Despite being a jazz superstar for decades, Davis was reclusive and deeply distrustful of other people. "Dark Magus" details Davis's Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, including his prodigious drug use, his misogynistic attitude towards women, his selfishness, and his distressing tendency to use violence to get his way or exact revenge. Other fascinating details abound, including Davis's relationship with Charlie Parker, his obsession with sports (especially boxing), and his grueling work with younger musicians.

Compelling from cover to cover, this is the story of one of the most recorded and beloved jazz trumpeters of all time. With unsparing honesty and a superb eye for detail, Clark Terry, born in 1920, takes us from his impoverished childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where jazz could be heard everywhere, to the smoke-filled small clubs and carnivals across the Jim Crow South where he got his start, and on to worldwide acclaim. Terry takes us behind the scenes of jazz history as he introduces scores of legendary greats--Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Dinah Washington, Doc...