A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Richard Davis (b. April 15, 1930): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
A superb bass technician who doesn't have as extensive a recorded legacy as expected, Richard Davis
has a wonderful tone, is excellent with either the bow or fingers, and
stands out in any situation. He has been a remarkable free, bebop, and
hard bop player, served in world-class symphony orchestras, backed
vocalists, and engaged in stunning duets with fellow bassists. He does
any and everything well in terms of bass playing: accompaniment,
soloing, working with others in the rhythm section, responding to
soloists, or playing unison passages. He combines upper-register notes
with low sounds coaxed through the use of open strings.
Davis
left New York in 1977 to teach at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison, where he has remained as a professor into the 21st century.
Concurrent with his life as an educator, he continued making
intermittent appearances as a performer, including at the Aurex Jazz
Festival in Tokyo in 1982, playing in a jam session led by trombonists J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and at the 1984 Chicago Jazz Festival. Davis
was featured in the 1982 film Jazz in Exile. He's done relatively few
recordings as a leader, though three Muse sessions are available on CD.
The superb The Philosophy of the Spiritual, which matched Davis and fellow bassist Bill Lee, is not in print or on CD. Notable Richard Davis recordings during the 21st century include The Bassist: Homage to Diversity (a duo recording with John Hicks) issued by Palmetto in 2001, as well as two Japanese releases on the King label, So in Love in 2001 and Blue Monk (with pianist Junior Mance) in 2008.
Richard Davis is an international performing
musician and Professor of Bass (European Classical and Jazz), Jazz
History and combo improvisation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Chicago born, he came to the UW-Madison in 1977 after spending 23 years
in New York City establishing himself as one of the world's premier bass
players. Downbeat International Critics Poll named him Best Bassist
from 1967-74. He has recorded a dozen albums as a leader and 2000
recordings/jingles as a sideman. Some of his performance/recording
credits include Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Frank Sinatra, Barbra
Streisand, Miles Davis Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band, Dexter Gordon, Ahmad
Jamal and a host of other notables. Mr. Davis is equally at home
in the world of euro classical music, having played under the batons of
George Szell, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, Gunther
Schuller, and Leonard Bernstein. His great versatility as a bassist
keeps him in constant demand for worldwide concert appearances. For
nearly fifty years he has drawn enthusiastic audiences in Japan, Europe,
Russia, South America, Puerto Rico, Cuba, The West Indies, Hong Kong ,
Israel and United States. His most recent CD release (May 2000) , The
Bassists: Homage to Diversity (King Records) was recorded in Japan. This
CD was inspired by experiences related to diversity dialogue. His
second CD with King records So In Love was assembled with the idea of
embracing the oneness of humankind.
In 1993, he founded the Richard Davis Foundation for
Young Bassists, Inc. which annually brings in 17 masterful bass
instructors/performers to teach young bassists ages 3-18. Prof.
Davis has received honorary doctorate degrees in Musical Arts and Humane
Letters, and the Hilldale Award for distinguished teaching from former
Chancellor Donna Shalala. In 2000 he received the Manfred E. Swarsensky
Humanitarian Award from the Rotary Club Of Madison. International Peace
Award Tokyo Japan, U of WI/Madison Mentors Award. On 11/13/01 he
received the Governor's (Wisconsin) Arts Award. In the year 2002 he
received the Urban League Whitney M. Young Award, N.A.A.C.P.
W.E.B.DuBois Advocates award and many other community based awards. In
the year 2007 Reverend Richard Davis was ordained by the Universal
Ministries. (non-denominational). Richard Davis has been a faculty
member at UW Madison for 25 years. In 1998 he self elected to form
Retention Action Project (R.A.P.) That body of people collaborate
withVice Chancellor Paul W. Barrows office and Seema Kapani (Equity and
Diversity Resourse Center). on student affairs whose main goal is to
educate all students toward multicultural competency. He has facilitated
many open dialogs (video viewing) on racial/class issues in his home,
colleges, municipal agencies etc. Other activities on the UW campus and community include: 1. Faculty Diversity Liaison 2. Faculty House Fellow 3. Pathway to Excellence (Board Member) 4. UW Campus Climate Committee 5. N.A.A.C.P. Education Committee 6. Co-advisor for Campus based P.R.E.A. (Promoting Racial and Ethnic Awareness He
has been instrumental in bringing to the UW campus renowned speakers
and social change activists such as Peggy McIntosh (White Privilege),
Jane Elliott (Brown Eyes Blue Eyes), Francie Kendall, Nathan Rutstein
(Racial Healing in America, Kirk Hogan (Anthropoligist) “Oneness of Us
All”, Victor Lewis, Hugh Vasquez, Color of Fear (Stir Fry ) 1995, Paula
Rothenberg and Allan G. Johnson (Gender Knot). Prof. Davis is devoted to
equity issues and shares freely his wisdom, home, and resources with
one and all to help create an environment where all can experience
dignity and peace. Prof. Davis initiated the S.E.E.D (Seeking
Educational Equity and Diversity) on the U of W/Madison campus. He has
also initiated a chapter in Madison of the “Institutes for the Healing
of Racism,Inc. with the intent to introduce the oneness of humankind to
the Univ, Madison Metropolitan School District, Police, Fire departments
and community churches.
"In New York, I could play with anybody, [Leopold]
Stokowski, Stravinsky, people like that, because in New York, it was
more what kind of a musician are you, instead of what kind of race you
come from."
When initially contacting legendary bassist Richard Davis for this
profile, the response was a simple "Call at six am your time any day."
Since Davis has been based in Wisconsin since the '70s, this meant for
him a talk at five in the morning. A far cry from the stereotypical jazz
musician who didn't know there were two 8 o'clocks in a day, Davis
needs all the time he can get for his various activities. Besides
performances and recordings, he is a music professor at the University
of Wisconsin, is heavily involved in race relations on campus and runs
the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists Inc., a non-profit
organization. Davis, who will turn 75 years old shortly after
his upcoming reprise of last year's Bass Hits concert, is best known as
the only bassist to have performed with Eric Dolphy and Igor Stravinsky,
Sarah Vaughan and Pierre Boulez. His mellifluous arco technique is
unparalled, the result of listening openly and never limiting himself to
one avenue of expression. "Music is music. You play this, you play
that. That's how my teachers taught me to think," he asserted
unequivocally, firm and confident despite the early hour. "Some of the
first bass players...used the bow to play the walking bass line. And I
heard all of that coming up as a kid... Therefore, when you start to
study books of bass methods, you start out with the bow no matter what
your intentions are... All that comes through osmosis of what you're
hearing, what you want to do and how you want to express yourself. And
I'm teaching European classical music now at the University so there
must be some intertwining of what I heard as a kid, what I heard working
with Sarah Vaughan, wanting to imitate those vocal sounds. I'd say I'm a
product of lots of different experiences with that bow." His mention of Vaughan is a reminder of his indisputable musical legacy (in 1964 alone he played on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, Joe Henderson's In 'n Out, Charles Lloyd's Discovery!, Tony Williams' Lifetime, Kenny Dorham's Trompeta Toccata and Lucky Thompson's Lucky Strikes
to name a few). However, that morning Davis was more interested in
discussing the racial divide he saw as a young musician and now sees as
an established educator. "My environment with race issues started the
day I was born. You're born with dark skin and that itself brings on
attitudes of other people who are not dark-skinned to see you as someone
to be oppressed and not to be given equal chances in society. So that
is something that is permanent," said Davis. "Right now on the campus we
have students fasting because of the tuition hikes. The tuition hikes
are telling us that we don't want someone of a certain social-economic
class to survive on the campus. So only those who have money can go to
school and that's clear-cut across the campus and Wisconsin. And that is
exactly what was happening 4 or 500 years ago. Certain people are not
supposed to have a right to education, and equal opportunity to become
educated." The concept of equal opportunity had a particular
resonance with Davis when he was trying to establish himself as
musician. The dual path of jazz and classical music was, and still is,
uncommon and perilous though he was ultimately successful. "I was 18
years old and I could play any and all of the European classical music
but you weren't allowed to participate in the symphony orchestra because
there were racial issues and prejudices that kept you from
participating. They didn't want to see you. I auditioned and I was never
given a chance to perform in the orchestra. There are a few conductors I
know of who didn't care what color you were like George Szell of the
Cleveland Symphony, Leonard Bernstein and the New York
Philharmonic...but then because of them going on Southern tours, they
themselves had to think twice before they allowed that to happen... In
New York, I could play with anybody, [Leopold] Stokowski, Stravinsky,
people like that, because in New York, it was more what kind of a
musician are you, instead of what kind of race you come from. Jazz has a
long history of racial input too. You could not mix with white
musicians on the same bandstand in the '20s and '30s, maybe some part of
the '40s. So this country's biggest system is race and class. Nothing
has really changed there. Institutionalized racism is as rampant as it
was when it started in 1492."
It was perhaps these experiences and his eventual overcoming of
difficulty that led Davis away from the hectic competitive scene of New
York in 1977, answering a call from Wisconsin to impart his knowledge.
Davis stated it simply: "I wanted to share what I had learned with the
younger generation. Anything I knew I wanted to share, bass, anything,
music, whatever I knew, I wanted to share with younger people." His
purview has gone past just music however to important life lessons he
finds lacking in some students. "I try to educate the white students,
who have not been exposed to people other than people who look like
them," he said. "And a lot of white students are complaining that they
don't have enough diversity on the campus to be able to become better
citizens for the next generation... I am sure when they built
universities around the country, it was never conceived that a person of
color would be going there."
Nevertheless, he is a bassist first and the love of the instrument
steered the conversation to the subject of his foundation work. "It's
called the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists Incorporated. Our
12th annual is coming up March 25th-26th. It's always Easter weekend.
Bass players start late in their lives, generally speaking. They have to
be a certain height to play the bass, at least that was the way it was
up until 20 or 30 years ago. I just gave a lesson to a bassist who has
been playing since he was three. Now he is 11 years old so he's been
playing the bass for 8 years. Many years ago, you didn't conceive a
bassist starting when he was 3 years old. And so, I noticed that string
bass players that would come into the university, they were not nearly
as mature as another person of the same age who had played the violin or
piano since they were three or four. So I said, why don't we do
something about that? So I said I think I'll start a foundation for
young bassists. We take them from foetus until they're 18 to get them
prepared to go into a college career on the bass. We cover jazz, we
cover European classical, we cover Latin. This is our first year having a
Latin bassist with us. We cover the music that electric bass players
are known to play so it's a rounded thing. We have 85-100 bass players
who will come to Madison and they are taught by 18 professional bassists
from all fields of music." Davis is optimistic for its success even
after he is gone. "The Richard Davis Foundation as I see it will be
around as long as any symphony orchestra has been around. The name
stands no matter who is here to run it. I got some very good people with
me. I got noted bass players from all over the country and it's a big
family weekend of bass experiences." Another family weekend of bass experiences is at Iridium this
month. Davis and fellow bassists Eddie Gomez and Avishai Cohen will lead
groups and then come together for a low-end jam. "Bass players love
each other," Davis mused. "We all have an attitude of a club. It's a big
instrument. Sometimes you have to borrow somebody else's. And I like
the two guys who are playing it...it's good to see three different
styles on the same stage." Chances are, even after these late night city
shows, Davis will still be up at dawn.
Recommended Listening:
* Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch (Blue Note, 1964)
* Andrew Hill - Point of Departure (Blue Note, 1964)
* Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Rip, Rag and Panic (Limelight, 1965)
* Pat Martino - Baiyina: The Clear Evidence (Prestige-OJC, 1968)
* Richard Davis - Now's The Time (Muse, 1972)
* Richard Davis - Live at Sweet Basil (Evidence, 1990-91)
Richard Davis is an international
performing musician and Professor of Bass (European Classical and Jazz),
Jazz History and combo improvisation at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Chicago born, he came to the UW-Madison in 1977 after
spending 23 years in New York City establishing himself as one of the
world’s premier bass players. Downbeat International Critics Poll named
him Best Bassist from 1967-74. He has recorded a dozen albums as a
leader and 3000 recordings/jingles as a sideman. Some of his
performance/recording credits include Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Don
Sebesky, Oliver Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Frank Sinatra,
Barbra Streisand, Miles Davis Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band, Dexter Gordon,
Ahmad Jamal and a host of other notables.
Mr. Davis is equally at home in the
world of euro classical music, having played under the batons of George
Szell, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, Gunther
Schuller, and Leonard Bernstein. His great versatility as a bassist
keeps him in constant demand for worldwide concert appearances. For
nearly fifty years he has drawn enthusiastic audiences in Japan, Europe,
Russia, South America, Puerto Rico, Cuba, The West Indies, Hong Kong ,
Israel and United States. His most recent CD release (May 2000) , The
Bassists: Homage to Diversity (King Records) was recorded in Japan. This
CD was inspired by experiences related to diversity dialogue. His
second CD with King records So In Love was assembled with the idea of
embracing the oneness of humankind.
