Artist on artist: Theo Croker on the ‘cool’ and ‘consistent’ Miles Davis
The American jazz trumpeter and composer shares his love for a legendary musician with an enduring tendency to ‘just go left’
Theo Croker is a jazz trumpeter, composer and producer with nine studio albums to his name, not to mention a Grammy nomination, three Echo Award nominations and a Theodore Presser Award.
Croker studied music at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville and attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where he was mentored by the great Donald Byrd. But it was when he was growing up in Leesburg, Florida that he first encountered the music of Miles Davis.
A man for whom it seems a little superfluous to offer an introduction, the trumpeter and band leader Miles Davis is one of the greatest and most influential figures in the history of jazz music. Initially a member of Charlie Parker’s Bebop Quintet in the 1940s, Davis would go on to be a pivotal figure in jazz for the next four decades; his 1959 album Kind of Blue, remains the biggest selling jazz album of all time.
In March 2026, we celebrateD 100 years of Davis here at the Southbank Centre with a special event led by Croker, which saw the contemporary trumpeter joined by singer-songwriter Ego Ella May and two-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Gary Bartz to present a special musical tribute. Ahead of this event – part of our annual Montreux Jazz Festival Residency – we caught up with Croker to get a picture of just what Davis means to him.
I feel like Miles Davis has just always been there. I grew up in a jazz family; my pops had records and LPs like Kind of Blue, and many others, so I remember seeing images of Miles Davis and seeing him in videos and hearing him. So Miles and John Coltrane have always been there for me. I feel like I always knew who Miles Davis was, I mean, who doesn’t.
My first intentional encounter with Miles Davis came when I was 12 or 13. Back in the day, I would have to do chores around the house, or help my pops on his farm, to get an allowance. He would give me $20, and all I wanted to do was buy jazz CDs, so every weekend I got to go do that. It would be a different artist each time, but this time I got to the Miles Davis name card and I was like, yeah I’m ready. This is the guy.
That was the moment where I personally discovered Miles Davis, where I really captured a personal affinity for him. I remember I bought three albums. There was Kind of Blue, which is obviously a classic, there was Miles Smiles, and then there was another one called Pangaea: Live Under the Sky or something like that, some crazy fusion album that went completely over my head. With Kind of Blue I was like ‘wow, I think I could actually transcribe this’. And then Miles Smiles just blew me out of the water. I was like ‘woah, what are they doing? What’s going on with the time? What are these harmonies?’. So I really got three different sides of him at one time.
I was fascinated by how cool he was and how consistent he was at being himself. Even though the electric stuff at that time was a little too much for me and I didn’t really understand it, I could still recognise how, what I had in those three albums was Miles in three different stages. And I was fascinated by how he was constant and consistent through these different style and genre periods, despite everything around him in each of those three settings being completely different.
‘Miles Davis did these things that later everybody looks back on as pivotal, that I’m sure at the time caused him and his team all sorts of business grief. And I don’t think he cared. I think he knew enough to trust in what he was doing.’
I think one of the many things that really sets Miles Davis apart from everybody else is how he’ll just go left. And I don’t think it’s something to be over analysed, I don’t think anybody can say, ‘oh, he played this way because of this or that’, I think all of that is a little too esoteric. I think Miles just knew his hip factor was if everybody is going, right, I’ma go left. But he wouldn’t go left and throw everything off. The way he would go left, it would feel so correct. It’s almost like ok, why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I think to just play a long note there? Why didn’t I think to just leave some space? It almost seems obvious, it’s him working smarter, not harder.
In his biography, he talks about how at first he wanted to play like Dizzy Gillespie. I mean everybody does, and still does. But it’s very hard technically to play like Dizzy Gillespie, it’s a lot of notes. So at some point Miles was like, ‘man, I just need to play pretty. I can’t be Dizzy’. And that finding of himself is, again, him turning left. Everybody’s trying to play like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie – and Miles had been playing like that, because was in Charlie Parker’s band and he’s on those records – but then he’s like ‘nah, let me get rid of my vibrato, let me not try to play fast, let me phrase these melodies with space’. And you know everybody just kind of fell right in behind that left move.
