Eddie Davis (saxophonist)
Encyclopedia
Edward Davis who performed and recorded as Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, was an American
jazz
tenor saxophonist
.
, Lucky Millinder
, Andy Kirk
, Louis Armstrong
, and Count Basie
, as well as leading his own bands and making many recordings as a leader. He played in the swing, bop
, hard bop
, Latin jazz
, and soul jazz
genres. Some of his recordings of the 1940s also could be classified as rhythm and blues
.
His 1946 band, Eddie Davis and His Beboppers, featured Fats Navarro
, Al Haig
, Huey Long, Gene Ramey
and Denzil Best
.
In the 1950s he was playing with Sonny Stitt
, while from 1960 to 1962 he and fellow tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin
led a quintet. From the mid-60s, Davis and Griffin also performed together as part of The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band
, along with other, mainly European, jazz musicians.
Davis may be heard playing on the 1973 CBS
album Ella Fitzgerald
at the Newport Jazz Festival
Live at Carnegie Hall
on the song "Young Man with a Horn".
With Count Basie
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
tenor saxophonist
Tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
.
Biography
Davis played with Cootie WilliamsCootie Williams
Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter.-Biography:...
, Lucky Millinder
Lucky Millinder
Lucius Venable "Lucky" Millinder was an American rhythm and blues and swing bandleader. Although he could not read or write music, did not play an instrument and rarely sang, his showmanship and musical taste made his bands successful...
, Andy Kirk
Andy Kirk
Andrew Dewey Kirk was a jazz saxophonist and tubist best known as a bandleader of the "Twelve Clouds of Joy," popular during the swing era....
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, and Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, as well as leading his own bands and making many recordings as a leader. He played in the swing, bop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
, hard bop
Hard bop
Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano...
, Latin jazz
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is the general term given to jazz with Latin American rhythms.The three main categories of Latin Jazz are Brazilian, Cuban and Puerto Rican:# Brazilian Latin Jazz includes bossa nova...
, and soul jazz
Soul jazz
Soul jazz is a development of jazz incorporating strong influences from blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often an organ trio featuring a Hammond organ.- Overview :Soul jazz is often associated with hard bop. Mark C...
genres. Some of his recordings of the 1940s also could be classified as rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
.
His 1946 band, Eddie Davis and His Beboppers, featured Fats Navarro
Fats Navarro
Theodore "Fats" Navarro was an American jazz trumpet player. He was a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. He had a strong stylistic influence on many other players, most notably Clifford Brown.-Life:Navarro was born in Key West, Florida, to Cuban-Black-Chinese parentage...
, Al Haig
Al Haig
Alan Warren Haig was an American jazz pianist, best known as one of the pioneers of bebop.Haig was born in Newark, New Jersey...
, Huey Long, Gene Ramey
Gene Ramey
Gene Ramey was an American jazz double bassist.Ramey was born in Austin, Texas, and played trumpet in college, but switched to sousaphone when playing with George Corley's Royal Aces, The Moonlight Serenaders, and Terrence Holder. In 1932 he moved to Kansas City and took up the bass, studying with...
and Denzil Best
Denzil Best
Denzil DaCosta Best was an American jazz percussionist and composer born in New York City. He was a prominent bebop drummer in the 1950s and early '60s....
.
In the 1950s he was playing with Sonny Stitt
Sonny Stitt
Edward "Sonny" Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime...
, while from 1960 to 1962 he and fellow tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin
Johnny Griffin
John Arnold Griffin III was an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist.- Early life and career :Griffin studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago under Walter Dyett, starting out on clarinet before moving on to oboe and then alto sax...
led a quintet. From the mid-60s, Davis and Griffin also performed together as part of The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band
The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band
The Kenny Clarke–Francy Boland Big Band was one of the most noteworthy jazz big bands formed outside the United States.It was formed in 1961, when, with the help of producer Gigi Campi, the US drummer Kenny Clarke and Belgian pianist and composer Francy Boland and ex-Ellington bassist Jimmy Woode...
, along with other, mainly European, jazz musicians.
Davis may be heard playing on the 1973 CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
album Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
at the Newport Jazz Festival
Newport Jazz Festival
The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. It was established in 1954 by socialite Elaine Lorillard, who, together with husband Louis Lorillard, financed the festival for many years. The couple hired jazz impresario George Wein to organize the...
