Art Davis

Arthur D. Davis, double-bass player, bandleader and psychologist: born Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 5 December 1934; married; died Long Beach, California 29 July 2007.

It's hard to imagine a more stunning jazz bassist than Art Davis. He was a virtuoso with a fat, perfect sound on the instrument. He was intelligent enough to blend into any kind of group that he chose to play with, be it Louis Armstrong's, John Coltrane's or James Brown's.

Although he was so skilled, and recognised by musicians and listeners alike, it took him a long time to get established at the front rank of the instrument. He spent four years in the Fifties leading his own band in his hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "We wouldn't play rock and roll, so there weren't even many people in Harrisburg heard us."

Davis didn't take up the bass until 1951, at the age of 16, but by then he had studied piano and won a national competition as a tuba player. "I gave the first bass concerto ever heard in my city," he said, "and while I was still in school I played in the Harrison Symphony which was a great thing because of the race barrier."

As gifted in classical music as he was in jazz, Davis applied for posts in symphony orchestras, but, in the climate of the times, had little chance. Nat Hentoff wrote:

Black musicians were frozen out of those jobs, partly because Jim Crow was in the wings but also because of favouritism. First chair players especially - all of whom were white - would push their very best students - all of whom were white - into some of the positions as they opened.

Davis spoke out against this kind of treatment and felt that he then lost a lot of work because he was marked down as a troublemaker. He was given scholarships to study at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, but had to relinquish them when he returned to Harrisburg to look after his mother.

He joined the band of the drummer Max Roach with whom he played from 1958 to 1961, dovetailing his role with work in Dizzy Gillespie's Quintet over the same period. "The bass is usually the last instrument of interest in most groups," said Davis, "and in those two groups there were so many others who soloed."

But his performances with the trumpeter were so prodigious that despite his pessimism he moved straight to the top rank on his instrument. He made significant recordings with Gillespie and was featured in a movement of Gillespiana, a suite written for Gillespie and a large orchestra by Lalo Schifrin and recorded in 1960. He toured Europe with Gillespie's Quintet the following year and the group played a slimmed-down version of Gillespiana that featured Davis prominently.

Davis worked with the tenor saxophonist John Coltrane at various times between 1958 and 1967, making notable recordings with him in 1961 and 1965, including a role in Coltrane's much-revered suite A Love Supreme (1965). Coltrane was fascinated by the role of the bass and sometimes used Davis in tandem with his fellow bassists Jimmy Garrison and Reggie Workman.

Never short of work, Davis played with Quincy Jones, Judy Garland, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Hank Williams, Erroll Garner, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Ornette Coleman, Roland Kirk, McCoy Tyner and a long list of leaders. He worked in the studio orchestra at NBC from 1962 to 1963 and for Westinghouse Television from 1964 to 1969 and CBS from 1969 to 1970. At that time he was blacklisted (he called it "whitelisted") because he began a lawsuit to improve opportunities for African-American musicians in symphony orchestras.

Despite his difficulties in getting jobs, he worked with many leading orchestras including the National Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Radio City Music Hall Symphony, the Westchester Symphony and the Orange County Symphony.

He taught at Manhattan Community College from 1971 to 1973. In 1973 he worked with Thelonious Monk and gained his BA at Hunter College. In subsequent years he received degrees in psychology from New York University (1976 and 1981) and then worked principally as a psychologist whilst leading his own small jazz groups at night. He published The Arthur Davis Method for Double Bass in 1975.

In 1986 he moved to Long Beach to teach at California State University. From that year on, he organised annual tributes to Coltrane in Los Angeles and joined Alice Coltrane and members of her family for a "Coltrane Legacy" tour of Japan in 1987. From 1993 he led a quintet that included Ravi Coltrane and in the mid-Nineties recorded with Herbie Hancock and Ravi Coltrane in his band. He made a cameo appearance in the film The Shadow (1994).

He toured Europe with David Murray's All Stars in 2000 but mainly devoted himself to teaching and playing occasionally in clubs in Los Angeles.

Steve Voce