I feel like Miles Davis was very much a ‘smarter, not harder’ kind of artist and creator. He would just make those choices. Even in his style and how he would dress he would go left. If he was gonna wear a suit. It would be cool, the suit would be dope. Even during the Kind of Blue era where he was wearing a suit, or he’d have the little scarf around his neck, he just looked hip. He was always, whatever you’re going to try he’s going out hip you. That’s really a defining characteristic of Miles; musically, fashion wise, even how he’ll talk in an interview – he’s going to go left,and it’s beautiful. And again, it’s the kind of left where everything just makes sense. It’s just smarter, not harder.
My personality is also to go left, so Miles Davis’ tendency to do that really spoke to me and gave me affirmation. Not left just for the sake of being left, or to be noticed. I question everything and question authority and if everybody’s doing something one way, I don’t necessarily want to do it that way. I always wanted to play the phrasing the way I wanted to play it, even in middle school band class. Luckily I had a really good teacher who recognised I had this improvisational spirit; he would let me do those things, but he would just make me explain it to the other kids. He was like ‘ok, if you’re gonna play the phrase that way, you need to teach it to the whole section that way’. He really encouraged and nurtured that side of me, so hearing Miles be like that too, really reinforced that ‘yes, I can phrase this melody however’, so I was encouraged to do that more, to phrase pieces however, which is the real spirit of that type of music.
I’ve found that the most ‘left’ thing I can do intuitively in a music setting now, is to just play the melody, play pretty, and Miles Davis made that clear to me. Most students and young people I come across, they can’t do that. Everybody’s trying to play like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker all the time, as if it’s a math class or something like that, you know? So Miles definitely influenced me to continue down that path of just being smarter, not harder. Being original.
When I’m playing. I’m not trying to play like Miles Davis. I really don’t try to imitate him or play like him, and some things I leave well alone. I would never try to play ‘Bitches Brew’, like why would you do that? But there’s songs from that record that I would incorporate the spirit of into what I’m doing, for sure.
I feel like the worst thing anybody can do is just go out on stage and just play a bunch of Miles Davis’ stuff. Not that that’s bad, but it’s just not in Miles’ spirit to do that. I don’t think Miles would show up to that. You can play Miles, but I think he would be more likely to show up to hear you be you. Ahead of this show, I’ve been doing another pass on everything Miles, trying to find the most Miles things. I want to incorporate things and have little vignettes or portraits of Miles coming in and out of what it is I do, but it’s important to me that I’m not ever trying to imitate or recreate him.
I don’t sound like Miles Davis, nobody does. Miles Davis sounds like Miles Davis. So I think it’s laziness when a critic or a journalist tries to compare your music to a bunch of other people. They’ll say ‘oh, let me put this in this Miles box’; ‘Oh, let me put this in this Coltrane box’’ ‘Oh, that sounds like Freddie Hubbard, let me put that in there’; or if he’s got a groove, it’s ‘oh, it’s like Robert Glasper’, but it’s not. And I understand the core reason, to activate some sort of connection for the readers, but I am at the point now where I don’t really read reviews and things like that anymore, because, as soon as somebody starts making comparisons, they’re not listening no more.
‘Everybody’s trying to play like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker all the time, so Miles Davis definitely influenced me to just play the melody, play pretty, and continue down that path of working smarter, not harder. Being original.’
Music is a continuum, a continuation, that’s how it is. And that’s a tradition that goes all the way back to Africa, the continuation of honouring your elders and ancestors in your music. Yes. It’s clear, I’ve studied and incorporated all this Miles stuff in me, so that influence is there, but we did our own thing with it. And when I’ve done things that are a nod to, or a tribute to Miles, and people then say ‘man, you took that in in its own way which was very Miles-esque’, or ‘you really honour Miles by doing something interesting with what he’s doing, and purposely not doing what Miles did’, those are my favourite comparisons.
If you’re near me in my personal life you’re going to hear some Miles Davis. There’s no way I’m not going to put on Miles and some point just to chill. And I’ve never heard anybody not be into Miles; actually I knew one person, whose name I won’t say, who wasn’t into Miles, but, you know, now he is.
