Christopher Drukker
Davis performing in 2014 at the Eric Dolphy Freedom of Sound concerts in Montclair, New Jersey.
He’s a renowned bassist with a wondrous resume in jazz, classical and rock; venerated UW-Madison professor; healer of racial injustice. Richard Davis has filled many vital roles in his 88 years. They’ll all be celebrated Oct. 11 at Overture’s Capitol Theater at a multimedia event titled Passing the Bass: A Global Tribute to Richard Davis.
“Richard has brought world attention to the campus and city, and we should honor his life and legacy,” says Willie Ney, former director of UW’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative, who is producing the free event in conjunction with the Overture Center. “Not just through his impact on jazz, but also his amazing work on social justice.”
Memorabilia demonstrating Davis’ involvement in music and activism will be on display in the theater foyer. Among the honors are several of his eight Downbeat awards, his Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award, photos and posters from his career, and President Obama’s letter congratulating Davis on receiving the 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award (only the fifth bassist so honored since the award’s inception in 1982).
In 1975, Davis was the reigning Downbeat jazz bassist of the year (and had been so since 1967), had played on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, and had spent a year with the New York Philharmonic. In 1977, he accepted the invitation to become UW’s tenured professor of bass where he taught classical and jazz performance, jazz history and improvisation.
“People wonder even today why I came to Wisconsin,” says Davis, a Chicago native. “I just thought it was time for me to teach.” The artist wanted to inspire new generations, as his DuSable High School music director Captain Walter Dyett had done for him.
The tribute was curated by Ney, former Wisconsin Public Television cinematographer/director Chuck France, and former Urban League president and WORT jazz host Steve Braunginn. The event’s host and emcee, Peter Dominguez, was Davis’ first UW student. A veteran symphony bassist who now heads up the jazz studies program at Oberlin College and Conservatory, Dominguez is also artistic director for the Richard David Foundation for Young Bassists, which held its 25th annual conference earlier this year. Dominguez will be playing Davis’ “Lion’s Head” bass, one of two of Davis’s basses in his care; it’s the bass Davis played — to rapturous reviews — when he assembled the ensemble for Van Morrison’s legendary Astral Weeks album 50 years ago.
The Passing the Bass band, also hand-picked by Davis, includes drummer Andrew Cyrille, violinist Aska Kaneko, and pianist Angelica Sanchez — who all played at Davis’s last recorded concert, in 2015 — and tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson. After a series of selections coordinated by Sanchez, the quintet will also perform Davis’ song for his daughter, “Persia, My Dear,” the title track from his 1987 album.
Video profiles by Katy Sai’s StoryBridge Studio and Wisconsin Public Television’s Wisconsin Life make it clear that Davis’s students revere him as much as he still reveres Dyett. The multi-generation connection also shows in a short 2014 video of Davis performing with Hiwot Adilow. She was a part of Davis’ Black Music Ensemble, which focuses on the music of black composers, and a member of First Wave, the hip-hop scholarship program that Ney founded and led for 10 years. She wrote a song “One For Richard,” which she performed with Davis at his former home.
Already deeply ingrained in Madison, Davis will now become a part of the city infrastructure. As musician and neighborhood activist Wilder Deitz will announce during the event, construction has started on Richard Davis Lane, linking Darbo Drive and Webb Avenue on the east side. The street will have metaphoric meaning, joining isolated areas to solve a long-standing problem, much as Davis brings isolated people together through his Institutes for the Healing of Racism. “I’m glad it’s in a black neighborhood,” he says. “But when I see a street named after somebody, I think of Martin Luther King or Duke Ellington, not me.”
Deitz represents the next generation of Davis’ legacy. He was a member of the Black Music Ensemble near the end of Davis’ 29-year-career, and five years ago, he founded a Black Music Ensemble at East High School, with others underway at La Follette and Memorial high schools. The university’s ensemble hasn’t fared as well; it was reduced to a non-credit, student-run organization after Davis retired in 2016.
The night of celebration ends in commemoration, a recording of Davis performing the spoken word “Caroline’s Song,” in memory of his longtime companion, Caroline Loniello. Predicts Dominguez: “There won’t be a dry eye in the house.”
