Miles Davis, who would've turned 85 today, was, without dispute, a giant of late 20 century music, fronting two of America's great quintets and developing several streams of modern jazz. He was also my first major assignment for The Wall Street Journal.

This was back in the early '80s when the paper was introducing its Leisure & Arts section. I had written a review of a book about Davis and was encouraged by my then-editor Raymond Sokolov to seek other assignments. At the time, Columbia was investing in introducing...