Miles Davis is one of the few artists where I can say I really did seek out everything he’s made. Among the musician community, we’ve got bootlegs of Miles that we’ve been passing around for years, and later they become records and it’s like, ‘yes, but we’ve been listening to that since college’. And that’s not an ego thing, I’m still looking, I’m hoping someone brings me some Miles I haven’t heard, that would make my day. But I can still listen to Miles Davis any time. There’s never a point in time when Miles comes on and I’m like ‘nah pass’.
When I’m listening to Miles Davis he is somebody I can truly, honestly just listen to and enjoy. I just enjoy the way he plays, it’s so good. I think every ensemble at some point goes through their Miles’ Second Quintet phase, especially Live at the Plugged Nickel. Anytime I have young people come into my band, they’re always going ‘hey man, have you heard this song on the Plugged Nickel?’’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, man, in college, that’s all we were doing’. Me and Kassa Overall, all we was doing was listening to Plugged Nickel in our ensemble and trying to play like that, trying to be all over the place, and trying to be loose but supportive, that type of thing.
It’s always cool to see younger people I work with get turned on to Miles Davis’ sound. With having young people come in and out of my band, there’s always a record or recording that me and Eric, the bass player, can pull out and say ‘man, check this out, this is actually the inspiration for what we’re doing right now, where we’re starting at’. And it’s great to see them really kind of open up their ears to that.
My interest in Miles Davis has evolved, and as an adult I’ve learned more about him personally and him as a human being. And of course you learn about people’s flaws. You learn lessons from their lessons. And as I grow older I’ve also started to recognise his business acumen, how he would handle business and how he would protect his own legacy. And that’s definitely also been an influence on me. It’s interesting to go from being a fan, or influenced by somebody’s music, to then studying their career and really understanding those different phases and how Miles was never complacent – creatively or business wise – he was going to do what he was going to do and you see that time and again in his work.
Kind of Blue is an example of Miles Davis really being different and being left, and yet it’s a commercial success. But then you look at something like Bitches Brew where people hated the live shows at first, but it didn’t stop Miles from doing it. He did these things that later everybody looks back on as pivotal, that I’m sure at the time caused him and his team all sorts of business grief. And I don’t think he cared. I think he knew enough to trust in what he was doing, and to stick with that, all the way up to We Want Miles, which finally got him the Grammy.
I don’t think anything about Miles Davis is underrated. Not now. It’d maybe be different if I was alive when certain records came out. If anything, I’d say maybe some of the newer stuff you hear, with people remixing and digging in his archives, I think some of that stuff is overrated, because I mean, how do you do Miles without Miles?
‘I can still listen to Miles Davis any time. There’s never a point in time when Miles comes on and I’m like ‘nah pass’.’
I would give up a couple of toes to be able to see the Miles Davis Quintet live. Especially the Carnegie Hall concert where they’re performing with the Gil Evans Orchestra and he’s doing some really sketchy stuff, I would be in for that too. To be honest there’s not a period of Miles that I’d want to skip out on, so it’s hard to pick one moment to be there for, but I have to say the Quintet, as cliche as it may be. I would love to see Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and Ron Carter and Tony Williams and Miles Davis together, that would be insane.
Individuality, uniqueness, attitude, style, passion, mood, hipness, that’s what I think of when I think of Miles Davis. And I think Miles’ actions, as far as his playing and his behavior, speak way louder than words, especially for a guy who didn’t talk excessively. I think that’s Miles.
If I were to meet Miles Davis, if I could frame the situation, I’d want him to be at a show I played. I’d want him to be backstage when I got done, so he could tell me either I’m fucking with it or I’m not, you know. I wouldn’t want his stamp of approval necessarily, more I would want to see or feel him enjoy what it is we’re doing with the music, beyond him. The way he enjoyed Wallace Roney I’d want to hopefully have that same effect. And you know, I go left, so I’m sure I’m sure Miles would love what I’m doing, just as I’m sure he would love what Keyon Harrold’s doing, what Ambrose Akinmusire is doing and Christian Scott, and Brandon Woody, and Marquis Hill. I’m sure he would love all of that.
Theo Croker was speaking to Glen Wilson
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