Prof. Davis has received honorary
doctorate degrees in Musical Arts and Humane Letters, and the Hilldale
Award for distinguished teaching from former Chancellor Donna Shalala.
In 2000 he received the Manfred E. Swarsensky Humanitarian Award from
the Rotary Club Of Madison. International Peace Award Tokyo Japan, U of
WI/Madison Mentors Award. In 2001 he received the Governor’s (Wisconsin)
Arts Award. In the year 2002 he received the Urban League Whitney M.
Young Award, N.A.A.C.P. W.E.B.DuBois Advocates award and many other
community based awards. In the year 2007 Reverend Richard Davis was
ordained by the Universal Ministries (non-denominational).
In 2008, Richard Davis received the MAMA
(Madison Area Music Award Michael St. John Lifetime Achievement Award,
Human Rights Award (Rev.James C. Wright), “FIGS” 2008 First Interest
Group Students (Freshman Year), the TRIO award/first in family to go to
College/Awarded by Caroline McCormack. In 2009 he received the
Exceptional Service Award University of Wisconsin-Madison 2009 (Gary
Sandefur, Dean), and the Spencer Tracy Award for Distinction in the
Performing Arts (Wisconsin Historical Society).
Richard Davis has been a faculty member at UW Madison for 25 years. In 1998 he self elected to form Retention Action Project (R.A.P.)
That body of people collaborate withVice Chancellor Paul W. Barrows
office and Seema Kapani (Equity and Diversity Resourse Center). on
student affairs whose main goal is to educate all students toward
multicultural competency. He has facilitated many open dialogs (video
viewing) on racial/class issues in his home, colleges, municipal
agencies etc.
Other activities on the UW campus and community include :
1. Faculty Diversity Liaison
2. Faculty House Fellow
3. Pathway to Excellence (Board Member)
4. UW Campus Climate Committee
5. N.A.A.C.P. Education Committee
6. Co-advisor for Campus based P.R.E.A. (Promoting Racial and Ethnic Awareness
He has been instrumental in bringing to
the UW campus renowned speakers and social change activists such as
Peggy McIntosh (White Privilege), Jane Elliott (Brown Eyes Blue Eyes),
Francie Kendall, Nathan Rutstein (Racial Healing in America, Kirk Hogan
(Anthropoligist) “Oneness of Us All”, Victor Lewis, Hugh Vasquez, Color
of Fear (Stir Fry ) 1995, Paula Rothenberg and Allan G. Johnson (Gender
Knot). Prof. Davis is devoted to equity issues and shares freely his
wisdom, home, and resources with one and all to help create an
environment where all can experience dignity and peace. Prof. Davis
initiated the S.E.E.D (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) on the U
of W/Madison campus. He has also initiated a chapter in Madison of the
“Institutes for the Healing of Racism,Inc. with the intent to introduce
the oneness of humankind to the Univ, Madison Metropolitan School
District, Police, Fire departments and community churches.
Richard Davis is currently working on his autobiography.
AWARDS AND ACCOLADES
1. Wisconsin Arts Governor’s award 2001
2. NAACP Madison, Wi Branch W.E.B. DuBois Advocates Award (Education)
3. International Society of Bassists Award for Board of Directors service
4. International Society of Bassists/Young Bassists award
5. Manfred E. Swarsensky Humanitarian Service Award (Rotary Club).
6. Urban League (Whitney B. Young) Award 2002
7. Madison Magazine / Madison’s Best
8. Hilldale Award University of Wisconsin-Madison(Donna Shalala) 1989-90
9. ASCAP composers award/last 7 years
10. Down Beat International Jazz Poll award from 1964-1977
11. International Peace award / Tokyo, Japan 1987
12. Community Service award (WORT)1990
13. NAACP Act-So Judges award 1999
14. National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy Award 1999
15. Franklin-Randall MMSD PTO Award 1989 -1990
16. University of Wisconsin/Madison Mentor Program 1988
17. Certificate of Appreciation NAACP 2000-2001-2002
18. Blue Note Tokyo Musical Excellence award
19 Certificate of Appreciation (Plato) University of Wisconsin-Madison 1997
20. Certification Mt. Zion Baptist Church 1999
21. Certificate of Ass. Membership Nat.Jazz Service Organization 1995-99
22. Jazz and Pop Best Bassist Annual Readers Poll 1968
23. Endowed Chair University Club University of Wisconsin-Madison
24. Kappa Kappa Psi Honorary Band Fraternity Life Membership
25. Arts Midwest Jazz masters award 1993
26. 3/2./00 Received 1st Hate Mail letter from unknown to Campus Diversity (Happy to have received/joined my white anti-racist)
27. Honorary Doctorate of Musical Arts/Vandercook College of Music 1992
28. Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters/Edgewood College 1998
29. State of Wisconsin/City of Madison Committee for the Arts 1990 (Mayor Paul Soglin)
30. Mayoral Proclamation Award / Mayor Soglin 1993
31. Strathmore’s Who’s Who 1960-Present
32. Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 2004
33. Excellence Award/ Umoja Honoree Sept 2005
34. Clark County School District Equity & Diversity Education Department
Las Vegas Nevada Dr.Celeste Jackson Stansberry, Coordinator lll Presenter for EDE speaker series.
35. National Foundation for the Advancement in Art Teacher Recognition 2005-6
36. MAMA (Madison Area Music Award Michael St. John Lifetime Achievement Award 2008
37. Human Rights Award (Rev.James C. Wright) 2008
38. “FIGS” 2008 First Interest Group Students (Freshman Year)
39. TRIO award/first in family to go to College/Awarded by Caroline McCormack
40. Spencer Tracy Award for Distinction in the Performing Arts (Wisconsin Historical Society) 2009
41. Exceptional Service Award University of Wisconsin-Madison 2008 (Gary Sandefur, Dean)
Legendary Bassist Retires from UW, Continues the Diversity Work that is Music to His Soul
Posted on
UW-Madison School of Music faculty member and legendary bassist Richard Davis retired
from the university last spring after 39 years. His impact on many
music students here was profound. But his quiet and steady impact
on Madison’s racial climate has been equally profound and he pointedly
assures anyone who wonders that he’ll never retire from working to heal
racism. In
2000, decades into his musical career and before the broad popularity
of approaching racism by addressing individual beliefs and
misconceptions on a person-to-person basis, Davis founded
the non-profit organization Madison Wisconsin Institute for Healing
Racism, Inc. Its mission is to raise consciousness about the history
and pathology of racism and to help heal racism in individuals,
communities and institutions within the Greater Madison area and all
over the nation. He received Madison’s Martin Luther King, Jr.
Humanitarian Award in 2003 for his work in diversity. Regardless of how far he’s travelled, or where he’s performed, racism
is present everywhere, Davis said. That includes his adopted hometown
of Madison. “The institute embodies my personal experience with racial attitudes,” he said. It was a visit to Madison by University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Professor Nathan Rutstein, an internationally-known diversity advocate
and author on media, racism, spirituality and educational
reform, that started Davis down the path of working to teach about the
process of healing racism, Davis said. “He (Rutstein) came to the university to speak and after we met he
called me a ‘stayer,’ someone who stays put until the work is done. He
had all kinds of faith in me,” Davis said. Rutstein, who passed away in
2006, always reminded Davis that he needed to learn how to fully
forgive. In fact, that aspect of their very close friendship helped
Davis to understand why the work of racial healing is never complete.
“The work is never done. You can’t die until you’ve made your contribution to hopefully change attitudes of bigotry.” — Prof. Richard Davis
Participation in the institute is not for the faint of heart, or
anyone who is willing to go through the motions just to list another
seminar on their resume, or score easy continuing education credits.
The sessions, led by experienced facilitators, dive deep and sweep wide,
with topics including the history of racism, the oneness of
humankind/humanity, the pathology of racism as a disease, how racism is
perpetuated and institutionalized racism. “Our beliefs and attitudes about race and interpersonal differences
begin manifesting as soon as we are born,” Davis said. “I’ve known those
attitudes since I was three years old. My mother taught me. Racial
conditioning is what all of us have suffered from because as we grew up,
we were conditioned to believe certain attitudes and misconceptions
about other people and ourselves. These attitudes and misconceptions
about people we’ve never even met come from our families, our schools,
our institutions and the media. It’s a form of brainwashing and we
become attached to them emotionally. ” Racism is embedded in the inaccuracies of history and how certain
groups are portrayed and labeled, which in turn creates a reaction to
those stories and effects our view of ourselves, he added. History
perpetuates the myth that blacks are inferior, Davis said, and the myth
has become institutionalized. But like the Institute, it’s not just
about people of color, he added. “White people should be even more angry because they’ve been told
they are better than everyone else all their lives,” Davis said. He
lost one of his best friends to white privilege, he added. His former
friend couldn’t identify his own sense of white privilege and sense of
unjustified superiority, which led to frequent demeaning and
racist comments. Davis chose not to associate with him anymore because
his former friend just didn’t understand why his words and attitude were
offensive. But Davis, along with the steering committee and the participants of
the Institute, believe that a vindictive attitude toward the oppressor
or oppressed is not of a healing nature. Their philosophy advocates
forgiveness.
“I only hope that I can somehow change who I
am in my remaining lifetime and pass on to my children what little I now
know so they do not have to wait 46 years to finally learn the meaning
of racism.” -–Retired University of Wisconsin Police Captain Dale G. Burke
The next two Fall 2016 Institute series begin Sept. 14 and 15. Open
to *all regardless of race/ethnicity, religion, political affiliations,
sexual orientation, or gender expression who are 16 or
older, participants are required to make a 10-week commitment of about
two hours for full understanding and impact. People of color are also
encouraged to apply and space is limited. If you think you’re going to
miss more than two sessions, please apply to a later session when you
can fulfill the attendance commitment, Davis emphasizes. An active steering committee works cooperatively and continually
with the institute’s member participants, who know their work
toward understanding and teaching about diversity and healing racism is
never done. One series of 10 two-hour sessions just touches on the
racial healing process, Davis said, which is why participation in more
than one series is recommended. “Ten weeks is like a minute, a grain of sand in the educational
format we present,” Davis said, and full engagement for 10 weeks or
more is necessary to address racial attitudes that typically permeate
every aspect of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. “You have
to fully engage with attitudes that are in full force and used all the
time in real life.” It is the consensus of many experts on anti-racism that a mix of
ethnicity is an enhancement to the group, but is not necessary for one’s
healing. As Judy Katz states in White Awareness: “In efforts
to deal with that pervasive disease racism, human relations
practitioners have become increasingly convinced that the American form
of the disease is most effectively treated as a White problem that
severely damages its White victims, as well as those against whom it is
directed. More, since White racism is a White problem, it is the
business of White people to resolve it. We must not place the burden of
changing White attitudes and behavior upon the members of minority
races. It is not their responsibility to help us to change. The
responsibility/accountability is ours.” “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then
let us work together.” – Lila Watson
School
of Music faculty member and legendary bassist Richard Davis retires
this spring, after 39 years at UW-Madison. His impact on many music
students here was profound.The study of real laws and policies that have infiltrated the social,
political and economic fiber of American society is sobering, Davis
said. Regardless of whether or not we are impacted by it or unwittingly
benefit, examining history and law is eye-opening for everyone, Davis
said. The institute then uses the lessons on historical context
to examine local issues in a new informed light. And finally,
participants move into examining where they currently dwell, how to
change and heal their perspectives and work with others seeking
change, healing and the desire to combat racism through the examination
of white privilege, ally building and fear/action. Why this process works is described under How an Institute Functions under background on the Institute’s web page. It all sounds like arduous, grueling work, but the institutes and
what is accomplished in them, are a source of joy for Davis. He’s not
retiring, he’s rearranging his time to put more emphasis on diversity
work, Davis summarized.
“Richard is what, back in the day, we used to
call a renaissance man. We is an outstanding musician, a humanitarian,
an influential activist, a social innovator and a great human being. And
he has the spirit of a little kid. There are few who have brought so
much to making this a better world.” — Michael Thornton
Richard Davis is
an international performing musician and Professor of Bass (European
Classical and Jazz), Jazz History and combo improvisation at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chicago born, he came to the UW-Madison
in 1977 after spending 23 years in New York City establishing himself
as one of the world’s premier bass players. Following musical studies in
Chicago, where he began his commitment to a musical interdisciplinarity
that remained throughout his career, he relocated to New York City in
1954. In New York, he began what would become a decades-long performing
and recording career. Notably, Davis toured with Sarah Vaughan and
performed alongside Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, Elvin Jones and Roland
Kirk. He was a member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra from
1966-72.
Prof.
Davis has receivedhonorary doctorate degrees in Musical Arts and
Humane Letters, and the Hilldale Award for distinguished teaching from
former Chancellor Donna Shalala, and a honorary doctorate of Humane
Letters from Edgewood College, Madison, in 1998.In 2000 he received the
Manfred E. Swarsensky HumanitarianAward from the Rotary Club Of
Madison. In 2001 he received the Governor’s of Wisconsin Arts Award.Downbeat International Critics Poll named him Best Bassist from
1967-74. In the world of classical music, Davis worked with conductors
and composers such as Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Gunther Schuller
and Igor Stravinsky. Davis’s ability to perform in multiple styles and
take on diverse repertories made him sought after by rock and popular
music musicians as well. He recorded with Janis Ian, Paul Simon, Bruce
Springsteen and Van Morrison. As recently as 2008, he performed live
with Bruce Springsteen in Milwaukee. He has recorded a dozen albums as a
leader and 3000 recordings/jingles as a sideman.
