It is when the snow finally settles like dust on an old dresser, when the slush paints your shoes brown, that the winter blues begin. It happens like clockwork every year just after the holiday season when the tinsel unravels itself from lampposts and when all the snowmen have been ambushed. All hopes for anything better seem to disappear, veiled by frost-covered windows and muffled by the slow tune “It Never Entered My Mind” by Miles Davis.
The song is not a hopeful tune. It is a song of monotony and loneliness. The trumpet cries out for a lover, and the piano murmurs about better times. The song starts with this murmur. The piano ascends, but there is no peak; there is no finality to the tune. It continues in the background of the song as the trumpet takes a hold of the chorus.
The original ‘40s showtune, written and composed by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, tells the story of a love lost — unrequited and unfulfilled. It is a beautiful rendition, but Davis spins the song into something entirely his own. The trumpet is his voice; there is no need for lyrics, only the painful longing felt in every wailing note.
It is rare that a song is able to express an emotion such as longling so purely. Miles Davis’s performance captures it effortlessly. I remember listening to this song for the first time: I laid in a hammock in a warmer month. My eyes were closed, and I swung back and forth to the melody of the song. When Davis played his first note, I was consumed by it. He played as if the song lay dormant in his breath, grasping at the walls of his ribcage begging to be released. When it finally was, it was measured but still unbelievably raw.
The trumpet stands at the center of the song, but it is the accompaniment of piano, bass and soft drums that make the tune complete. The soft shivvers of the snare drum sound like the shuffle of passersby in the snow, and the bass plucks to the tempo of a slow beating heart. The quintet swirls around each other in perfect synchronicity and balance. “It Never Entered My Mind” is a true feat of jazz perfection.
“It Never Entered My Mind” is a song that pulls at your tears with pliers. It is a song to fall asleep to and a song to fall in love to. It transforms and changes shape in the ear of the beholder. For me, it’s a song to reminisce to. When the snow starts to pile on my windowsill and a shiver starts to creep up my spine, I know the blues have begun. All one can do is submit to it. For me, that means I crawl into my dangerously lofted bed, swaddle myself in my duvet, hug my stuffed animal close and listen to “It Never Entered My Mind” until I hear Miles Davis’s phantom trumpet singing in my dreams.
