1701 Kansas Avenue, East St. Louis, Illinois

Young Miles Davis, known as "Little Doc Davis" by his classmates, had a talent for learning music. Like many musically inclined children, at 13 he was faced with his first major decision - band or orchestra? Although his mother wanted him to play the violin, Dr. Davis got him a trumpet in 1935. It has been alleged that his father chose the trumpet to provoke his wife, who disapproved of the instrument. Miles began taking weekly music lessons with his father’s drinking buddy and his soon to be life-long mentor, Elwood Buchanon, a music teacher at Crispus Attucks Grade School in East St. Louis. After being accepted, he convinced his father to pay his tuition to the prestigious New York Julliard School of Music. His first girlfriend, Irene, says "Miles was like a sponge. He absorbed everything around him. He was young, talented, and beautiful, and I believed that he would be famous". She dared him to try out for a big night band over in St. Louis called The Blue Devils, a tryout that would serve to really jump start Davis' career. Miles later fondly recalled St. Louis as a music "conservatory" during those times.

Miles remained close with his father and in 1953 he came to St. Louis to ask him for help in kicking his heroin habit cold turkey. Years before, when Miles decided to quit Julliard, he called Dr. Davis telling him, "Listen, Dad. There is something happening in New York. The music is changing; the styles, and I want to be in it. I'm quitting Juilliard because what they're teaching me is white and I'm not interested in that."

What Dr. Davis told him next would stay in his mind forever. "Miles, you hear that bird outside the window? He's a mockingbird. He don't have a sound of his own. He copies everybody's sound, and you don't want to do that. You want to be your own man, have your own sound. That's what it's really about. So, don't be nobody else but yourself. You know what you got to do and I trust your judgment. And don't worry, I'll keep sending you money until you get on your feet."

His father, a dentist, was born March 1, 1898 in Noble Lake, Arkansas to Miles Sr. and Mary (Luster) Davis, who owned a profitable 200-acre pig farm. He was educated in Pine Bluff and Little Rock, and in 1924 he graduated Northwestern University's School for Dentistry as one of only four African American students. (One of his brothers studied at Harvard and in Germany, and was a journalist and nationally famous minister.)

Dr. Davis married Cloots "Cleota" Mae Henry, a violinist and music teacher in 1924 and they moved to Alton, Illinois. They had 3 children, including Miles. In 1926, the family moved to the cultural center of East St. Louis and lived above Dauts Drugstore at 3 North Fifteenth Street at Broadway. Near the family's small apartment, surrounded by the Ringside pool room, the Jolly Corner lounge, the Peppermint Lounge and Restaurant, and many more clubs, shops, and bars owned by people of various ethnicities, music playing in the clubs drifted through the streets at night.

In 1927, the family moved again to 1112 Milnor Avenue in Alton, Illinois and in 1930 they purchased a home at 1701 Kansas Avenue in East St. Louis. Today, the House of Miles East St. Louis (HOME) offers tours and educational programs in their recently restored home.

As a practicing oral surgeon, he belonged to a group of upper middle class African Americans in East St. Louis. His class allowed Dr. Davis to make friends with white professionals, and his children to make friends with theirs. The family was always well dressed in the latest fashions, and they would fish, hunt, and ride horses on the family farm in the summer. Dr. Davis also purchased a 160-acre farm near Millstadt, Illinois where he raised champion horses and hogs. He was the first African American to raise Landrace hogs. Although he began breeding hogs as a hobby, he would raise over 300 on his estate at a time, and sell between $14,000 and $21,000 worth of swine at a single auction. His hogs would also win numerous awards at state fairs in Missouri and Illinois. He imported his strain from Sir Winston Churchill's farm in England.

(Dr. Davis was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the National Medical Association, the Masons, Knights of Pythias, American Woodsmen, and the NAACP, and even made an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Illinois State Legislature.)

In 1946, after his marriage to Cleota ended, Davis married his second wife, Josephine, an assistant principal. They had a son, Joseph, in 1959. Dr. Davis died in 1962 in St. Louis of pneumonia following a stroke. He had recently returned from a visit to see Miles in New York.

Read more about their relationship in Miles' 1989 autobiography. WARNING: Includes Explicit Language