Other performance/recording credits include Don Sebesky, Oliver Nelson,
Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Miles
Davis, Dexter Gordon, Ahmad Jamal and a host of other notables. “Richard Davis will be greatly missed,” says Susan Cook, Director of
the School of Music. “Since he joined the faculty, Richard has been a
living embodiment of the School’s commitment to the Wisconsin Idea,
sharing tirelessly his expertise and insights with audiences throughout
the state and internationally. We know that in retirement he’ll continue
to be a transformative educator.”
“It takes only a few minutes of conversation with
Davis to figure out that this is a man who likes to wing it. That’s true
whether he’s recording an album, teaching a group of aspiring bassists
or mapping out a concert set list. Maximum freedom expressed from within
a framework of mastery.” Bob Jacobson, covering Richard Davis as part of the Isthmus Jazz Festival round-up.
Throughout his long career, Davis received numerous awards, most notably in 2014 he was named a Jazz Master by
the National Endowment for the Arts. That same year, the Oral History
Association recognized Davis at their national meeting with a public
oral history interview. In 1993, Davis created the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists,
which carries out an annual weekend devoted to nurturing emerging bass
players; bass performers, many of whom studied with Richard themselves,
come from around the country to lend their support and mentorship. Well known in the larger Madison community, Davis founded the Institutes for the Healing of Racismin 2000. Read more about Richard Davis’ life and work in this lively Isthmus piece by local journalist Bob Jacobson: Richard Davis: The face of the bass.
*Registration Fee $50.00 — Scholarships are available. For more
scholarship information, please email IHRscholarship@gmail.com.
Registration payment will be accepted once your enrollment is confirmed.
Please wait for more information regarding registration payment. Parts of this story are from the May 13, 2016, article by L&S News
One-on-one conversation yields profound insights and sage advice and from one of the world’s most highly respected bassists
Exclusive interview with FBPO’s Jon Liebman
April 11, 2011
Richard Davis is one of the most highly
acclaimed bass players of our time. Born in Chicago, Davis spent
twenty-three years in New York, where he established himself as one of
the world’s premier bass players. Throughout the course of a career
that has spanned over fifty years, Davis has performed and/or recorded
with Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Miles
Davis, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band, Dexter Gordon, Ahmad Jamal and
many others. Equally at home in both the jazz and classical
worlds, Davis has also performed under the batons of George Szell,
Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, Gunther Schuller and
Leonard Bernstein. Among his many distinctions are honorary doctorate degrees from
VanderCook and Edgewood Colleges, the International Peace Award and the
Wisconsin Arts Governor’s award, as well as acknowledgements and
distinctions from the NAACP, International Society of Bassists, ASCAP,
Down Beat and countless others. In 1993, he founded the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists,
which conducts master classes for bassists ages 3-18. Since 1977,
Davis has been on the faculty at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where
serves as Professor of Bass (European classical and Jazz), Jazz History
and combo improvisation.
FBPO: Tell me about your musical upbringing. RD: Well, I’m from Chicago and I was brought up in a
very popular high school. The neighborhood was very musical, too,
because there were a lot of blues players in the back alleys. My
upbringing was in Chicago, where theaters had bands coming in. That was
before the theaters petered out because of TV. So I had exposure to a
lot of live music. In the high school I went to, there was a guy named Walter Dyett. He
had a reputation for creating and developing very good musicians. You
might say his most popular musician was Nat King Cole. He went to
school there. You know the name Johnny Griffin? FBPO: Sure! He played with Monk. RD: And Gene Ammons, Dinah Washington… He developed all those people. And I went to that same high school. FBPO: What was the name of the high school? RD: DuSable. FBPO: How did you end up as a bass player? RD: Well, I always liked the bass when I was a kid.
My cousin, a girl who was eight years older than I was, influenced me
to follow my interest and, at 15 years old, I decided to start studying
the bass with Walter Dyett at the high school. FBPO: You’re very well steeped in both classical and jazz. Do you have a preference for one style over the other? RD: No, I don’t. I think music is either good or bad, no matter what the genre. FBPO: How do you adapt to different musical environments?
That is, how does one go from playing with Eric Dolphy to Frank Sinatra
to Igor Stravinski to Barbra Streisand and consistently give the music
what it needs? RD: I never made it a point to feel like I had to. I
was just creating what I wanted to hear coming from me, contributing to
the music that I was around. Walter Dyett taught us that. He’d tell
us, “You’ve been there before.” He just taught us that there was no
such thing as sight reading. We went in with the confidence that we had
been there before. We were just in a new environment. Classical music is just part of the general music. I didn’t switch
gears. That was the fantastic part about his teaching and that’s how I
teach today. Ninety-five percent of my teaching comes from my
experience with learning from such a master, and he was. FBPO: You spent a lot of time in New York. What advice do
you have for young aspiring bass players with dreams of going to New
York – or, for that matter, to L.A. or Nashville – and breaking into the
music scene? RD: Follow their dream. Wherever they want to go is
where they should be. If they have reasons not to go to a certain
place because of fear of not making it, or the fear of high competition,
I encourage them to get past that. Some of them are afraid to go away
from their own neighborhood because now they know they’ll be competing
with a whole lot of people just like them from all over the country.
And if you don’t experience that competition, you’re living in fear for
life. When I was 24, I went to New York with Don Shirley. Johnny Pate, who
had been playing with Don, recommended me because he did not want to go
to New York. So I took Pate’s place with Don and Pate took my place with
Ahmad Jamal. New York frightened me to a degree, so I asked Pate if I
could have my job back with Ahmad. Luckily for me, he said I could not
have my job back and that I belonged in New York. So I was made to go to
New York. I tell that story of fear out of personal experience and I
encourage students who have that fear to go ahead and jump in the water. FBPO: You’ve been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for
quite a while. What can a diligent student hope to achieve by attending
the music program at that school? RD: Well, I’ll tell you what I do. A lot of people,
like you, perhaps, think I run a jazz program. My contract and
obligation to the school is to teach bass students how to perform
European classical music. I teach them how to play concertos, sonatas,
orchestral repertoire and all those things that have to do with
classical music. That is the only thing I am required to teach. And as
far as that goes, the program is very excellent. I have developed about
seven professors. I also have several performing students in jazz and classical… you
name it. I only teach those bass players jazz if they’re interested,
and then I split the lesson into two parts. But most of them are not
interested in jazz. I got the job there because they knew I could do
both. I teach a jazz history course and I teach students how to perform
in jazz combos. FBPO: I’m glad you cleared that up because that was not my impression! RD: At one point, they did have a jazz degree
program and, because I’m known basically as a jazz player, people will
assume that I’m running it. But there’s no program there to speak of.
It’s still on the books, but it’s not developed. FBPO: Is Peter Dominguez one of those students you referred to? RD: He was my first student when I came here in
1977. He is now a bass professor himself and he’s like a son to me. He
is the main part of my Richard Davis Foundation for young bass
players. He is the main part that makes that happen. FBPO: Tell me about the Richard Davis Foundation. What is its mission? RD: Eighteen clinicians, that is professors of the
bass, get together every Easter weekend, Friday and Saturday, to teach
bass players of all levels and all interests. We have about eighty-five
young bass players who attend every year. I started that thing by
myself with the encouragement of Peter Dominguez. He told me I should
start something like that. This Easter will mark our eighteenth year.
The teachers give a recital on Friday night and the students give theirs
on Saturday night. It’s one of the most spectacular things that’s
happened to young bass players. FBPO: You’ve done so much good outside of the music world. What are some of the causes that are the most meaningful to you? RD: The thing that I spend a lot of time with is
racial conditioning. I have good course facilitators, I have good
materials, good books, good videos and lots of people participating.
And now I’m being asked to travel to do some series. We study together,
have a lecture and then we give what’s called a testimony, where people
open their hearts once their heads are open. And that has proven to be
very, very successful. It’s amazing what people do not know when it
comes to racial issues. We do it with compassion and make everyone
comfortable and feeling that their ideas are protected, never edited,
never interrupted. I’ve been doing that since 1989. FBPO: You are to be truly commended for all you have
accomplished in your life and your career. What else would you like to
achieve that you haven’t done yet? RD: I’ll have to live till I’m 137 years to get done
what I want to do! By that time, I will have gained some wisdom and I
will become what they call a “wise man.” I’m about to turn 81, you
know, and I feel like I’m just beginning to live!
FBPO: What’s on that list of things you want to accomplish if you live to 137?
RD: The thing I want to accomplish is to be read, to
have the answers to a lot of things. A lot of people come to me for
answers. My students will come to me about their family situations,
about racial situations within the family. I teach a class at the
university called, “The oneness of humankind.” A lot of students come
to me with questions and feel like I have an answer. So I am constantly
studying from books, from videos and just living the life. I feel like
I have a responsibility. It’s funny because, as a kid, I was not athletic, so I had to have
something else I could develop, and that was reading. I read so much,
you wouldn’t believe it! The teacher would give me an assignment in
high school and, not only did I use the textbook, I went to the library
and got three or four other books on the same topic. So I had a rounded
answer for her. I had great teachers in high school, both black and
white. I guess they recognized I was after something because my mother
had trained me to be the best student, to have the highest grades. I
couldn’t afford anything lower than 100 because I was black and I had
two strikes against me already. With that kind of discipline and with
the discipline of Walter Dyett, I had nowhere to go but to the top. I
use that same discipline in everything that I do. FBPO: What would you be if you weren’t a bass player? RD: I would be a professional horseman.
Richard Davis, one of the great
virtuosos of the contrabass in jazz, turns 87 today. I had the privilege
of hosting the maestro on WKCR in August 1993 — the transcript appears
below. I wish we’d had a little more time, so we could have spoken more
about the ’60s and ’70s, not to mention his years with Sarah Vaughan,
but I’m glad to be able to share his testimony about the Chicago scene
that formed him.
**************
Richard Davis, WKCR, August 18, 1993:
TP:
Richard Davis is one of the many gifted musicians who emerged out of
Chicago onto the national scene in the 1960s. You’re a musician who has
covered both the jazz and the classical areas. Does your orientation
toward both idioms go back to your early education on the instrument in
Chicago?
RD:
Definitely. Because my high school teacher, Walter Dyett, Walter Henry
Dyett, had that type of background himself, and he caught on a universal
way. His approach was total universal . . .
TP: He was a concert violinist, I believe.
RD:
A concert violinist. Also he played banjo in Erskine Tate’s band. And
he played also piano. So his background himself entailed, you know,
music of all types, and he encouraged and taught his students to be that
way.
TP: Now, he was the music teacher at DuSable High School.
RD: DuSable High School, right.
TP: And many, many professional musicians of note, jazz soloists and people in other areas came out of there.
RD: Oh yes.
TP: Who were some of the people you heard there in your years . . . ?
RD:
Okay. When you went to that school, even as a freshman, you were in awe
of the people who had gone there before you in music. They were very
popular and very successful, so you knew that you had some kind of shoe
to fit into. Amongst them was Dinah Washington. Milt Hinton had gone to
the previous DuSable . . .
TP: Phillips High, I think.
RD:
He went to Wendell Phillips. And DuSable, when it was built, was I
think called the New Wendell Phillips, but then they changed it to
DuSable, which was a very prominent name in Chicago . . .
TP: The founder of Chicago, Jean Baptiste DuSable.
RD: Yeah, he was the first one to settle.
TP: Milt Hinton, I think, came up under Major N. Clark Smith, who had been the bandmaster at Phillips High, I believe.
RD:
See, that’s information that you’re giving me that’s something new. I
don’t know. But that sounds very logical. And then there was Gene
Ammons, there was Johnny Griffin, there was Clifford Jordan, Joseph
Jarman, Leroy Jenkins — you name them. John Gilmore. I can go on and on,
and not even remembering half of them who are very prominent today. But
that was the kind of thing he built, was a pure professional attitude
toward the music, and his approach to the music led you to believe that
anything you wanted to do was up to you.
TP:
He also organized, I think, bands outside of the school, and had kids
join the union and actually work as professional musicians.
RD: Oh yeah. I worked in his band.
TP: Tell me about that. What kind of material were they doing?
RD:
Well, mostly the band that I worked with for him was mostly for dance,
ballroom dancing. But he would play Jazz charts, and the people would
dance because it was a big band. I worked with another band around
there, too. Eddie King had a band of that same type. But Walter Dyett’s
band I worked in, and . . .
Walter
Dyett never left the teaching podium. I mean, when you were around him,
you just sat and listened, because you knew you were going to grab
something that would be meaningful for the rest of your life. Even after
I left high school, I mean for the next 20 years . . . Let’s see. He
died, I think, in 1968; I graduated from high school in ’48. For the
next 20 years I was learning things from him. He was visiting New York.
