Another day, another Under the Influence playlist. And today our suspect is Miles Davis.

Not a bad suspect to have, considering he was one of the most influential musicians in the history of jazz. But as always, we aren't here to walk through his career. That would be far too easy.

Instead, we are following the clues.

The interesting thing about Miles is that his influence rarely arrives in a straight line. Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes it sneaks in through a drummer, a producer, a particular sound or an entire genre that wouldn't quite exist without him. Which makes this playlist feel less like a history lesson and more like a small detective story.

The playlist opens with some serious names: Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Sarah Vaughan. The connection is particularly strong with Shorter and Hancock, both members of the legendary Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-1960s, a group that quietly rewrote the rules of modern jazz.

From there, the playlist moves into one of Miles Davis' biggest revolutions: electrifying jazz. Electric pianos, funk grooves, rock influences and studio experimentation all became part of the conversation. Today that sounds perfectly normal. At the time, it was anything but.

Then come the branches of the family tree. Fusion. Atmospheric ECM jazz. Spiritual jazz. Even the point where hip-hop starts borrowing from jazz and carrying some of those ideas into a completely different world.

So while Miles Davis never actually appears on the playlist, his fingerprints are everywhere. Which is probably the best definition of influence there is.