Miles Davis "The First Meeting"

The first time I met Miles Davis, was kind of under strange and painful circumstances.
I was coming to the United States from Brazil in 1967. I was coming to meet Flora who had already been here in the US for a month. I arrived in California, without speaking hardly a word of English. I knew very few words and could not even tell the taxi driver where to go and all that kind of stuff. It was an interesting story, the day that I arrived in California, so I’m gonna start my story there.
I arrived at the Los Angeles airport with a piece of paper that a friend of mine had written on. It said “Please take me to…” and then Flora’s address was on the other side. So I got a taxi outside the terminal and the driver immediately started talking. I guess he was asking me were I wanted to go, so I started to read (very badly) my note, and then handed it to him.
“What airline did you fly?” he asked me, but of course I did not understand. I just shook my head and said “Sorry no English”
“Varig did you fly on Varig?” He asked. Well I recognized that because it is a Brazilian airline. “Yes! Varig.” I replied. Then suddenly he started talking away in Portuguese. He was a Brazilian guy who had been living here for a while driving a taxi. It was great! We drove off and talked a lot and I was happy to be with someone I could talk with. I thought that everything would be like this, that it was going to be easy. That there would be no problem with my speaking little English.

We arrived around eleven pm at a small building, which was the address on the paper and I got out of he taxi. I was a bit confused because I thought the address was for a house but it was an apartment building. I did not know the apartment number. So I walked around and just knocked on the first door I saw, which was on the second floor. This big black American woman answered the door, and in a very nice friendly manner started talking away to me. I did not understand her at all and just said, “Brazil” and pointed to myself. She seemed to get something from that and put her robe on, then walked over to another door downstairs and knocked on it.
It turned out to be the apartment of Moacyr Santos a great Brazilian composer and arranger. He was here writing for movies and all kinds of stuff like that. We had woken him up but he invited me in, and I explained that I was here to see Flora. He was very helpful and explained that Flora was at Shelly Manne’s club. That she had gone to see Miles Davis with her friend, another Brazilian singer, Pery Ribeiro. Moacyr felt bad that Flora was not there and asked me to sit down, and woke up his wife, who made us all some coffee.

After hanging out for about an hour he told me where Flora’s apartment was and I just went right up there. The door was not locked, so I could go in. I had two suitcases with me, one with clothes and the other full of percussion. I put them in Flora’s apartment and then started to think how great it would be to see Miles Davis. I really wanted to go and Moacyr said that the club was just around the corner and down a few blocks. He gave me the directions and off I went.
When I got there, I just walked right in, there was nobody playing. I looked around and did not see Flora, so I went backstage. There was nobody stopping me. It was kind of funny nobody stopped me at the door of the club and nobody stopped me from going backstage, I was just there.

Anyway, Miles was standing right there by the dressing room door. I remember I said something like
“Miles!” rather excitedly, and he just looked at me with that look. That bored Miles look. I said his name again, then added
“Me Brazil!..............musician…………..Love! I Love!...” I was trying to find the right words and he just looked back at me with that look. Then he turned away and called for someone named Jack. Later on I found out he was calling Jack Whitmore.
“Hey Jack! Get this guy out of here! Get him out of here!” So I was taken back out front to the manager and Jack and the manager threw me out of the club. I hadn’t paid to get in the club, I had just walked right in and gone backstage.

So there I was standing on the curb, having been tossed out of the club, and I was thinking, Wow! I just talked to Miles Davis! This is incredible! Then I realized that it was terrible, that I met him but he did not like me, he hated me. All these thoughts were going around in my head, so I took a little walk for about half an hour. I even cried it was such a bad experience for me.
Then I went back to Flora’s place and fell asleep on the couch. When she walked in I was sound asleep. She was all excited to see me because she did not know that I was coming that day.
So that’s what happened. That’s what happened the first time I met Miles Davis.
People always ask me if I ever told him, and no, I never did.

Part 2 "Working with Miles"