Bassist to the stars, UW's Richard Davis dies at 93

As a bassist, Richard Davis enriched the sound not only of jazz recordings by Eric Dolphy, Elvin Jones and Sarah Vaughan, but also of rock and pop albums by Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon, to name a few.

As a professor for nearly four decades at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he shaped many young musicians, sharing Black history and cultural experience while teaching the finer points of improvising music.

Davis died Sept. 6 in Madison at age 93. His daughter Persia confirmed his death to Madison365.com. He had spent the past two years in hospice care.

"In my classes they sometimes say, 'This is my first time with a Black professor. I'm glad I had the experience,' " Davis told the Milwaukee Journal's Kevin Lynch in a 1984 interview.

In 2014, Davis received one of the top honors in jazz, the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award. Closer to home, the City of Madison honored him in 2019 by naming a street after him: Richard Davis Lane, which connects Darbo Drive and Webb Avenue on the east side.

Born in 1930 in Chicago, Davis studied both classical and jazz bass as a teenager, playing in the Youth Orchestra of Greater Chicago (now the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras) and was instructed by Rudolf Fahsbender of the Chicago Symphony. His early jazz career included stretches in the bands of pianist Don Shirley and vocalist Sarah Vaughan; he also played classical music under the batons of Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein and other glittering names.

Davis' many jazz sessions in the 1960s included "Out to Lunch" (1964), widely considered the best album by his friend Eric Dolphy, an innovative alto saxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist. Then based in New York, Davis was called for many pop and rock sessions, including Paul Simon's "There Goes Rhymin' Simon" (1973), Bruce Springsteen's "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." (1973) and "Born to Run" (1975), and notably Van Morrison's jazz-influenced "Astral Weeks" (1968). Writing about "Astral Weeks," noted rock critic Greil Marcus gushed that "Richard Davis provided the greatest bass ever heard on a rock album."

"While most jazz bass involves plucking, the bow is also used, and at that Davis has few peers," Milwaukee Journal jazz reviewer Kevin Lynch wrote in that 1984 profile.

Davis' family estimated that he recorded on 3,000 albums and jingles, in addition to his dozen albums as a leader.

In 1977 Davis was recruited to UW-Madison, where he taught music and musical history until his retirement in 2016. He also founded a Madison chapter of the Institute for the Healing of Racism and worked with the campus Retention Action Project, dedicated to enrolling, keeping and graduating students of color.

From boyhood on, Davis had a passion for horses. When he first came to UW, he lived outside Barneveld where he kept and rode several horses, participating in dressage and other competitions.

Davis met his wife Pat in 1972; she played a role in his conversion to the Nichiren branch of Buddhism. On a 1977 pilgrimage to Japan, they met their first child, Joshua, a Japanese and black child living in an orphanage for interracial offspring of American soldiers.

Persia Davis told Madison365.com her father requested no public memorial service. The family suggests memorial contributions to the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UW's Richard Davis, bassist for Van Morrison and others, dies at 93