So, what day was Miles Davis born, anyway?

Those who follow this site with any regularity know that when I get something wrong, I try to correct the misinformation as quickly and publicly as possible. Well, I've really screwed the pooch this time (to coin a phrase) with regard to Miles Davis' birthday.

A number of sources, both online and off, list Davis' date of birth as May 25, and that date (yesterday) was when I orginally put up a post commemorating what would have been Davis' 80th birthday. However, reader Benjamin Cawthra emailed today with a correction, stating that Davis' actual date of birth is, in fact, May 26. He cites a number of sources, the most definitive of which is Miles' own autobiography, co-authored with Quincy Troupe. And after looking at my own copy of the book, I found that it does indeed cite May 26 as the correct date.

Davis' own words would have been plenty good enough for me, but Mr. Cawtha also mentions other sources for the May 26 date, including two bios of Davis written by Ian Carr and John Szwed, the Rough Guide to Jazz, and the St. Louis Walk of Fame Web site. He also says that while he worked on the local history museum's Davis exhibit a few years back, he spoke with members of the Davis family as well as Miles' legal representatives, and saw a copy of Davis' birth certificate, and all those sources also confirmed that Miles' actual birthday was May 26. He further suggests that the May 25 date may have stemmed from an error made years ago in Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz, a standard reference work used by many jazz journalists and historians, and that seems entirely plausible to me.

So, based on the preponderance of credible evidence, I've corrected the previous post - thanks also to Mr. Cawthra for pointing out that while Miles is buried in New York, he actually died in Santa Monica, CA - and sincerely hope that you, esteemed readers of these scribblings, will forgive this egregious error. I can't promise that I'll never make another mistake - heck, I've already made two just this week - but I can promise that I will always do my best to make sure that the correct facts ultimately get out, no matter how personally embarassing that may be.

(Edited 5/25/06 to correct a misspelling.)