‘ITS NOT PC LOL FUNNAY PICTURES BECAUSE ITS TRUE’ or some such. (-_-;)
lorq

J.G. Ballard had some remarks on this topic back in ’68.
http://the-purest-of-treats.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-i-want-to-fuck-ronald-reagan.html
- http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  
  Imagine my joy and surprise when I found that, quite by accident, during a library search.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523727765 Tom Mandel

Judging by the experience of a friend of mine (told to me first hand) Nancy’s question is not an uncommon one among ‘first ladies…’ He was at the Bushes (bush 1) for a bar-b-q, i think in Maine, cuz he was mixing sound for some big artist, and Barbara looked at him (a long haired roundish asian) and asked him, “And what do YOU do?”
Inexplicably, he didn’t lose his appetite, and he also said he thought she was nice. Go fig.
- chgoliz
  
  How a privileged person speaks to someone else is an immediate indicator of their assumptions about that person. They judge instantaneously, then they modify their speech to match. How you dress can be enough to throw their assumptions off. This is something I play with, and find the results to be quite informative. (It’s like going undercover to find out what kind of person they really are. Very useful.)
  
  Your friend may have been socialized to believe that a powerful person even noticing he existed as an individual was a positive thing. Which is sort-of true: it’s better than not even being noticed, let alone spoken to. There are many political functions these days where that would still be the norm. So…glass half full.
D3

Within ten seconds anyone with half a brain would know that this story is made up. Apparently that doesn’t matter to Cory, or some of the commenters.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523727765 Tom Mandel
  
  Which half?
Mitch Furman

Cory: can you source this piece of apocrypha? I realize it wasn’t your article to begin with but it is being widely debunked around the web (after your post made its rounds) via Miles’ autobiography.
http://twitter.com/gmokery George Mokray

When Richard Nixon honored Duke Ellington at the White House, Duke greeted him by kissing him twice on the left side of his face and twice on the right. Nixon was puzzled and asked, “Why four kisses?” Duke answered, “One for each cheek.”
- C W
  
  These legends are silly, but this one moreso, why wouldn’t he be having Nixon kiss ~his~ ass instead of kissing Nixon’s ass?
wwy

A paraphrase of a misquote from an autobiography. Read pp. 378-381 of Miles’ autobiography http://www.amazon.com/dp/0671725823/ . He said something similar to this, but not to Nancy Reagan. Why the author of that Guardian piece would misquote things like that when the story — or at least a first-hand version — is widely available, who knows. But it’s pretty sloppy journalism.
http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson

To be fair to Nancy, she also fucked the Governor of California and a famous actor.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Patrick-Pine/1312381576 Patrick Pine

In the vein of just making stuff up – here is my modern version – at a Romney fundraiser, Ann asks one of the chauffeurs/limo drivers ”What do you do???” After a pause, he responds: ”The same thing as you, I drive Cadillacs…”
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Janiece-Senn/1503822482 Janiece Senn
  
  He should have added and I fuck Mitt Romney. If your going to make up a fable might as well go for the gold. lol
- C W
  
  This assumes they drive themselves anywhere.
Rusty Stardust

Just a day after I saw the Reddit post of Miles Davis & John Lennon playing a little b-ball. He just gets cooler, and more badass, each day.
snagglepuss

I was sitting outside an Orlando water park about 10 years ago, wearing my Miles Davis t-shirt (A picture of later-day day Miles, holding one of his fingers up to his lips in a ‘Shhhh’ position), when a vacationing British family wandered by, single file.

(I assume they were British, based on their coarse jabbering and their accents)

They made me think of the Simpsons, only Cockney. Black sleeveless t-shirts with knockoff Disney characters on them, weird floral swim trunks, black socks and black sneakers, with the limbs alternately flashing bone-china white or lobster-red, depending on which side of the sunburns I was seeing; Exhausted Father, Mother, oldest daughter, middle daughter trudging along – And then the son, about six years old and looking like a pee-wee cross between Junior Samples and Eric Cartman – Who stopped dead in his tracks, eyed my shirt and yelled “Bloody ‘Ell – That’s Moiles Dayvis !”

I was speechless. Shit, what would you have said ? I finally said “Right! Well Done, Young Man!”, and he ran off to catch up with the rest of his family.
http://profile.yahoo.com/OMHO6ER5QJE3SIZ35VAXIRCLYM Stephan

Story is not true.
But who cares if its against Nancy Reagan which Miles Davis liked according to his biography …

Miles Davis turned to Nancy Reagan and said...

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