Richard Davis, an esteemed bassist who played not only with some of the biggest names in jazz but also with major figures from the classical, pop and rock worlds, died Wednesday. He was 93.
His death was announced by Persia Davis, his daughter. She did not say where he died, but said he had been in hospice care for the past two years.
Mr. Davis, who was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2014, has appeared on more than 600 albums. He was a first-rate player for some of the most important figures in jazz history and had fruitful collaborations with reed player Eric Dolphy (whose composition “Iron Man” was named after him) and the pianist Andrew Hill. He was a member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, which performed every Monday evening at the Village Vanguard in New York from the ensemble’s debut in 1966 until 1972.
His advanced technique, especially with the bow, led to work with classical orchestras conducted by Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. His adaptability resulted in sessions with Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Bonnie Raitt.
Mr. Davis made 30 albums as leader or co-leader from 1967 to 2007. He was named best bassist in DownBeat magazine’s readers’ survey from 1968 to 1972.
Reviewing a 1986 performance at Sweet Basil in Greenwich Village by a band led by Mr. Davis and featuring Freddie Waits on drums, DailyExpertNews music critic Robert Palmer wrote: “The relaxed, slightly behind-the-beat swing that is typical of so many jazz rhythm sections are not for them. Their accents fall exactly on time, and they vary their springy forward movement with rhythmic eddies and rapids and an explosive sense of dynamics.”
Richard Davis was born on April 15, 1930 in Chicago. His mother died during childbirth and he was adopted by Robert and Elmora Johnson. He was introduced to music through the records his mother collected in her native New Orleans and the hymns that Mr. Johnson sang around the house.
He attended DuSable High School in Chicago, where he studied music with Walter Dyett, who mentored many future jazz stars, and began playing bass at the age of 15. As he recalled in a 2013 interview published in the American Federation of Musicians magazine Allegro: “I was just fascinated by the sound. The bass was always in the background and I was a shy kid. So I thought I might like to be in the background.”
Mr. Davis credited Mr. Dyett with pushing him to play different styles, and during high school he also studied with Rudolf Fahsbender of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1952, he would earn a bachelor’s degree in music education from VanderCook College of Music in Chicago.
As a young player in Chicago, he was mentored by local bassists such as Wilbur Ware and Eddie Calhoun. While still in college, he performed with pianist and bandleader Sun Ra, billed at the time as Sonny Blount.
His first major performance was with pianist Ahmad Jamal in 1952. He then went on the road with another pianist, Don Shirley (whose story was told in the film “Green Book”); this led to his first recordings and eventually to his move, in 1954, to New York, where he worked with singer Sarah Vaughan from 1957 to 1962.
In a 2005 interview for The New York City Jazz Record, Mr. Davis talked about how he used aspects of his classical studies and his time with Ms. Vaughan to create his particular bowing technique:
“Some of the early bassists used the bow to play the walking bass line. And I heard all that coming as a child. Therefore, when you start studying books on bass methods, you start with the bow, whatever your intentions are, so there must be some intertwining between what I heard as a child, what I heard when I worked with Sarah Vaughan and that I wanted to imitate. those voices.”
After his time with Ms. Vaughan, Mr. Davis’ reputation began to grow rapidly, as did his discography. The year 1964 was a particularly important year; he played on the final studio recording of Mr. Dolphy, “Out to Lunch!”; Mr. Hill’s seminal “Point of Departure”; drummer Tony Williams’ first album, “Life Time”; and ‘The Song Book’ by saxophonist Booker Ervin.
Three years later, Mr. Davis’ first album under his own name, ‘Heavy Sounds’, on which he and drummer Elvin Jones co-lead, was released on the Impulse! label. In the following years, his work expanded beyond the jazz world: his credits included serving as musical director for Mr.’s album ‘Astral Weeks’. Morrison and providing the haunting bow work at the end of ‘The Angel’ on the Mr. album. Springsteen. “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ”
Mr. Davis continued to release albums regularly throughout the new millennium. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he was also a member of the New York Bass Violin Choir, led by fellow bassist Bill Lee, and played with other greats of the instrument such as Ron Carter, Milt Hinton and Sam Jones. In the late 1980s he was a founding member of New York Unit, a trio with pianist John Hicks and drummer Tatsuya Nakamura, which recorded eight albums for Japanese labels until 1998.
In an email, Mr. Carter said that Mr. Davis was “an incredible bassist, a wonderful teacher and my dear friend.”
In 1977, Mr. Davis left New York to become professor of music and music history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I got a call offering me a job at the University of Madison because they didn’t have a bass teacher on campus,” he told OnWisconsin, the university’s alumni magazine, in 2011. “I said, ‘Where’s Madison?’ I asked around to see if anyone had heard of the place because this school kept calling me. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the importance of teaching others, and I had always wanted to teach young people. I thought maybe it was time.”
He retired from teaching in 2016. In 2018, Richard Davis Lane in east Madison was named in his honor.
Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.
In addition to his recorded work and his influence on generations of students, Mr. Davis leaves behind two legacies: one musical, the other social.
The Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists, which he founded in 1993, hosts an annual conference for young players to learn from professionals and perform with each other. And in 2000, Mr. Davis founded the Madison chapter of the Center for the Healing of Racism, an outgrowth of his 1998 founding of the Retention Action Project at the University of Wisconsin to improve graduation rates for students of color.
His activism was related to his earliest experiences trying to be a classical player. He said in the 2005 interview:
“My environment with racial issues started the day I was born. You were born with a dark skin color, and that in itself creates the attitude of other people who do not have a dark skin color, who see you as someone who should be oppressed and who does not have equal opportunities in society. So that is something that is permanent.
“I was 18 years old and I could play all the European classical music,” he continued, “but you weren’t allowed to join the symphony orchestra because there were racial issues and prejudices. They didn’t want to see you.”
The bassist William Parker, who studied with Mr. Davis as a young man in New York, said: “Richard Davis was a wonderful musician and human being. He reminded me of an African king, regal and strong. I don’t praise him because he could play both classical and jazz. I applaud him because the brother had a big, poetic sound full of freedom.”
Mr. Davis, he added, “taught me a thing or two about music, but his most important message was: ‘Be yourself.’”
