InsideHook did a lengthy piece on Miles Davis’ commercial activity in Japan.
“[That] one commercial got me more recognition than anything else I have ever done,” he wrote in his autobiography. “[P]eople who hadn’t ever heard of me started speaking to me on the streets, black and white and Puerto Rican and Asian kids, people who didn’t even know what I did, started speaking to me after I did those things. Man, now ain’t that a bitch. After you make all this music, please all these people with your playing, and are known all over the world, you find out that all it takes is one commercial to put you over the top in people’s minds.”
How Miles Davis Became the Face of a Short-Lived Japanese Shōchū Brand