Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Davis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 14, 1967 but was raised in Binghamton, New York. He grew up with jazz music being played in the household listening to his father’s record collection and his grandparents played. With mentors Doug Beardsley and Al Hamme, he was fortunate to play with his peers Kris Jensen, Tony Kadleck, Tom Dempsey, Dena DeRose and John Hollenbeck among many others.
He went on to study jazz under Dr. Jackie McLean at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford in Connecticut. While in school, Davis also gained valuable experience sitting-in and gigging with Hotep Galeta, Nat Reeves, Don DePalma, Larry DiNatale and others at The 880 Club. A recommendation to Art Blakey saw Steve joining the Jazz Messengers at Sweet Basil in New York City in 1989. Following Blakey’s death, he joined the Hartt faculty in 1991 where he continues to teach today, and taught at The Artist’s Collective in Hartford.
He gained further international recognition playing with McLean’s sextet for five years and for four in Chick Corea’s Origin. Trombonist Steve Davis has played and recorded with Freddie Hubbard and The New Jazz Composers Octet, Benny Golson’s New Jazztet, Hank Jones, Cecil Payne, Horace Silver, Cedar Walton, Harold Mabern, Larry Willis, Eddie Henderson, Roy Hargrove, Avishai Cohen, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and Michael Weiss.
Davis has been a member of the cooperative sextet One for All since its inception in 1996, alongside Eric Alexander, Jim Rotondi, David Hazeltine, John Webber and Joe Farnsworth. He also currently plays with Larry Willis’s Quintet, The Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band/Septet, leads The Steve Davis Quintet and remains a fixture on the New York and Hartford jazz scenes.
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Requisites
Portrait In Jazz: This album contains Bill Evan’s greatest trio with wonderful interplay between piano and bass on Autumn Leaves and it introduces Evans’ Peri’s Scope. This is a gem of an album filled with standards but the interpretations are not the predictable routine.
Personnel: Bill Evans – piano, Scott LaFaro – bass, Paul Motian – drums
Record Date: Riverside / December 28, 1959
Songs: Come Rain or Come Shine, Autumn Leaves (take 1), Autumn Leaves (take 2), Witchcraft, When I Fall In Love, Peri’s Scope, What Is This Thing Called Love, Spring Is Here, Someday My Prince Will Come, Blue In Green (Take 3), Blue In Green (Take 2*)
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Jazz In Film
Young Dillinger: This 1965 film directed by Terry O. Morse and stars Nick Adams, Robert Conrad and John Ashley. The movie brings together three of America’s most infamous criminals – John Dillinger (Adams), Baby Face Nelson (Ashley) and Pretty Boy Floyd (Conrad) in this uninspired gangster film.
The story goes… John Dillinger lands in jail after attempting to rob his girlfriend’s father at her suggestion. Falling in with the likes of Baby Face Nelson and Floyd, he arranges their escape and together they start on an escalating series of holdups.
This film was notorious in its time for its gratuitous violence, so much so that public outcry prompted CBS to cancel plans to air it in early 1968. In a grim coincidence, star Nick Adams died a few days later.
Trumpeter, arranger and composer Shorty Rogers composes and conducts the music score.
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Requisites
Something Cool: June Christy established her reputation fronting the Stan Kenton Orchestra at the same time that Pete Rugolo was composing and arranging. Her voice was ideal for the high-art ambitions of the progressive jazz movement. Her diction was impeccable, her phrasing often inspired, and as this reissue of her classic Something Cool -augmented by another 12 tracks recorded between 1953 and 1955–so ably demonstrates, her technique was extraordinary, allowing her to navigate the most abstract melody with accurate pitch and rhythmic confidence.
Personnel: June Christy – vocals, composer, arranger and bandleader Pete Rugolo and His Orchestra
Record Date: 1953
Songs: Something Cool, It Could Happen To You, Lonely House, This Time The Dreams On Me, The Night We Called It A Day, Midnight Sun, I’ll Take Romance, A Stranger Called The Blues, I Should Care, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, I’m Thrilled
(Re-mastered CD has the same songs both in Mono and Stereo)
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Jazz In Film
Wayward: This 1932 Paramount Productions drama about family intrigue brought on by a jealous mother-in-law was directed by Edward Sloman and starred Nancy Carroll, Richard Arlen and Pauline Frederick.
Taken from the novel Wild Beauty by Mateel Howe Farnham it features the song ”What’s the Difference”. Edward Heyman wrote the lyrics and the music composed by Johnny Green. The film also featured music by pianist Claude Hopkins and his Orchestra.
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