📍Alton, Illinois, USA
1926 – 1944“I was born Miles Dewey Davis III on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, and grew up in East St Louis, across the Mississippi River from St Louis, Missouri. My father was a dentist and landowner — we were solidly middle class by the standards of Black America in the 1930s — and the comfort of my upbringing gave me the confidence to pursue music without desperation, which I think is part of why I was never afraid to change. My father gave me my first trumpet at thirteen, and I knew immediately. I left for New York at eighteen, officially to study at Juilliard but really to find Charlie Parker, who was playing bebop in the clubs of 52nd Street. Alton and East St Louis gave me the Mississippi River — that wide, brown, restless body of water — and it was always in my music.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Davis, M. with Troupe, Q. Miles: The Autobiography (1989), Simon & Schuster; Szwed, J. So What: The Life of Miles Davis (2002), Simon & Schuster