Sunday Music: If I Were A Bell (Life Philosophy From Guys, Dolls, And Miles Davis)

There's something telling about the fact that Miles Davis' post-heroin period in the 1950s contains some of my favorite sessions from his entire catalog. It's almost like watching someone rediscover a lost love. There’s a different type of gratitude and wisdom you can hear, or at least I feel like I can, in how he starts holding each note in the air in front of his trumpet. It’s not about the skill or even the statement anymore. It’s so we can all see the note, as he presents it, for ourselves.

You can hear it in every note – this newfound liberation, this rekindling of the raw excitement he had when he first burst onto the scene in the ‘40s. But now, it's different. He’s different. He knows more. Not just about music, but about the costs of life, the tuition experience charges, and the privilege of having a chance to find your way back.

It's as if Miles had been collecting lessons in the darkness, storing them away until he could finally use them in the light, and now he’s parsing through them in real time for all of us to hear.

Maybe the darkness had to come first. Maybe the tension, the risk, the contrast – they’re the only way to set up the resolution. The master playwright is always there, working every detail towards the final act, and we in the audience aren’t always certain if it’s going to be a comedy or a tragedy until the climax has arrived. So we have to celebrate these positive turns towards resolutions, precisely because they're never guaranteed. Some stories, many stories, derail straight into the shadows and never come out. Miles knew this script trick. He’d already lost too many friends, peers, and colleagues along the way.

Enter "If I Were a Bell," a Frank Loesser composition that found its way into Miles' hands through the most American of channels – Broadway's Guys and Dolls. The song's original context is deliciously complex: picture Sister Sarah, straight-laced and suddenly tipsy, declaring herself a helpless instrument of romance to Sky Masterson, a man who's there on a bet but finding himself caught, unexpectedly, in his own trap. Both of them are watching their carefully constructed worlds crumble, both surrendering to something larger than their previous selves.

The tune itself is light and playful. It’s written to capture that peculiar, magical hour – the moment when the night's darkness starts yielding to the promise of a sunrise, even though you know the morning is coming with its own challenges. The sobering up, the facing of consequences, the reconciliation of who you thought you were with who you're becoming, it’s a lot.

The song was everywhere in its time – Bing Crosby cut it, Doris Day made it shine, it was a bona fide hit. Miles would have heard it just living his life, walking the streets, passing open windows. When he brought it into that 1954 Prestige session for Relaxin' with The Miles Davis Quintet, was he thinking about its deeper resonance? Did he see himself in that late-night moment of transformation?

We can't know for certain – maybe he just dug the changes and loved the way the melody moved. But when I listen now, I hear all of it: the plot's turning point, the character development, that specific time of night when everything seems possible. I hear Loesser's meaning dancing with Miles' interpretation, creating something entirely new yet somehow familiar – like a pattern we've always known but never noticed before.

Sometimes you have to sober up, take stock of what matters most now, and step into a new day. It’s a miracle Miles made it. This era is a celebration of life, and you can hear it.