Cicely Tyson on Snatching Miles Davis’ Weave After Catching Him Cheating
Back in the day, Cicely Tyson and Miles Davis were a couple that got a lot of public attention. But their celebrity relationship didn’t last for multiple reasons. Tyson revealed that she once snatched his weave during an argument.
Cicely Tyson and Miles Davis were married from 1981 to 1988
The jazz musician was married to Frances Taylor when he started getting closer to Tyson in 1965. He divorced Taylor the next year and they eventually got married.
Tyson wrote about how their marriage ended on bad terms. But she recently spoke highly of him with NPR.
The Miles Davis that I know and knew is not the Miles Davis that you’ll read about in those books. I had the good fortune to be close enough to him to have him reveal himself to me the first moment we met. It is the Miles Davis that kept me with him as long as it did. Not only was he brilliantly talented, he was brilliantly sensitive.
Cicely Tyson, NPR
Davis eventually spoke openly about struggling due to his use of cocaine. Tyson talked about forgiving him and helping him.
“And so when I realized that he was in deep trouble and that he wanted — he said, ‘I don’t want to do that anymore,'” she later said. “So when somebody says that to you and they’re asking for help, at least I would try to help them.”
She wrote about snatching his hair
Tyson wrote a memoir called, Just As I Am. She wrote about the end of her marriage with Davis and a specific incident between them in 1987, according to Vulture. She claimed that she found a note between him and another woman, then confronted him.
“I’m not giving you anything,” she said. “Why don’t you go out and meet your woman? You know where to meet her.” Tyson claimed Davis twisted her wrist when she tried to leave so she grabbed his hair.
“Well, honey, he got to twisting and turning, and the more he tugged his head back and forth, trying to pry himself loose, the tighter I held on,” the actor wrote.
“By the time he struggled free, I was holding a whole bushel of his weave in my right hand,” she continued. “I hurled it onto the ground, marched out the door, and slammed it shut.”
Tyson went on to claim she overheard Davis complaining to someone over the phone about how much he paid for his weave. “I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cringe, which is why I did both,” she added.
They stayed in touch after their divorce
The former couple might have had their ups and downs, but they stayed in touch. Gayle King mentioned Davis wanted someone to tell Tyson that he was sorry on his deathbed in 1991. Tyson said he was the love of her life and that she didn’t find a love like that again.