You’d see him anywhere. And he was always telling you something that was
directed toward a positive attitude toward what you what you were
wanting to accomplish on your instrument. He would have us sit down in
the band room for twenty minutes without even touching our instrument,
and we would talk about things that we wanted to get accomplished. Mind
power, he called it. It was fantastic.
TP: Did he select you to be a bass player, or were you playing bass when you entered as a freshman?
RD: No, no. I asked him could I study bass with him.
TP: What was the fascination for you? Why did you want to be a bass player?
RD:
Well, my dearest friend at the time, Ernest Jones, was in the band. And
every day we would walk home together, because he lived in the same
direction that I lived in, and he’d tell me about all these things that
he was doing in the band room, about counting bars and rests, and
recognizing this . . . And I used to stand over him while he was
practicing at home, just to watch what he was doing. And I said, “I’ve
got to get into this.” And I was always fascinated by the bass anyway.
So I just went up to the band room and asked could I get in.
TP: Did you have the opportunity to listen to records when you were a kid . . . ?
RD: Yeah!
TP: . . . or see bands around Chicago? I mean, there was so much music around Chicago in the 1930s or 1940s.
RD:
Well, see, there wasn’t any television. You know, you couldn’t sit at
home and get all this. So what you’d do, you’d go . . . In my case, it
was only four blocks from me. I would go to the Regal Theatre. And every
band you want to mention would come into the Regal Theatre, and you saw
them live. And you could stay in there for as long as you could stay in
there. Because you’d just pay one admission there, and you’d stay
around the clock if you could afford the time.
TP: And did you sometimes?
RD: Oh yeah! And then you . . .
TP: Who did you go to see?
RD:
Well, all the great bands. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jay McShann,
Lucky Millinder — just any band that you could mention was in that
theatre.
TP: Did you have a chance, say, to see Jimmy Blanton?
RD:
Well, it’s funny you mention that. Because he died in 1942, and I was
12 years old at the time. Now, it’s possible I heard him, but I really
can’t recall. There were some older friends I had at that time who would
take me to their homes and listen to records. In particular there was
Karl Byrom that I would hang out with. He was in school at an older age
than the normal high school student, because he had TB and he could
never finish the term, so he was delayed. Which was to my benefit,
because he kind of took me under his wing, and played all these
fantastic records he had at home with Oscar Pettiford, Milton Hinton,
Jimmy Blanton, you know.
TP: And these were the people who initially inspired you as a bassist.
RD:
Oh yeah. It was a congregation of good feelings. Because you’d just sit
there and listen to these older musicians play. I remember . . . I was a
freshman when Johnny Griffin was a senior, and I remember watching him
on the football field playing a clarinet, you know, in the marching band
and stuff like that. And I remember Lionel Hampton heard him at what we
called a booster concert, you know, to start off with the football
season, and the jazz band would play, the school jazz band — and Lionel
Hampton was the guest artist. And he heard . . . Johnny Griffin stood up
and took a solo, and that was it. He took him right out of there. “Hey,
you’re the one.”
TP:
Now, you’re the generation that came under the sway of bebop, and you
were a teenager when those records were coming out. I remember Clifford
Jordan telling me about hearing “Red Cross,” I think . . .
RD: Uh-huh.
TP:
He didn’t know it was “Red Cross,” and then he found it out — but that
really just took him all the way in that direction. Did records like
that have a big impact on you?
RD:
Yeah, well, I hated it when I first heard it. Because I was just
beginning to learn how to play boogie-woogie bass lines, and things of
the swing era, you know, learning tunes off of records, and here comes
Charlie Parker — I said, “God!” But it was lucky for me that it came at
that time, because it caused me to develop. I remember playing a 78
record over and over again of “My Old Flame,” trying to find out what
Tommy Potter was doing with the bass line.
TP: Were you listening to the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band with Ray Brown . . . ?
RD: Yeah! And Charlie Mingus. Listened to the whole thing.
TP: Everything.
RD:
I mean, it got so that once I got involved, knowing I wanted to do
that, which was from day one, I started going back and reading all of
the old jazz magazines, doing research on the roots of the music I was
wanting to play. And I started listening to, you know, an enormous
collection of music, go to everybody’s house and exchange records. And I
remember those Jimmy Blanton records I took from my friend’s house and
went to a recording studio and had them copied from one disk to another.
I still have those.
TP:
Now, I recollect reading a profile of you in Down Beat from maybe 25
years ago where you talked about playing the Calumet City circuit . . .
RD: Heh . . . Yeah!
TP:
. . . and doing all these gigs in Chicago after high school . . . It’s
just such a full range of experience you’d get in Chicago. It sounds
like you were doing your classical training . . .
RD: Mmm-hmm.
TP: . . . and playing blues and boogie-woogie gigs, and bebop gigs, and jump bands and the whole thing.
RD: Mmm-hmm.
TP: Is that how it was in Chicago?
RD:
Yeah. Chicago was wide-open. I mean, you could go to jam sessions,
like, five or six o’clock in the morning. That’s when they started,
breakfast jam sessions. That’s when I met the great Ike Day and Wilbur
Ware, playing at these sessions. So you had all that music just flowing
around you. It was just wide open.
I
should go back and say that my mother also had brought in records from
New Orleans. I had records made in 1904 of, you know, different people
who had recorded on RCA-Victor. And she was, of course, a contemporary
of Louis Armstrong. They were born the same year.
TP: Is she from New Orleans?
RD: Yes. She was from Homewood, Louisiana, which was right outside of New Orleans.
So
then you’d have all this exposure! You’d go to the Club DeLisa and hear
big bands, shows, everything. You’d hear vocalists, Joe Williams,
everything. Then, of course, you would jam with your friends. You’d go
to each other’s house, you know . . . I was just looking over some old
pictures of mine, because I had to do that to send off for some promo,
and I saw a picture (and I’d forgotten I had it) of Sun Ra, Jimmy Ellis,
a guy named Charles Hines and myself, right in my house rehearsing.
TP:
You’ve mentioned a few names in the last couple of minutes who I’d like
you to comment on. The first is Wilbur Ware, who really held sway over
all the bassists in Chicago at that particular time, I think.
RD:
Yeah, he was the king. He was the king. But the guy I really admired,
and thought that he was really the king, because I knew him personally
and hung out with him a lot, was Karl Byrom. Now, he was the all-around
bassist, very talented. It’s just that his health just didn’t allow him
to emerge into, you know, the atmosphere of getting to New York. It
reminded me . . . It was almost as if I had my own Jimmy Blanton right
in my own high school.
TP: He was that strong.
RD:
Oh, he was strong. And all the recordings that Jimmy Blanton made, he
knew them note for note, Slam Stewart note for note — and he had his own
particular way of doing things. And I just loved him.
TP: Another bassist who was in Chicago a lot at that time, and one of the great masters, was Israel Crosby.
RD:
Israel Crosby was another one. Ooh! See, we had all these great bass
players around to listen to. Like Eddie Calhoun. Eddie Calhoun was the
first one to show me something about the middle part of a tune, that’s
called a bridge, and the “Rhythm” changes. And I grasped it very fast,
because I already knew triads and chords. And he told me that, and I
said, “Man, it. . .” Eddie Calhoun was the first person to order a drink
for me in a nightclub. He was with Ahmad Jamal. Because I had gotten to
legal age. And he said, “You want a drink?” I said, “Yeah.” He said,
“What do you drink?” I said, “I don’t know what to drink.” I’ll never
forget it, he ordered a burgundy with a ginger ale! [Laughs]
But
Eddie Calhoun was a fantastic player. You had Israel Crosby, you had
Wilbur Ware, and there was another bass player — I can’t think of his
name at the moment. Oh, what was his name? A very short guy.
TP: Leroy Jackson?
RD: No. There was Wilbur Edmonson(?) there, too. He was phenomenal.
TP:
We’ll call it to mind in a moment, I’m sure, probably when we’re doing
something entirely different. You also mentioned the name of Ike Day,
who has recorded I think one session, and you can hardly hear him, so
any time I have someone up here who heard him in the flesh I ask them
what he sounded like.
RD:
Well, let’s see. At the time I heard him, I don’t think I was mature
enough to analyze and say what it is that you want me to talk about. But
I was fascinated, because I saw this very small, skinny guy approach
the drums, while I was playing, and when he started to play it was like a
football field. Every person in the audience started saying “Ike Day,
Ike Day, Ike Day.” And I looked around, and I got very nervous, because
then I knew who it was. And then Wilbur Ware came up with his bass, and
we played together, two basses and Ike Day and whoever was in the front
line. But I can only estimate that his contemporaries being Max Roach
and any other drummer along that line of time. . . I heard that they all
. . . when they came to Chicago, that’s where they made tracks to, was
to hear Ike Day.
TP:
You mentioned Sun Ra as well, and a picture of him in your house. That
period of his career has been talked about and written about, but again
we haven’t really heard it. Can you talk about what Sun Ra was doing in
1950, ’52 . . . ?
RD:
Oh yeah! Well, thank the Lord that he was around. Because I learned a
lot from him about not only just music, but about life. And at that
time, his name was Sunny Blount. It all goes back to a period in my life
where I needed to hear a concept of someone who was individualistic, as
he was, who was dynamic in their resolve philosophies; you know,
philosophies that I think had been tested by him already. And it was
during this period where they wanted to take me into the Korean War and
all that crap that I had never heard about. I had never heard the word
“Korean” or “Korea” before the war started, and I didn’t think it was my
business, heh-heh, to be involved. But Sun Ra was definitely the person
to put a cap on that, to tell you philosophically what was happening in
the world.
And
I remember the first time I met him, the first thing he said to me
. . . He said, “I don’t think you’re ready to go to the Moon yet.”
That’s the first thing he said to me. And I listened . . . As a matter
of fact, I’m going to have some tapes transcribed that I interviewed him
when I worked with him in Paris, oh, maybe ten years ago. I have a lot
of things that he talked on tape, maybe three hours of it, you know. But
that’s one of the projects that I have in mind to get done for
historical-archival things that just should be documented, you know.
Because his thoughts were just dynamic.
And
I had never heard a person talk like him before. My father also was a
great talker and a spiritual guider. But then this was a contemporary in
the sense of recent thoughts that he penetrated through. That’s why so
many people stayed with him, because he was the man.
TP:
But he was running rehearsal bands, even at that time, with many of the
top young musicians in Chicago (yes?) in the late ’40s , early ’50s?
RD:
Well, I don’t know. You can verify that yourself. But my association
with him was that he would have meetings every Sunday at his house,
talking. And then, if we had a gig, then we’d have a rehearsal for a
gig. And I’ll never forget him saying . . . There was a tune I didn’t
know that was a very popular standard, and he said, “You should have
known that eons of years ago.” He said, “We have to advance towards some
other aspect of tunes.” And when he said that to me, with the respect I
had for him, I started learning more and more and more tunes as fast as
I could, because I came to play with him — I knew I had to perform. It
was him I worked with in Calumet City. You mentioned that word; I worked
with him in Calumet City.
TP: What was the band? Do you recollect?
RD:
I just remember Sun Ra and the drummer. See, a band . . . It was a
burlesque house in Calumet City. The bumps and grinds of females, you
know. They usually would hire a piano, trumpet and drums, just enough to
make it a band. And of course, the musicians are used to playing with a
bass player, so they would all chip in ten dollars of their fee, and
hire a bass player. And I was a bass player in that particular group. I
was going to college at that time, getting off at 4 o’clock in the
morning and I had to be in school at 8, you know. But it was nothing,
because I was with Sun Ra and, you know, learning a lot of things.
If you want to, I can tell you a beautiful story about my impressions of him at that time.
TP: Please.
RD:
While . . . See, there was kind of a screen between us and the dancer.
We could see her through a veiled curtain of some type, so that the
drummer would catch the bumps and things like that. And we arrived back
together back and forth to work from Chicago to Calumet City. And one of
the waitresses used to ride in the car with us, and we met a couple of
the dancers that way, too.
But
the thing that impressed me about Sun Ra was that for the whole time
. . . This was like you call a factory job. He would be reading a
paperback book for the whole time he was playing, and he’d turn the
pages, you know, and play and never missed a beat, turning the pages and
reading. I said, “This guy is phenomenal.” I can do that now. I can do
two or three things at once, and do them quite well.
But
the thing is, he looked over at me and he said, “See the guy over there
who’s drunk?” I said, “Yeah.” There was a guy laying on a booth, who
had probably seen the show more than once or twice, but he was drunk — I
mean, he was actually very drunk. As the expression goes, he was pissy
drunk. And he said, “Watch me sober him up.” And I watched . . . And we
were playing “Body and Soul.” Then Sun Ra started going further and
further out with the chords, and I was watching his left hand to see
what he was doing . . . He wasn’t playing any louder than he had been
playing before, because it was all background music. And sure enough,
this guy must have been about 50 feet away from us, and he stirred . . .
and within three minutes he was standing straight up as if he was a
soldier standing at attention. And then Sun Ra looked at me kind of with
that little grin he had; he just looked at me and said, “See?” [Laughs]
And I said, “What else do you do?”
