Don Cheadle was 10 when he was first introduced to Miles Davisโ€™ music. โ€œMy parents had copies of Kind Of Blue and Porgy And Bess,โ€ he tells Uncut. โ€œI used to listen to those LPs all the time; especially Porgy And Bess. Because itโ€™s based on Gershwin, itโ€™s very theatrical and expressive. It felt like it was telling a story. Starting out as an actor at that age, those two things dovetailed together. It was going somewhere.โ€

It took 40 years for Cheadle to catch up again to Davis. The result is Miles Ahead โ€“ a film in which Cheadle not only stars as Davis but also directs. As with its subject, Miles Ahead has its own mercurial style. Set largely in the late โ€™70s, when Davis withdrew both from the concert stage and from the recording studio, it cuts away to show Davisโ€™ earlier career in the late 1950s and his courtship of dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi), his first wife. There is also a fabricated subplot involving the hunt for stolen studio tapes that is closer to caper movie than conventional biopic.

โ€œWe didnโ€™t want it to be a stuffy, cradle-to-the-grave film; the Greatest Hits of Miles Davisโ€™ life,โ€ explains Cheadle. โ€œThe โ€™70s became the departure point for us. How did this incredibly prolific artist, who had changed music three or four times, go silent for five years? Whatโ€™s happening? How do you get out of that? You start the movie when heโ€™s not playing and it makes you lean in and say, โ€˜What? Weโ€™re going to listen to you not play?โ€™

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โ€œThe period between when he met Frances and when she was running out of the door for her life was the period when he took Kind Of Blue and went from that first supergroup with Coltrane, Cannonball and Wynton Kelly to the second supergroup. He went everywhere those songs could possible take him, then never playing any of them again.โ€

Click here to read Milesโ€™ collaborators on the making of Kind Of Blue, Bitches Brew and more

One useful comparison to Miles Ahead may well be Love & Mercy, the Brian Wilson drama that similarly focused on two specific periods in its subjectโ€™s life. Both films depicted the hard construction work that goes into creating art: in Miles Ahead, Cheadle takes us inside the Porgy And Bess sessions. โ€œOne of the questions we had as we were putting the film together was, โ€˜How do you show genius, quote unquote?โ€™โ€ admits Cheadle, who learned to play trumpet for the film. โ€œWe went in there and acted like musicians, played it, figured it out and just recorded the session.โ€

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How would Cheadle describe the filmโ€™s two Davises โ€“ the 1950s and 1970s versions? โ€œItโ€™s not just binary,โ€ he counters. โ€œIt was modal. It was like, this is now and that was then. You see similar things in both times. The fragile nature of what heโ€™s dealing with: his jealousy, his fear of losing, the rage that inspires.โ€

Did you ever meet Davis?
โ€œNo, I saw him perform at Red Rocks, in Denver, Colorado, when I was a senior in high school, in 1982,โ€ reveals Cheadle. โ€œBut I met Kenny G that night. Though thatโ€™s not exactly the same thing as meeting Miles Davis, right?โ€

Miles Ahead is released in the UK on April 22

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The May 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK โ€“ featuring our cover story on PJ Harveyโ€™s new album, Brian Wilson, The Nationalโ€™s all-star Grateful Dead tribute, Jack White and T Bone Burnettโ€™s American Epic, Cate Le Bon, Donovan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cheap Trick, Graham Nash, Heartworn Highways, Sturgill Simpson and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

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