Miles Never Said That
The Guardian recently published an anecdote about a violently obscene thing that Miles Davis said to Nancy Reagan while he was dining at the White House.
The story is unsourced, unreferenced, and uncredited. It is also completely made up. It is either the product of a corrupt memory or a cynical prank.
Of course it is also too good to ignore, and is being frenetically repeated at this very moment by innumerable credulous websites. I first learned of it from Boing-Boing. Now we will have to hear this story repeated, probably forever, by people who “heard it somewhere” and definitely know that it is true.
Dear reader, not all sources of information are equal. Unlike Boing-Boing, I don’t repeat suspect anecdotes without checking first. You’re also on fairly good ground at the New Yorker and the New York Times. Unlike the rumor-rehashing sites that are circulating the fake Miles1 story, these places actually do some fact checking.
I happen to have read Miles Davis’ autobiography years ago, and I remember the story recounted in that fascinating book upon which the false Nancy Reagan story is loosely based. In the real story the acclaimed trumpeter is almost as much of an ass as in the fake story, but not quite: in Miles’ version, he was provoked, his retort was far less obscene, and his interlocutor was not the First Lady.
I don’t, as a rule, use people’s first names in this kind of context, but Mr. Davis was and is almost universally known as “Miles”.↩︎