TP: It sounds like a very impressive moment in the annals of music!
RD: Uh-huh.
TP:
We’re speaking with Richard Davis on “Out To Lunch” on WKCR-FM, New
York, 89.9, Ted Panken here, and Richard Davis and Friends are appearing
at Sweet Basil this week, through Sunday. It seems to me we’ve been
talking a while, and should get to some music. But since we’re talking
about Chicago, maybe we can do the bridge this way and talk about . . .
RD: Bill Lee?
TP:
Well, how you wound up . . . Well, Bill Lee, but also I guess the
events that led to you coming to New York, and I guess leaving with
Sarah Vaughan. . .
RD: That’s a funny one. Okay.
TP: . . . was your path away from Chicago.
RD: That’s a funny one. I can tell you about that.
TP: Well, Richard Davis, you worked with Sarah Vaughan’s group, I guess, for five years, was it . . . ?
RD: Right.
TP: From ’57 to ’62. And this really introduced you to the broader audience and to musicians all over.
0RD: Mmm-hmm, yeah.
TP: So that’s the prologue to what Richard Davis will say, I guess.
RD: Do you want to play music first, or . . . Should we talk now?
TP: Well, let’s play some music. Tell us about the piece we’re about to hear, and then we’ll resume the interview.
RD:
All right. It relates to Bill Lee. Bill Lee, in my estimation, formed
the first two-bass combo group — to my knowledge. And I think this was
1969. I was playing the melody bass (it was my actual date; I was the
leader on the date), and he played supporting bass. Bill had a . . . His
melodic and harmonic concept was just powerful. He employed Chick Corea
on the piano and Sam Brown on guitar, Sonny Brown on drums (where is he
nowadays?), and Frankie Dunlop on percussion. I think I told Bill that I
liked the melody to “Dear Old Stockholm.” That was all I said to him.
And he came up with this arrangement on “Dear Old Stockholm.”
This session was reissued two or three times, as called With Understanding,
and then it was released under another name with Chick Corea as a
leader! I think that the company probably thought that his name would
help them in the sales. I’m assuming this.
TP:
In your group, usually everybody writes and you incorporate a number of
your compositions, but the compositions from various members of the
group as well. At least in the past that’s been the case.
RD:
Right. I encourage that to happen. I think it’s a good idea to have
people do their thing. I think it’s good for morale boosting, and the
quality of the music has different attitudes because of different
composers.
TP:
We were speaking before, in a lengthy interview segment, about your
formative years and coming to maturity as a musician in some sense in
Chicago, playing at various joints in and around Chicago, with various
policies, and you were in school studying the classical bass, and really
covering a whole range of musical styles. You emerged from Chicago, I
believe, with Sarah Vaughan — or perhaps it was before that. Were you in
the ’50s traveling outside of Chicago with your contemporaries? If so,
who were some of them?
RD:
I did a lot of jobs with Harold Ousley around Chicago, playing cabaret
parties, they called them, where you’d bring your own whiskey, and
people would give you a set-up, or something similar to that. I didn’t
understand exactly what it was, because I wasn’t into drinking, so I
never, you know, found out what cabaret really meant in that sense.
But
I gigged around with lots of people, John Neely and a lot of my peers
in high school . . . But the first time I got which was more than local,
in a sense, was a guy who lived in Chicago at the time, who had come
from Pittsburgh — that was Ahmad Jamal. And that was the first job I got
that had that kind of . . .
TP: When were you part of his group?
RD: This must have been 1952.
TP: So it was in the early group before he started using a drummer? Was that in the guitar-bass phase of the group?
RD: Yeah. He had Eddie Calhoun . . .
TP: He had Ray Crawford on guitar?
RD:
Yeah. Ray Crawford on guitar, and then there was another guy on the
guitar — I can’t remember his name now either! Then there was Ahmad, and
I was playing bass, of course. Ahmad had a tune which required me to
play maraca while I was playing the bass; I had to learn to do that with
him, so he’d get this effect. And then Ray Crawford would thump on the
strings and make it sound like a conga drum. It was a fantastic thing.
And Ahmad had a sound and a concept that was just unbelievable. And of
course, he attracted all of the guys coming in traveling to the club to
hear him play, and it was always jam-packed. It was the first time I was
with what you might call a consistent professional successful group.
TP: Was he working steadily with, like, several-week engagements at a time? And what clubs was he playing in Chicago?
RD: He would work at the Pershing Lounge, which was in the Pershing Hotel, oh, six weeks at a time, or more even.
TP: There were several levels to that club, weren’t there? There were like two or three different venues within that hotel . . .
RD:
Well, the ballroom. See, the ballroom is where all the great traveling
artists would come through. Like Lester Young; I remember seeing Lester
Young. And several people would come. Charlie Parker . . . They’d all
work in the ballroom. And the lounge was the place . . . I think that’s
when first heard Eddie South, the violinist. I can’t remember all the
groups that worked there, but I remember being there with Ahmad. And it
was a classy kind of a joint. You know, there was a nice stage
presentation, a lot of room on the stage, storage of the instruments —
you know, it was very pleasant.
TP: Good piano.
RD:
Good piano, yeah. And Ahmad . . . It was a good thing for me to be with
Ahmad. The one thing I’ll never forget him telling me at a rehearsal,
he said, “Who is your favorite piano player?” And I said, “Oscar
Peterson.” You know, who else? And he said, “You want to know who my
favorite bass player is?” I said, “Tell me.” I thought he was going to
say Ray Brown or somebody. He said, “You are.” I said, “Me?” He said,
“Yeah, because you’re here with me.” I said, “God, what a lesson!” I was
the number-one bass player for him because he was confronted me being
with him. That was a real booster.
But
then after that, in 1952 . . . or was it ’54 . . . Yeah, in 1954, I was
approached by this bass player, Johnny Pate, whose son is Don Pate. And
I knew Johnny Pate; he was a helluva bass player, you know, and I used
to hear him on different jobs around town, and Johnny Frigo was around,
too . . . He said, “Do you want to go to New York with this guy I’m
working with?” And I said, “New York? Yeah!” And he said, “Well, I’m
getting ready to leave this guy because I don’t want to go to New York,
and I told him about you, because I thought you were the one qualified
to play what he wants out of a bass player. I said, “Well, thank you.”
So I went and auditioned for the guy, and he liked it, and he said,
“Okay, we’re leaving at such-and-such a time” and all that stuff, you
know . . .
And
man, I got the New York jitters after that! I said, “New York!” You
hear about New York and all these great musicians there . . . And what
happened is that we exchanged jobs. He went with Ahmad and I went with
Don Shirley. But my job didn’t start until we got to New York, and I
think we were going to exchange jobs at an appropriate time. But just
before I supposed to leave for New York, I went to him and I said,
“Look, man, I want my job back. I’m not going to New York. I was
frightened half to death.” For some reason I was at the Blue Note; I
can’t remember what for, but . . .
TP: The Chicago Blue Note on the North Side.
RD:
Yes. I remember being there in the daytime, and Sarah Vaughan was
beginning to rehearse there. But her bass player was there; Beverly
Peer, I think was his name. And he was working with Sarah Vaughan, and I
was asking him about New York, and I knew Sarah Vaughan was going to
come to that club and rehearse, you know . . . That was frightening me
to death, man.
So
then, Johnny Pate said, “Look, man, you can’t have your job back. You
belong in New York, and that’s where you’re going to go.” I don’t know
what made him say that, but it was the best thing for me . . . heh-heh
. . .
TP:
But it seems to me that Chicago would be the ultimate preparation for
going to New York and dealing with the music, just considering all the
types of experiences you could have. I presume you were sitting in with
the people when they were coming through town and doing these types of
gigs . . .
RD:
You’re right! You’re right. I mean, some of the experiences I had in
Chicago, you wouldn’t believe. You know, I learned a lot from another
saxophone player who taught me a lot of . . . You know, people would
teach you in Chicago, as for your grounds. But still it’s frightening.
Even leaving Chicago to go to New York is frightening. And I just didn’t
want to go. I got nervous. And he said, “You’ve got to go.” And he
wouldn’t give me my job back, so I had to go!
TP:
What was it like working with Sarah Vaughan for those years? One thing
that I think probably gets lost to the general audience is the level of
her musicianship. I’ve heard a story that she was on a tour with a
number of musicians, including Nat Cole in 1952 or so, and Nat Cole
couldn’t make it, couldn’t make a night, or he was sick . . .
RD: Mmm-hmm.
TP: So she came out and sing his whole thing and played all of the piano parts.
RD: That sounds like her! Like Shirley Horn today. Boy, that sounds like her.
But
the thing about . . . See, Roy Haynes used to come through Chicago, and
I met him — and he was working with Sarah Vaughan at the time. And he
and I kind of pal-ed off right away. And it’s possible that he was the
one who recommended me. I never knew that for a fact, but looking back, I
think that’s what happened. But I went to do the job with her, and man,
I was too frightened to play. And the first two or three nights playing
with Jimmy Jones and Roy Haynes and Sarah Vaughan on the stage . . . I
just kind of just. . . I was tip-toein’ through the tulips, just making
little announcements out of the bass and all that kind of stuff. And
then I looked around and said, “Hey! They must have called me here for a
reason.” And so I said, pardon the expression, but I said, “Hey! I’m
gonna just play. What the . . . ” — you know. And then I started opening
up, and started playing. And right away, I noticed they started looking
back and saying, “Oh, he’s opening up now.” But it took me two or three
nights before I could really relax and really begin to play.
TP: Were you based in New York while you were working with Sarah Vaughan?
RD:
Yeah, I moved to New York, and they called me. I went to New York with
Don Shirley. That’s the guy whose job took me to New York. And I stayed
with him for two years, I guess to 1956, and between ’56 and ’57 I was
just gigging around, taking any little gig I could get, and then I got a
call from Sarah Vaughan’s office in 1957.
TP:
I guess the series of recordings that really started to put your name
internationally on the map, where you could begin to express your
creativity as a musician and so forth begins in the early 1960s with a
series of recordings for both Blue Note and Prestige . . .
RD:
Right. Because after I decided to leave Sarah, after five years, the
first person I ran into with a prominent gig was Eric Dolphy, heh-heh. .
.right in the subway station. And he said, “What are you doing next
week?” I said, “Nothing.” And he said, “Why don’t you go down to the
Five Spot with me?
TP: 1961.
RD: Yeah. And that was it! I said, “Man, oh God, what a way to come into New York.
TP: You did some very famous duets with Eric Dolphy where he played bass clarinet and you on bass, the Douglas sessions.
RD: Mmm-hmm.
TP: A few words about him, and then we’ll get back to some more music by your current group.
RD:
Well, I think that first session was supposed to have been under my
name. I can’t remember whether it was or not. Not that it really
matters. But [engineer/proucer Alan] Douglas, who I had done a lot of
folk music with, I was playing a lot of folk music, folk singers and
things . . . . He said, “If you were going in the studio to play a duet,
who would you choose? Who would you want to play with?” I said “Eric
Dolphy.” And that was the beginning.
TP: Where did you first meet him?
RD: On the subway!
TP: Oh, that was it? You hadn’t known him before?
RD:
I don’t think so! [Laughs] Maybe he knew who I was. But when I saw him,
to be honest with you, I couldn’t tell whether he was Eric Dolphy or
Ornette Coleman. Because I think they both wore goatees at that time.
TP: Well, you and Eric Dolphy were part of a very famous date which is at the top of the stack right next to me, called Point of Departure by Andrew Hill, one of four or five recordings you did with Andrew Hill then . . .
RD: Yeah!
TP:
This was such a creative period. You were on Bobby Hutcherson and
Andrew Hill records, really extending the form, and there’s a real sense
of speculation and searching in these records.
RD: Uh-huh.
TP: Can you talk a little bit about the attitude that was behind the making of them?
RD: You mean as far as my contribution as a bass player?
TP: Your contribution and the overall spirit of the groups and the musicians.
RD:
Well, first of all, you had a company that really organized these
sessions, like Alfred Lion and those guys. They really rehearsed, they
paid you for a rehearsal, the rehearsal was set up in the studio, you
went over what you were going to do, who was going to solo, and the
tunes and all that. And I remember Alfred Lion always eating chocolates,
and he always gave me some, because I liked that . . . ! But then his
friend, Francis Woolf, he was always taking pictures. So it was a great
organization of a type. These guys were dedicated to the music.
And
on this date also was Kenny Dorham. Now, Kenny Dorham, I worked a lot
with him in clubs in New York. And I just loved Kenny Dorham. He was
slick. He used to call me the Fox, because he thought I was kind of
extra. . .
Of
course, that’s always applied to musicians anyway if they’re doing
something that is beyond the ordinary. Even Eric Dolphy, with his
performance ability . . . I remember a guy running backstage when we
were at Birdland one night, and he said, “Where is he?! Where is he?!”
