miles' smilestones in the sky

How did a player of middling range and precision become the greatest trumpeter ever? Sorry louis and maynard...but miles (or in Europe, kilometers davis) knew how to shape the sound like no one else. He experimented, he reinvented, he redefined jazz (oops, i mean "social music") over and over. Has anyone else ever done so more than once? Where he went, the rest followed (though sometimes not for years). Rick wright was copying miles on "Dark Side of the Moon". The Grateful Dead were mortified to be on the same bill. He would have collaborated with hendrix, had jimi not died.
A sterling composer as well, though arranging may have been his greatest genius.
And i heard him live.
If you know how unhip i was as a teenager, you'll appreciate my incredible good fortune. I didn't seek it out, it fell into my lap. I'd been a schoolboy trumpeter who peaked at fifteen, and ran out of steam post-braces when i failed to make the high school jazz band. I turned to acting, and didn't look back. But even though i knew of miles, i'd never owned or heard a full album (we suburban trumpet geeks were more hip to maynard ferguson and chuck mangione). So perhaps the greatest gift my father ever gave me, was that day in 1989 he said we were going to the Mellon Jazz Festival in Philadelphia. There are few things in this world as good as advertised, and even less that are greater.
Miles was greater.
The music did things to me i'd never experienced before, and only once since. It took me to a place outside space and time.
And now, i've finally heard the entire davis discography. Here are the masterpieces, the nearly-so, and essential strays.  A friend who grew up in the city told me there were only two things in every black household - the bible and "Kind of Blue". Insanity, and its antidote?
THE BEST
1959 - Kind of Blue
1969 - In a Silent Way
1970 - Bitches Brew
1975 - Agharta
1989 - Amandla
ALMOST...
1955 - Blue Moods
1968 - Miles in the Sky
1970 - Tanglewood Live
1971 - Live-Evil
1977 - Dark Magus
1986 - Tutu
1993 - Miles! Miles! Miles!
1995 - Avignon - The Last Concert
STRAYS
"Milestones"
"Mood"
"Autumn Leaves" (for cannonball adderley)
"Go Ahead John"
"He Loved Him Madly"
"Calypso Frelimo"
"Ascent"