Live at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
on the song "Young Man with a Horn".
As leader
- 1958: Cookbook, Prestige, with Shirley ScottShirley ScottShirley Scott was an American hard bop and soul-jazz organist. She was most known for working with her husband, Stanley Turrentine, and with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis...
(org), George DuvivierGeorge DuvivierGeorge Duvivier was an American jazz double-bass player.Duvivier was born in New York City and took up the cello and also the violin while in high school before settling on the bass. He also learned composition and scoring before going out on the road with Lucky Millinder and then with the Cab...
(b), Arthur Edgehill (dr), Jerome RichardsonJerome RichardsonJerome Richardson was an American jazz musician, tenor saxophonist, and flute player, who also played alto sax, baritone sax, clarinet and piccolo...
(fl) - 1960: Trane Whistle
- 1960: Tough Tenors with Johnny Griffin, Junior ManceJunior ManceJulian Clifford Mance, Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer.-Biography:...
(p), Ben RileyBen RileyBen Riley is an American hard bop drummer known for his work with Thelonious Monk, as well as Alice Coltrane, Stan Getz, Woody Herman, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Ahmad Jamal, Kenny Barron, and as member of the group Sphere...
(dr), Larry GalesLarry GalesLawrence Bernard "Larry" Gales was an American jazz double-bassist.Gales began playing bass at age 11, and attended the Manhattan School of Music in the late 1950s. In that decade and the beginning of the next he worked with J.C. Heard, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Johnny Griffin, Herbie Mann, Junior...
(b), MPS RecordsMPS RecordsMPS Records was a German jazz record label founded in 1968. MPS stands for "Musik Produktion Schwarzwald" .-History:... - 1961: Afro-Jaws (Riverside RecordsRiverside RecordsRiverside Records was a United States record label specializing in jazz. Founded by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer under his firm Bill Grauer Productions, Inc. in 1953, the label was a major presence in the jazz record industry for a decade...
) - 1961: Jawbreakers (Riverside, with Harry Edison)
- 1961: Blues Up And Down with Johnny Griffin
- 1961: Live at Mintons (live), Prestige, with Griffin, Mance, Riley
- 1962: Streetlights with Don PattersonDon Patterson (organist)Don Patterson was an American jazz organist.Patterson played piano from childhood and was heavily influenced by Erroll Garner in his youth. In 1956, he switched to organ after hearing Jimmy Smith play the instrument...
(org) - 1967: Sax No End with Johnny Griffin, Francy BolandFrancy BolandFrançois Boland was a classically trained Belgian jazz composer and pianist.He first gained notice in 1949 and worked with Belgian jazz greats like Bobby Jaspar, and in 1955 he joined Chet Baker's quintet...
(arrangements) - 1970: Tough Tenors Again 'n' Again, with Johnny Griffin
- 1975: The Tenor Giants Featuring Oscar PetersonThe Tenor Giants Featuring Oscar PetersonThe Tenor Giants Featuring Oscar Peterson is a 1975 live album by the tenor saxophonists Zoot Sims and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, featuring the pianist Oscar Peterson...
, (with Zoot SimsZoot SimsJohn Haley "Zoot" Sims was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor and soprano.-Biography:He was born in Inglewood, California, the son of vaudeville performers Kate Haley and John Sims. Growing up in a performing family, Sims learned to play both drums and clarinet at an early age...
) - 1977: Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis 4 – Montreux '77Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis 4 – Montreux '77Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis 4 – Montreux '77 is a 1977 live album by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, recorded at the 1977 Montreux Jazz Festival. -Track listing:#"This Can't Be Love" – 5:49...
, (live) - 1981: Sonny, Sweets and Jaws - Live at Bubbas, (live), (with Sonny StittSonny StittEdward "Sonny" Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime...
and Harry "Sweets" Edison) - 1983: Jazz at the Philharmonic – Yoyogi National Stadium, Tokyo 1983: Return to Happiness
As sideman
- 1961: Night Hawk, Prestige, with Coleman HawkinsColeman HawkinsColeman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
With Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
- E=MC2 (1957)
- Basie Jam (1973)
External links
- Overview of Davis' contributions to jazz
- Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis performing with the Count Basie OrchestraCount Basie OrchestraThe Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie. The band survived the late '40s decline in big band popularity and went on to produce notable collaborations with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Ella...
.