He was all excited. And he says, “Does he use dope?” Man, Eric Dolphy
was so far removed from dope. . . He was just high on the music, all the
time. The music was so tremendous.
And
Kenny Dorham had this very, very professional approach to his writing
and to his sound. He was a guy who I had heard when I was just learning
how to play the bass! And for me to be on the stage with him, it felt so
good. And then there was Joe Henderson, with that unique sound and
concept that he plays with . . . Man, I was in heaven. And there’s a
young Tony Williams from that date.
TP: We don’t even have it cued up. Would you like me to put something on from it?
RD: Yeah.
TP: Which one?
RD: I wouldn’t know what to select, because I haven’t heard this in years. You probably have heard it more recently than I have.
TP: Maybe so. How about “New Monastery”?
RD: Okay. Whatever you say, doctor.
TP: You’re the doctor . . . By the way, are you a Doctor in Music. You do teach at Madison.
RD:
Well, I do have a doctorate. I have what is called an honorary
doctorate in music. I am a Professor at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison camps.
-----
TP:
Your curriculum at University of Wisconsin and the band . . . Is there
an enthusiastic turnout for the jazz history course that you teach? Is
it well- received, well- attended? What’s your impression of the
students at this point?
RD:
Well, the class usually closes out in the first day of registration,
which means there are four days when students are still trying to get in
and wanting to be on a waiting list — which I don’t encourage. Because I
want a nice, intimate, smaller group of people. And I try to limit it
to 85, but it normally creeps up to about 110. And it’s an auditorium
which seats 200, so it’s comfortable for everybody. And I see students
all over the country who have been in that class, and they come to see
me when I’m in their town. Like, I was in L.A. last week, and I saw
about six or seven students who had been in the class, and here in New
York I saw three or four last night, the first night.
But
it’s been a good experience for me also to enhance my continued growth
and knowledge about the traditional jazz heritage. It has given me lots
of reasons to read more global things, because I relate them back to the
situation with jazz and how it fits into our society — things like
that.
TP: What’s your approach to the curriculum? Do you cover it chronologically from the beginnings up to the modern?
RD:
The way I handle that, to keep from being bored (which I dread that
feeling), is that . . . At first it was like 1920’s to present, general
history. What I did, I broke it down into four categories. One semester
you have saxophones, concentrated on that. Then the next semester,
trumpet players. The next semester, vocalists, miscellaneous instruments
and trombones. And the next semester you have rhythm sections and
combos. I don’t do the big band, because another professor does that;
he’s the band director, concert band and marching band — and he does big
band things.
TP: Well, then he wrote a tune after you, didn’t he, on Trompeta Toccata! That’s you!
RD:
I don’t know whether he related it to me exactly on that tune, but he
called me the Fox. And Eric called me the Iron Man, and he wrote a tune
called “Iron Man.” Because he thought I had endless energy — which I do.
And he said, “Man, one day I’m going to be like you; I’m going to be as
busy as you are and be able to . . . ” A lot of people thought I was
using dope to do all of the things I was doing!
Of
course, that’s always applied to musicians anyway if they’re doing
something that is beyond the ordinary. Even Eric Dolphy, with his
performance ability . . . I remember a guy running backstage when we
were at Birdland one night, and he said, “Where is he?! Where is he?!”
He was all excited. And he says, “Does he use dope?” Man, Eric Dolphy
was so far removed from dope. . . He was just high on the music, all the
time. The music was so tremendous.
And
Kenny Dorham had this very, very professional approach to his writing
and to his sound. He was a guy who I had heard when I was just learning
how to play the bass! And for me to be on the stage with him, it felt so
good. And then there was Joe Henderson, with that unique sound and
concept that he plays with . . . Man, I was in heaven. And there’s a
young Tony Williams from that date.
TP: We don’t even have it cued up. Would you like me to put something on from it?
RD: Yeah.
TP: Which one?
RD: I wouldn’t know what to select, because I haven’t heard this in years. You probably have heard it more recently than I have.
TP: Maybe so. How about “New Monastery”?
RD: Okay. Whatever you say, doctor.
TP: You’re the doctor . . . By the way, are you a Doctor in Music. You do teach at Madison.
RD:
Well, I do have a doctorate. I have what is called an honorary
doctorate in music. I am a Professor at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison camps.
TP:
Your curriculum at University of Wisconsin and the band . . . Is there
an enthusiastic turnout for the jazz history course that you teach? Is
it well- received, well- attended? What’s your impression of the
students at this point?
RD:
Well, the class usually closes out in the first day of registration,
which means there are four days when students are still trying to get in
and wanting to be on a waiting list — which I don’t encourage. Because I
want a nice, intimate, smaller group of people. And I try to limit it
to 85, but it normally creeps up to about 110. And it’s an auditorium
which seats 200, so it’s comfortable for everybody. And I see students
all over the country who have been in that class, and they come to see
me when I’m in their town. Like, I was in L.A. last week, and I saw
about six or seven students who had been in the class, and here in New
York I saw three or four last night, the first night.
But
it’s been a good experience for me also to enhance my continued growth
and knowledge about the traditional jazz heritage. It has given me lots
of reasons to read more global things, because I relate them back to the
situation with jazz and how it fits into our society — things like
that.
TP: What’s your approach to the curriculum? Do you cover it chronologically from the beginnings up to the modern?
RD:
The way I handle that, to keep from being bored (which I dread that
feeling), is that . . . At first it was like 1920’s to present, general
history. What I did, I broke it down into four categories. One semester
you have saxophones, concentrated on that. Then the next semester,
trumpet players. The next semester, vocalists, miscellaneous instruments
and trombones. And the next semester you have rhythm sections and
combos. I don’t do the big band, because another professor does that;
he’s the band director, concert band and marching band — and he does big
band things.
But
what I do is concentrate on making the student know a particular
personality who is innovative in the role of how the music developed
between the 1920s and the present. I talk about the social stimuli,
economic conditions, and other things related to the music being
produced the way it is produced. One of my favorite subjects, generally
speaking, in the music (and I just received a grant for that) is jazz
protest songs and experience in the 20th Century.
TP:
One last question before we get to the final piece of music is your
sense of the way the music is being produced today and the conditions
under which it’s being produced. Particularly the kind of repertory
approach to jazz amongst many of the young musicians. Just generally,
what’s your sense of the attitude to music by the younger musicians who
will be the future of the music that you’re aware of?
RD: If I’m understanding your question correctly . . . This might be something that does not answer that question per se . . .
TP: It may not be a clear question, too.
RD:
Yeah. I’ll just give you kind of a capsule conception of what I’m
seeing today with the younger musicians. I see them as the next
generation to what’s happened before them, and the ones that I’ve met
. . . Javon Jackson, I just spent a week with him in the band in
California. First of all, it was great to see the personality that he
has, which is dynamic. I mean, he asked me if he was my son! And I was
honored. Because he’s not my son, but when you see the next generation
coming up, you look at it in the same sense of the Son of the Music —
the next generation. And his talent, to my estimation, is very strong,
and his attitude towards honoring the music is just tremendous.
I
also have a godson, Eric McPherson, who plays with Jackie McLean on the
drums. I was there in the hospital the day he was born, just taking his
mother to the hospital. And to watch him come up and watch his attitude
as a gentleman, first of all, and a kind person . . . You know, we used
to just go out for McDonald’s hamburgers and go to movies, just to keep
an association when I’d come to New York, and then he starts playing
drums, and he’d come to the club every night, and he’d sit there and sip
on that Coca-Cola, and he was listening to Freddie Waits and any
drummer that I had with me at the time (Billy Hart), and he started
studying drums . . . And now to see him actually playing professionally,
it tells me that the music is honorable, because the next generation
deems it necessary to want to play it — and the challenge of trying to
play it is very demanding. He got a scholarship to go and study with
Jackie McLean. And I can mention his friend, Abe, alto saxophone . . .
He sat in with me once because our saxophonist didn’t show up, and he
really roused the audience . . .
TP: There’s some amazing talent out there.
RD:
Amazing, amazing talent out there. And I can name quite a few guys that
I have heard and have heard of, you know, through recordings and
whatever you want to talk about, that tells me that hopefully we’ve
handed the baton, and we have handed it to the right person.
Plus,
the other thing that is so phenomenal is that their business attitude
is quite different than ours was. They have nice, prominent young
lawyers representing them, like Terence Blanchard . . . I worked with
him on that memorial thing for Eric Dolphy. He had a bright young lawyer
right there talking in his behalf, and the guy was in his mid 20s, if
that old, but he was very, very polished!
Whereas
some of the older guys in our generation had all this talent and
equipment with writing and playing, but never really quite handled the
business well enough to escape the plantation. You see what I mean?
Because it was almost like saying, “I’m glad to get what I can get.” But
these guys now know that they have something that’s marketable, not in
the sense of a Michael Jackson recording . . . But whatever it is that
people are buying from them, they are selling it with more intelligent
attitudes.
TP: I guess we can safely say that you feel good about the future of the music.
RD: Oh, I feel good about it.
TP: And you continue to be part of the future of the music.
RD: Oh yeah!
TP: As is evident to anyone who will go down to hear Richard Davis and Friends this week at Sweet Basil.
RD: Yeah!
TP: We’ll conclude with something from a recording from 1987 that’s a dedication to your daughter . . .
Lemme tell you a sideline story,” says Richard Davis. “I was in
my car about a year or two ago, and when I turned the radio on there
was a jazz show. I remember [listening to] the bass player, and I said
to myself, ‘Good God, who is that? I hope I never run into that guy!’
After the song was over, the DJ said, ‘That was Andrew Hill with Richard
Davis on bass.'”
Davis erupts in a throaty laugh and says, “It was myself! I thought, ‘Damn, I should get back to doing some of that.'”
It’s true. Most bass players would kill to have the parts of his career
Richard Davis forgot. The Chicago-born bass player came up with talent
and a technique so broad he could play with anyone-and he pretty much
did. His graceful way with the changes impressed a mainstream master
like Sarah Vaughan. She kept him in the band for five years. Davis’ ease
with unconventional form and odd harmony caught the ears of young
mavericks like Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson and Eric Dolphy. For years,
they rang him up nearly every time they went to the studio. No
self-respecting jazz fan could claim even a passing familiarity with the
jazz of the ’50s through the ’70s without having heard Davis’ pizzicato
or his sublime bow work. And that just touches on his career in jazz.
He also performed under the baton of Igor Stravinsky, put together the
band for Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and set down bass tracks for Bruce
Springsteen’s Born to Run.
“I can think of some cats who can walk better than Richard, and some who
can strum the bass better, but I honestly can’t think of any that can
do everything as well as Richard. He knows the bass thoroughly,” said
Bobby Hutcherson just after he recorded his soon-to-be-classic Blue Note
1965 LP Dialogue with the bassist. Hutcherson wasn’t blowing hot air.
Davis did know his instrument thoroughly, and he still does-though you
have to be quick to catch him on one of his two or three yearly trips to
New York.
Modest, polite and quick to laugh, Davis now teaches at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. He signs his letters “Cousin Richard,” and would
rather share stories about his students, collaborators, mentors and
especially his daughter, Persia, than talk about himself.
Richard Davis did not pick up the bass until the relatively late age of
15, but he grew up in the music-saturated Chicago of the ’30s and ’40s.
The city Davis remembers contained so many notable jazz and blues
musicians that the walls of the clubs must have bulged. “You heard jazz
and blues music all over the place,” Davis says. “[It was] in all the
local bars and the alleys. You could walk around the corner-I lived on
47th street-and hear Memphis Minnie, Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters, B.B.
King. You heard all kinds of stuff in Chicago-guys playing guitar in the
alley somewhere, or on somebody’s back porch. [They would have] a ring
on their finger made out of the neck of a whiskey bottle to get that
twangy sound.”
The man who set Davis on his lifelong path, however, was his high school
music instructor, Walter Dyett. Under Dyett’s direction, the DuSable
High School music program turned out future luminaries like Ford turned
out automobiles. Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Johnny Griffin and
Gene Ammons all came through the same program. “He was a very powerful
man, a very spiritual man,” Davis says. “This guy was also hard. The
kids would put their cigarettes out when they saw him coming. The
principal, they wouldn’t put nothing out when they saw him coming.”
Dyett invited Davis out to his house, where the young bassist studied
harmony for two years. Even after Davis graduated, Dyett would call him
back to check up on his progress. Dyett, who himself played jazz on the
banjo and classical music on the violin, first suggested that Davis
pursue both jazz and classical music concurrently.
Davis also benefited from the influence of a slightly older bassist,
Karl Byrom, whose bout with tuberculosis held him back several grades in
school and eventually killed him. “He was a very advanced bass player
in jazz,” Davis says. “He introduced me to bass players on record. He
told me about Milt Hinton, Jimmy Blanton and Slam Stewart. His not
graduating was my fortune.”
