iii  Miles in New York The shadow of Sugar Ray saw him through the nights of cold turkey – still there in the jabs on the mute, the resonances that score as he dances back. And in the dancer on his arm, the cool of his Italian suits and his Ferrari. Which will not save him from ‘a Georgia head-whipping’ on Broadway, beaten by a cop’s blackjack for taking the air outside Birdland. A heavier presence begins to brood in the open horn, to draw on the darker notes as if Bird were camping it up in his best British, All right Lily Pons. To produce beauty, we must suffer pain – from the oyster comes the pearl. Of great price, as the cocaine takes hold, the dancer flees, and he’s left with the shadow of Jack Johnson.

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