Richard Davis on bass (no info on original metropub file about credit)
Madisonians don’t always do right by the artists in our midst, as when we rejected building proposals by Frank Lloyd Wright or kicked Joyce Carol Oates out of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. But we can be proud of our long love affair with Richard Davis, the peerless bassist who died on Sept. 6. In 1977, UW-Madison lured Davis away from a full-time performing career in New York City to join the music faculty — one of the greatest gets in Wisconsin history. For nearly 50 years, he performed and taught here, making us an unlikely power spot in the international bass community.
Davis grew up in Chicago, strumming on a broom before he could afford his first instrument. Trips to downtown music shops turned up recordings by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to be savored and studied. On Ellington’s “Ko-Ko,” the boy put his ear up to the speaker to hear bassist Jimmy Blanton’s artfully timed breaks. These self-directed listening sessions set him on his zigzagging musical path.
Davis hit the big time in 1957 with jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughan, propelling classic versions of “All of Me” and “Body and Soul” with his supple walking bass. Next, he switched from classic to confrontational on saxophonist Eric Dolphy’s 1964 avant-garde album Out to Lunch. Bassists don’t usually push themselves to the front of a jazz combo, but this one made his presence known with booming double stops, expressive glissandos and soulful bowing.
Out to Lunch scrambled my synapses as a teenager, and after noting Davis’ name on the album jacket, I started seeing it everywhere. There he was setting the pace on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. There he was laying down suave rhythms behind Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand. He even turned up in orchestral settings under Leonard Bernstein’s baton.
When I moved to Madison, I couldn’t believe my luck to find Davis playing around town. At the Memorial Union, the old Civic Center or Mr. P’s bar on the south side, he was by turns earthy and elegant, melding gutbucket moans with graceful pizzicato. His bass was not just a solid foundation: it was the shaper of moods, the fire in the furnace. With his insistent rhythms, varied attack and attention to detail, he made every chorus an adventure.
I once caught Davis at New York City’s Village Vanguard, leading an all-star quintet. He served as both accompanist and commander in chief, forging the band’s sound while also graciously stepping aside to let his sidemen shine. He helped each soloist create a full-blown dramatic statement, choking the time or letting it breathe. He’d build momentum, reach a series of mini-climaxes and then back off. When the big climaxes finally came, they felt earned — and were often overwhelming.
In my first Isthmus article about Davis, I used the phrase “greatest jazz bassist in the world” and later felt guilty of hyperbole. But seeing him at the Village Vanguard — and noticing his framed photo on the wall beside those of his jazz idols Ellington and Armstrong — confirmed that hyperbole, on the subject of Richard Davis, was simply impossible.
[In recent Isthmus coverage of Richard Davis, Bob Jacobson profiled the bassist’s musical career and his social activism, and Stuart Levitan wrote about a 2018 tribute to Davis at the Overture Center. And read Sara Freeman's 2000 interview with Davis here.]