While many of Davis’ peers headed south on music scholarships, he
elected to stay in the city. He studied with Rudolf Fahsbender, contra
bassist with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and took classes at Vandercook
College of Music during the day while gigging in burlesque houses by
night. Gangsters ran many of those clubs, and according to Davis his
particular burlesque out in Calumet was no exception. “It was kind of
exciting,” Davis says. “Kids are always excited about gangsters.” The
real draw for Davis was the house pianist known at the time as Sonny
Blount.
“Sun Ra was quite a mystic then. He would do things that were just
impossible. We were playing behind a screen, a mesh so we could really
see the dancer. I guess the audience just saw shadows. One time he said,
‘See the guy in the corner drunk? I’m going to sober him up.’ We were
playing “Body and Soul” and each chorus got more and more dissonant in
the chords. Before I knew it, that guy was standing up at attention.
Then [Sun Ra] looked at me and said, ‘Told you.’ He would say things and
then he’d prove it to you right away.”
Davis found his first big break as the bassist for pianist Ahmad Jamal.
In Chicago, Jamal already had an established reputation, a polished
style and a set book, which made the band an advantageous place for
Davis to be. The pianist boosted Davis’ career from the start. “He asked
me one day who my favorite piano players were, and I said, ‘Oscar
Peterson, Earl Hines, King Cole,'” Davis says. “He said, ‘Ask me who is
my favorite bass player is.’ I said, ‘Who’s your favorite bass player?’ I
thought he was going to say somebody like Ray Brown or Oscar Pettiford.
He said, ‘You.’ I said, ‘Me?’ He said, ‘Yes, you because you’re here
with me.’ That taught me so much, man, because I learned to appreciate
what I had. There wasn’t too much difference in our ages, but he had
that wisdom even then.”
Davis’ entree into Jamal’s band also paved the way for his move to New
York. It wasn’t a seamless transition, and it almost never happened.
Chicago pianist Don Shirley planned to take his trio to New York, but
his bassist didn’t want to go, so he arranged to switch places with
Davis and join Jamal’s group himself.
“At the very last moment, I said, ‘Man, I ain’t going to New York. Gimme
my job back,'” Davis says, laughing. “Know what he told me? ‘Get your
ass out of Chicago. You belong in New York.’ If he hadn’t said that, I
might never have left Chicago. I was too scared. I tell [my students]
that story now, so they know that they can make it, too.”
At the recommendation of drummer Roy Haynes, a friend of Davis’ who was
playing with Sarah Vaughan at the time, Davis took a room in a hotel
right across the street from Birdland. Davis moved in and spent two
solid days in his hotel room. Davis did eventually step outside, but
cutting into the top New York jazz and classical scenes would not be
automatic or easy. The bassist remembers hanging out at the musicians
union and picking up spare gigs. One involved playing at an amusement
park for $11. But since he lived across from Birdland he couldn’t help
but run into musicians. After all, he lived in the same building as a
few of them.
“I stayed in the hotel and practiced all day long-I didn’t have no
other interests,” Davis says. “The musicians who stayed in the hotel
heard me practice. They’d come knock on the door and say, ‘Man, what’s
that stuff you’re playing?’ I’d play some jazz and some classical,
because I was gigging on both ends-jazz and classical. People would
bring their bass players by to hear me play, and I was beginning to feel
confident and good. I remember Percy Heath coming by there. Paul
Chambers, Milt Hinton, George Duvivier and Al McKibbon. Al McKibbon and I
are still close today.”
A few out-of-town classical orchestras offered jobs to Davis, but his
heart was with jazz, and he decided to stay in New York. So when the
bass chair opened in Sarah Vaughan’s band, Davis was there to take it.
“People would ask, ‘Where’d you go to school?’ and I’d say, ‘University
of Vaughan’ just to tell them what I thought of her,” Davis says. “I
learned from being with her, Roy Haynes and [pianist and musical
director] Jimmy Jones. Jones was an orchestra full of harmony. Listen to
all that stuff. Good God, you won’t hear it nowhere else.
“I thought of her as being one of the greatest,” Davis says. “Jimmy
Jones said he thought she was one of the greatest, too, but, he said,
‘Don’t forget Ella Fitzgerald.’ I said I was raised on Fitzgerald. He
said, ‘That’s the problem-go back and listen to her. You just took her
for granted.’ So I did. But I still thought Sarah was the greatest. She
had a sound that nobody else did.” Davis spent five years with Vaughan before he started to think about
getting into something a little bit different. He found it, of all
places, on a subway platform in New York. Eric Dolphy walked up,
introduced himself and asked Davis if he was busy the next week. “I thought he was Ornette Coleman. I had never seen either of them in
person,” Davis says. “Anyway, he knew who I was. I said, ‘I ain’t doing
nothing.’ He said, ‘Well, I got a gig.’ I said, ‘OK.’ Ha!”
Dolphy’s music didn’t sound much like Vaughan’s, but Davis knew he was
in the right place. “After a couple of nights, [it felt like] there was a
marriage. All of a sudden the band clicked and I felt that that’s where
I belonged-right there with Eric Dolphy. It was just me and him. Nobody
else existed-audience, other band members, nothing.”
Davis stayed in New York until 1977, when the jazz scene and studio
musician’s work began to dry up. “Walk in and do recording dates three
times a day? That ain’t there no more,” the bassist says. The University
of Wisconsin came calling, and Davis, thinking about all the musicians
and teachers who helped make his career, decided to become an educator.
Davis left New York with only three regrets: that he never worked with
Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver or John Coltrane. Of the three, Davis
might have come closest to working with Coltrane.
“I forget the year, but I was in Birdland, hanging out and listening to
[Coltrane],” Davis says. “[Between sets], I went back in the kitchen
where he was, and he said, ‘Richard, I want you to come in the band.’
You know what I did? I walked away and didn’t say nothing. First of all,
it scared the shit out of me. Second of all, one of my friends, Jimmy
Garrison was playing there. I thought that I dreamt that. So a few years
ago, I said to McCoy [Tyner], ‘Did Trane ever say anything to you about
me working with the band?’ You know what he said? He said, ‘He talked
about you all the time.’ Then I believed it. I don’t remember answering
him. I don’t remember looking at him. I just walked away. And the thing
was I knew I could fit that picture. Sometimes you know what you could
do with a band that you hear. I knew I was the bass player for him.” Davis may have traded a room in New York City for a house in Madison,
but his schedule has hardly slowed to a Midwestern pace. Davis still
records semiregularly; his last date as a leader was 2001’s The Bassist:
Homage to Diversity (Palmetto). He has plans for an all-Ellington
session and would like to record the entirety of Sarah Vaughan’s
Brazilian Romance as a tribute to his former boss. Up until the late
’80s, when he moved to downtown Madison, he indulged in a childhood
passion unusual for city kids: riding horses. (Davis and another
neighborhood kid, Bo Diddley, used to work at a Chicago-area stable.) He
also coordinates antiracism programs at Wisconsin. Like his old mentor,
Walter Dyett, Davis spends the bulk of his time working with young
music students, a profession which he clearly loves. “I enjoy teaching very much. I have some promising students at this
moment and I have some who have gone on to be professors. Some have gone
on to be players in symphony orchestras. The latest one to get a job is
now coprincipal in Sydney, Australia,” Davis says. The bassist also
coordinates a yearly bass conference, Foundation for Young Bassists,
which yearly brings together 80 to 100 bass students and 19 bass
professors. For his upcoming bass camp, the 12th overall, Davis plans to
duet with an 11-year-old bassist with eight years’ playing experience.
“He started when he was three, playing a half-size cello,” Davis says.
“He and his mom stopped by my office and he played ‘Ave Maria.’ I said,
‘Man where’d you learn that from?’ He said, ‘From your recording.’ Ha!”
A forum for jazz reviews, discussion of new
jazz & blues music, the musicians, reviews of recent and historical
releases, reviews of live performances, concerts, interviews and almost
anything I find of interest.
by Ralph A. Miriello
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
The Philosophy of the Spiritual an Interview with Bassist Richard Davis Part 1 of 3
Richard Davis photo by John Abbott
The rich and resonant sound of Richard Davis' bass has been around for
the better part of sixty years. Now at age eighty four he spends most of
his time as an educator of euro-classical bass at the University of
Wisconsin in Madison, where he had been teaching since he left New York
back in 1977. He was at the epicenter of the movement from bebop to hard
bop and onto free jazz explorations that occurred throughout the
sixties and into the seventies. His discography spans major work with
Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Elvin Jones and Jaki Byard to
name a few and his in demand studio work has been an essential part of
seminal works by mainstream artists like Laura Nyro, Janis Ian, Barbara
Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Van
Morrison. It was a rare treat to spend two sessions speaking to Mr.
Davis via telephone from his home in Madison, Wisconsin on August 8th
and again on August 20th of this year.
Our conversations discussed our mutual fascination with life of the Ellington bassist Jimmie Blanton, Davis'
career and the people he played with in both the jazz and classical bass
worlds, his recollections of some of his predecessors on the bass, his
take on the future, his experiences as an educator, his social activism
and a lengthy discussion on his perspective on race in this country.
NOJ: First let me say thank you for taking out the time to
speak with me. I have been a fan of your music ever since I listened to your
album “Philosophy of the Spiritual” when I was in my early twenties.
RD: You were in your early twenties when you heard it?
NOJ: Yes. It was very profound for me. I had never heard a
bass being bowed like that in the jazz format. I came to really love jazz after
that and that album dove me into it deeper and deeper. I later came to know
about arco bass playing by people like Blanton and Pettiford and others. I especially was moved by your rendition of
“Dear Old Stockholm,” which you did so heart wrenchingly well. This was my
first exposure to the bass as a solo instrument of such great empathetic power.
It was very moving.
RD: Thank you so much.
NOJ: I guess our communication started with me sending you
my essay on the Duke Ellington bassist Jimmie Blanton. You responded kindly and
here we are.
RD: Oh Yeah.
NOJ: I was really intrigued by Blanton’s life. I heard you
on an interview with Ben Sidran from 2008 that you had Blanton’s bass at the
University( of Wisconsin, Madison). How did you get it and is it still there
and is it still with you and is it still being used?
RD; See, the bass player who took that bass over after
Blanton, and he also played with Duke Ellington, was his cousin Wendell
Marshall. He had the bass .So when he was no longer playing I asked him if I
could at least take care of it. I didn’t want to buy it, because it had been
handled, but I said, I’d like to take care of it. When he divorced his wife he had left it at
home in his basement and I wanted to protect it and he agreed. I kept it for many, many years, but he
finally took it back. Wendel died but one of the student/ teachers in my
foundation found the bass, found it somewhere and knows where it is.
NOJ: Interesting. When I did research for my Blanton essay,
I found some references to the fact that he may have started out playing in the
Jeter-Pillars Orchestra with a three stringed bass. Do you know anything about
that?
RD: That’s questionable, because some people said that he
recorded with Jeter-Pillars, but it has been found out that he did not. One of my students, who did a lot of
research, found out that he never recorded with that band. I know from his sister, (Gertrude Blanton)
who I interviewed before she died- it was about a four hour recorded interview-
she said that when he got the job with Duke Ellington he had to get a bigger
bass. She didn’t say anything about a three stringed bass, but just that he
needed a bigger bass.
Jimmie Blanton
NOJ: When I did my research on Blanton, I found the
information to be pretty sparse. One interview that I found, an oral history
with drummer Lee Young, who was Lester Young’s brother, was particularly interesting. I was very
surprised to find out that as Young recounted, Jimmie and Nat King Cole and
himself were “running” buddies in Los Angeles, California.
RD: They were?
NOJ: Yeah, that’s what Lee Young told an interviewer.
RD: Well, see one of his (Blanton’s) good friends was Ben Webster in that band.
Illinois Jacquet told me a story that when he first saw Blanton he was at jam
session and he had heard so much about him that he was nervous to go into it. I
was sitting right next to him when he told me that story. Wendell told me
he (Blanton) was headed toward
developing some new harmonies that were in his head.
There is a guy… from somewhere in Europe who is doing his
thesis on Blanton right now. He called on my former student, Peter Dominguez
who is a bass professor at Oberlin, and he is talking to me through a guy named
Lewis Porter, who wrote the book on Coltrane. So the research is still going on.
I am planning on giving him, if it works out that way, the tapes I have when I
interviewed Gertrude Blanton.
NOJ: I’d love to hear that interview.
RD: I caught up with her in Detroit before she died.
NOJ: What year was that?
RD: I don’t remember
but it was a long time ago.
NOJ: I don‘t know what you thought about the conclusions or
speculations in my essay? I was very surprised to find that Blanton had
probably played with Charlie Christian at least one time in his short career. The fact that they both died so young, Blanton
was 23 and Christian was 25 within five months of each other from TB, you have
to wonder if one may have contracted it from the other? It’s a mysterious coincidence considering they
both revolutionized their respective instruments and both died of the same
disease at the same time don’t you think?
Charlie Christian
RD: U huh. Even when
I started playing in 1945, my mother warned me against fast women and drinking.
TB was running rampant at that time.
