What made Miles Davis so special? Why was he such a colossus not just in jazz but in the wider world? The answer is that Miles had a unique set of qualities that enabled him to see the world, music and people in different ways. “How many people have been on this planet since the human race?” asks Mark Rothbaum, Miles’s former manager. “Billions and billions and billions, and there are similarities between them all. And there was no similarity between Miles and anybody else. He was so unique I can’t imagine anybody coming close to what he was about.”