NOJ: Let’s get back to you. You were born in Chicago 1930
and you were part of a family singing trio is that right?
RD: That was like when I was a kid.
NOJ: Do you still sing?
RD: I wouldn’t say I sing. It is something we just did
around the house. We did try out for an amateur hour show called Major Bowes.
We didn’t make it but we did it. My cousin, who influenced me to play the bass,
used to coach us in singing. It was just something we did as kids.
NOJ: What was the very first concert that you attended that
really had an influence on you.
RD: Well see, you know you would go to the neighborhood
theater and see the bands on stage, that was before television took over. The
Regal (Theater) was about four blocks from my house, (and I would try to go
there) anytime they had a stage show and they had shows there very, very often.
NOJ: Was there any specific concert or performance that blew
you away?
RD: I can’t remember
any specific concert, but the whole scenario blew me away because there you
were listening to these live musicians playing and singing. I was impressed
with the bass player, because he was spinning his bass around. It was quite a
thing to see.
NOJ: It was very showman- like.
RD: Oh yeah, and they all had showman-like qualities.
NOJ: Well it was more than just music it was entertainment,
right?
RD: It sure was. I was very impressed.
NOJ: You have stated in past interviews that your experience
with Walter Dyett your musical director at the famed Dusable
High School music program, was instrumental in both your musical and personal
development. Can you explain how he inspired you?
Walter Dyett
RD: Well first off he was a highly spiritual person and a
very skillful musician in different venues like jazz and classical. Did you
ever hear of the Erskine-Tate band? He played in that band, he played banjo in
that band. He was spiritual, he was a Rosicrucian and I learned a lot of things
just being around him.
NOJ: Was he religiously spiritual or just secularly
spiritual?
RD: I am not that familiar with it either, but I know he did
(practice) it. He was very inspirational with anybody whom he taught.
NOJ: Did he push you to achieve what you were looking to
achieve because he saw in you something that was a natural talent?
RD: Yes. He had me at his house once a week…studying theory
and harmony. I worked with his professional band. He told me what school to go
to, what college to go to. I went to the same college he went to, VanderCook
College of Music, and when I went there,( I understood) everything they were
saying because I had heard it before… he was a graduate of that school. I was
way ahead.
NOJ: I have read that
you pursued the bass because you were shy as a youngster and it was a bit of a
background instrument that you felt you could hide behind it, and also because
you had a natural affinity for the sound of the bass from a very early age. Can
you elaborate how this developed into such a lifelong passion?
RD: Well I guess you just said it all there. I don’t think I
can elaborate on that. (Laughing)
NOJ: Well I did read some of your previous interviews, but I
wouldn’t want to put words into your mouth.
RD: Yeah, I think you have done a good job with wherever you
have gotten that from.
NOJ: Well some of this material came from several sources,
but I would like to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
RD: That’s a good
idea.
NOJ: And I hear you’re a horseman?
RD: That’s for sure. I been a horseman since I was nine and
I only stopped in 1987.
NOJ: That became a passion too, right?
RD: It was definitely a passion. I did everything imaginable
with horses. I only stopped when I moved into the city here (Madison,
Wisconsin), because I no longer had a place to keep the horses.
NOJ: Getting back to
your musical experiences, who was the very first bass player that you saw
perform live that you were really impressed with, and when was that?
RD: That I heard?
Well see, at fifteen years of age, when I started playing the bass,
there was a student in high school with me named Karl Byrom .I was very
impressed when he played. He and I became
friendly and consequently there were all these other (jazz)bass players
he knew about.
NOJ: So he introduced you to them?
RD: Yeah he had their recordings. Oscar Pettiford, Jimmie
Blanton, Slam Stewart, Milt Hinton all these guys.
NOJ: So let me ask you about some of these guys and as one
of the great jazz bass players, I would love to get your impromptu take on them
as bass players.
Let’s start with Walter Page?
Bassist Walter Page
RD: Walter Page to me was like the Rock of Gibraltar with
the walking bass line. He was solid, he had a big sound. He was in a rhythm
section that they called the “All American Rhythm Section,” he and Jo Jones,
Freddie Green and Count Basie. I was not impressed with any of his particular
skills. He didn’t solo at all, as far as I know, but he was inspiring.
NOJ: I would say maybe Blanton next?
RD: Yes, Blanton next.
NOJ: And how did he change the way the bass was being
played?
RD: First, he was
soloing and he was bowing and he would come out in front of the band and play a
duet with Duke Ellington. I heard him and I said boy I’m impressed. My teacher
who was a European classical teacher from the Chicago Symphony had his record
too, what he did with Duke.
NOJ: Wasn’t Slam Stewart doing stuff like that at the same
time?
RD: Oh I can’t give you a date, but I am sure he was.
Bassist LeRoy "Slam" Stewart
NOJ: In that same interview done with Lester Young’s
brother, drummer Lee Young, Lee recalled that Slam Stewart and Jimmie Blanton
once had a cutting session. Lester, who was a big Slam Stewart fan, thought he
was the tops and was rooting for Stewart, but after he heard Blanton at that
session he became a convert.
RD: Oh yeah. I’d wish I could have heard Blanton in a jam
session playing with the bow. That was never recorded.
NOJ: What about Milt Hinton?
Bassist Milt Hinton
RD: Well Milt Hinton was an exceptional player playing on
both classical and jazz. He did a solo album. I think it was called Ebony Silhouette, he bowed on it. I wish
I could find that record. He bowed the melody I know I heard it. I think that
was the name of it Ebony Silhouette.
NOJ: What about Oscar (Pettiford)?
RD: Well now you’re talking about (laughing) some sort of
monster there man. Did you ever hear him play on Swamp Fire with Duke Ellington?
NOJ: Yeah, he used to play cello too right?
Oscar Pettiford and Duke Ellington
RD: Yeah. He was playing a baseball game and fell down and
broke his arm and he picked up the cello as something that put less
pressure on it. Oscar Pettiford was a natural and his solos were
swinging.
NOJ: What is the difference in your mind between Blanton and
Pettiford?
RD: Two different people with two different ideas on how to
solo. Pettiford was maybe as good as Blanton, I am not really sure about that,
but Blanton was in the world’s eye before Pettiford. I met Oscar, I talked to
him a lot. Oh yeah, I met him in New York, He was very egotistical. I was on
the (Ellington) bus when they were getting ready to leave, because I knew
somebody (in the band). Pettiford said ”I don’t need him (referring to Duke) ,
he needs me.” (Laughing) I said to
myself wow!
One time, I was hanging out with Wendell (Marshall, Ellington’s
regular bass player at the time) we were
both hanging out with Pettiford and Pettiford said to me and Wendell ”Why don’t you guys come around to this
rehearsal I got so you can learn how to
play the bass.” (Laughing) When he played on that record he did Swamp Fire, I was impressed. That
record, I think I have got it on the old vinyl.
NOJ: That’s got to be great. What about a guy like Tommy
Potter?
RD: Tommy Potter was a good bassist. He was one of the guys
in bebop who could keep those tempos. I never really saw him as a soloist. See
soloists were taking over from the guys that were just walking, and Tommy
Potter and Curley Russell were responsible for doing that (walking) stuff. I
remember all those guys. When I met Curley Russell, someone had taken me
backstage where he was working to meet him and he told the guy “… don’t tell
him to make a career out of music.” (Laughing)He was protecting me.
Bassist Curley Russell
NOJ: What about Ray
Brown?
RD: Oh yeah he was a monster, man. He was out there with all
of them.
Bassist Ray Brown
NOJ: How do these guys differ from each other in your mind?
RD: Well they are different
spirits of different times in jazz performance. You might say that Ray Brown
came up during the bebop era. Now the guy that started playing bebop on the
bass was Oscar Pettiford. That is the way I see it. There is another bass player back in those
days… he was with Stan Kenton.
NOJ: How about Israel Crosby was
he around then?
Bassist Israel Crosby
RD: Oh man Israel; he was one of
these young guys that started. Israel Crosby was ooh. I remember him in
Chicago. Yeah, good bassist.
NOJ: And (George)Duvivier?
RD: There is another one. He was
known for his beat and his precision and intonation.
NOJ: Yeah he has great
intonation.
RD: Yes sir!
NOJ: How about Red Mitchell?
Bassist Red Mitchell
RD: Now there was a phenomenal
player too.
NOJ: He played with a different
tuning didn’t he?
RD: I think he did.
NOJ: I loved his work with
Hampton Hawes trio. They just cooked. I really liked the way Red played.
RD: I met him much later.
NOJ: Then of course there was
Mingus, who was in his own world.
Bassist and Composer Charles Mingus
RD: Yeah he was in his own world
all right.
NOJ: (Laughing) Brilliant, but sort of difficult.
RD: He made sure of that.
NOJ: What about a guy like Scott
LaFaro, who everybody says was a pivotal point on the bass?
Bassist Scott LaFaro
RD: He was definitely a pivotal
point on the bass.
NOJ: And why was that?
RD: He just played high on the
register and played fast and with alternate fingering. He played out of time.
He was basically not just keeping the beat. You know Ray Brown said the first
guy that he heard who was doing that stuff was me.
NOJ: You?
RD: That’s what Ray Brown said.
Richard Davis at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay, California, February 28, 1987
Richard Davis (born April 15, 1930) is an American jazz bassist. Among his best-known contributions to the albums of others are Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch!, Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, of which critic Greil Marcus wrote (in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll), "Richard Davis provided the greatest bass ever heard on a rock album."[1]
June 27, 2013 University of Wisconsin-Madison News
Richard Davis talks with a student during the
annual Bass Conference hosted by the Richard Davis Foundation at
UW–Madison in 2011. Photo: Bryce Richter
Richard Davis can add one more leaf to his many laurels. On Thursday, June 27, the National Endowment for the Arts named Davis, a professor of bass, jazz history, and combo improvisation at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of four 2014 NEA Jazz Masters,
considered the highest honor for a living jazz musician. Recognizing
his lifetime achievements and exceptional contributions to the
advancement of jazz,Davis will receive a one-time award of $25,000. Each year since 1982, the arts endowment has conferred the NEA Jazz
Masters Award to living legends who have made major contributions to
jazz. Only living musicians or jazz advocates may be nominated for the
honor. For the 2014 NEA Jazz Masters, the panel considered 144
nominations.
“The campus ensembles he leads provide world-class
training for student performers, as well as joy and inspiration to
audiences.”
--Susan Cook
“Richard Davis has been at the forefront of both jazz performance
and, especially, jazz education for decades,” says Susan C. Cook,
professor and incoming director of the UW–Madison School of Music. “The
campus ensembles he leads provide world-class training for student
performers, as well as joy and inspiration to audiences. This
recognition from the NEA is a fitting tribute to his long and
distinguished career.” Johannes Wallmann, who leads UW–Madison’s jazz studies program, also praised Davis’s selection. “As colleagues, we’re thrilled that he has been recognized with this
richly deserved award,” says Wallmann. “He’s a huge figure in this
music; I’ve known of his work for years. He has set a new standard for
jazz bass playing, and our students are so lucky to have him as a
resource.” The award places Davis in the same category as 131 luminaries such as
Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and the Marsalis family. “It was an honor to be recognized amongst my peers,” says Davis,
recognizing the past generations of musicians. “I’ve worked with almost
all of them. A lot of people were, in a sense, models.”
Watch a 2012 “Forward Motion” episode about Davis:
He points to one in particular: bassist Milt Hinton, a 1993 honoree who passed away in 2000. “His career was just phenomenal,” says Davis. “When I moved to New
York, he introduced me to a lot of people who made my career
successful.” Davis is known as a remarkably prolific sideman, performing and
recording in nearly every genre. Chicago born, he came to UW–Madison
after spending 23 years in New York City establishing himself as one of
the world’s premier bass players. “Richard Davis, with his wide palette of skill sets, has been an
inspiration for me and many bassists,” says bassist and composer Linda
Oh in Davis’s NEA citation. “To me, he shows strength and versatility
within his musicianship — a versatility that seems to not compromise
integrity and individuality, something many bassists can only dream to
achieve.”
“Living is excitement. Each hour, day, minute brings on another surprise. You need to grow.”
--Richard Davis
This passionate curiosity has extended to his career as an educator.
Since 1977, he has passed that multidimensionality on to students at
UW–Madison. “I think the ability is a necessary path to grow on, incorporate all
musics,” says Davis. “As Duke Ellington said, ‘there’s only two kinds:
good and bad.’ He was right.” His years at UW–Madison sometimes seem like a small part of his
teaching career. When he shares knowledge, on and off campus, he rarely
limits himself to a single time or subject. He leads seminars on racial
healing from his home; he convenes dozens of young bassists for annual
conferences. So what’s next? “Just living,” he says. “Living is excitement. Each hour, day, minute brings on another surprise. You need to grow.”
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Richard Davis 
One-on-one conversation yields profound insights and sage advice and from one of the world’s most highly respected bassists
NOJ: I guess our communication started with me sending you
my essay on the Duke Ellington bassist Jimmie Blanton. You responded kindly and
here we are.
