Davis, Francis (John) 1946-

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DAVIS, Francis (John) 1946-

PERSONAL: Born August 30, 1946, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Dorothy (a medical clerk; maiden name, McCartney) Davis. Education: Attended Temple University, 1964-69.

ADDRESSES: Office—Atlantic Monthly, 77 N. Washington St., Boston, MA 02114-1908.

CAREER: WHYY-FM Radio, Philadelphia, PA, producer and host of "Interval" (weekly jazz music program), 1978-83; Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, jazz critic, 1982—; Musician, jazz editor, 1982-85; Atlantic Monthly, music critic, 1984—, contributing editor, 1991—. National Public Radio, jazz critic for "Fresh Air," 1987; 7 Days, New York, NY, staff writer, 1988-90. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, instructor in Folk and Blues, 1995—.

MEMBER: National Writers Union.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grammy nomination (with Martin Williams and Dick Katz), 1989, for liner notes to Jazz Piano; Guggenheim fellow, 1993; Pew fellow, 1994, for literary nonfiction; Morroe Berger-Benny Carter fellow, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1994.

WRITINGS:

In the Moment: Jazz in the 1980s, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1986, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Outcats, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

The History of the Blues, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1995.

Bebop and Nothingness: Jazz and Pop at the End of the Century, Schirmer Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Like Young: Jazz and Pop, Youth and Middle Age, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

Jazz and Its Discontents: A Francis Davis Reader, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic, Cadence, Connoisseur, Down Beat, High Fidelity, Jazz Times, Stereo Review, Boston Phoenix, Times Literary Supplement, Village Voice, and Washington Post Book World; Musician, contributing editor, 1982-85; High Fidelity, contributing editor, 1984—; Wire (U.K.), columnist, 1990—.

SIDELIGHTS: Francis Davis's In the Moment: Jazz in the 1980s was hailed as "the jazz book of 1986" by Ken Tucker of the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the Moment is a collection of jazz criticism articles that Davis wrote for various periodicals. Davis's reviews and interviews concern themselves with better-known jazz artists such as Sonny Rollins and Anthony Davis, but also with more obscure musicians, including the Vienna Art Orchestra's Mathias Ruegg and pianist Sumi Tonooka. As David Nicholson explained in the Washington Post Book World, "much of Davis's book deals with the tension between composition and improvisation" in contemporary jazz. Labeled "an incisive interviewer and rethinker" by Kevin Whitehead in Down Beat, Davis is also "often a wonderful writer" with "an eye for terrific images," according to Neil Tesser in the New York Times Book Review. "Due to the fluidity of Davis's style," wrote Richard B. Kamins in Cadence, "you can almost touch the people and hear the music that he writes about."

Bebop and Nothingness: Jazz and Pop at the End of the Century is a collection of previously published articles that, for the most part, profile peripheral musicians, including homeless tenor sax player Charles Gayle. "Davis extols the avant garde," noted Zan Stewart in Down Beat. "His willingness to unflinchingly say what he believes gives the reader new reason to think and care about jazz."

Like Young: Jazz and Pop, Youth and Middle Age is a collection of reviews and essays about a broad spectrum of pop icons, from Bob Dylan to Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday to Frank Sinatra, Puff Daddy to Newt Gingrich. Variety's Richard Dubin noted articles he thought to be particularly worthy of attention. "'Not Singing Too Much' provides a fleshy portrait of the enigmatic and brilliant songwriter Dave Frishberg," observed Dubin. "The interview with Sun Ra, 'Taken: The True Story of an Alien Abduction,' is a classic."

Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael is Davis's tribute to his friend and mentor, New Yorker critic Kael, who Davis once said "established the movie review as a form of literature with the potential for social commentary." The volume consists of three long conversations that took place over two days at Kael's home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, before her death in 2001. Kael, who was eighty and suffering from Parkinson's disease, tells of her likes and dislikes in television and film, including her fondness for television series Sex in the City and The Sopranos.

She talks of her struggles with New Yorker editor William Shawn, who was conservative in his attitude toward reviewing films. Kael, who had watched Deep Throat, for example, gave in to his request not to review it. Salon.com contributor Allen Barra noted that her interest in Deep Throat "had nothing to do with the quality of the film and everything to do with her interest in eroticism in the movies, a subject she was allowed to touch on only occasionally in the New Yorker." Barra wrote that "the most enjoyable aspects of Afterglow aren't any strong revelations, but the seemingly endless stream of declarations, opinions, and offhand remarks that reflect the joy Kael took in a good conversation." Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman remarked that Davis's "vital give-and-take aptly celebrates Kael's acumen and effervescence."

Davis once told CA: "As a music critic, I consider myself a beat reporter. My job is to report the facts, but my opinion of the performance in question becomes the chief fact it is my duty to report.

"Among jazz critics, my major influences have been Martin Williams and Nat Hentoff, the coeditors of the short-lived magazine Jazz Review. Between them, Williams and Hentoff revolutionized jazz criticism: Williams by applying a critical rigor more associated with judgment of literature and 'serious' music; Hentoff by emphasizing the social climate in which jazz musicians create. I try to integrate both approaches.

"However, in a way that is difficult for me to specify, the pop critic Robert Christgau and the film critics Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris have influenced my thinking and writing to an even greater extent than Williams and Hentoff. Perhaps it is simply because of the assumptions they make, and I wish to make, that art criticism is implicit social criticism, that criticism is a kind of literature, that opinions and impressions and ideas are somehow of real value."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, September 15, 2002, Donna Seaman, review of Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael, p. 192; April 15, 2004, Ray Olson, review of Jazz and Its Discontents: The Francis Davis Reader, p. 1414.

Cadence, April 1987, Richard B, Kamins, review of In the Moment: Jazz in the 1980s.

Down Beat, March 1987, Kevin Whitehead, review of In the Moment; November, 1996, Zan Stewart, review of Bebop and Nothingness: Jazz and Pop at the End of the Century, p. 65.

New York Times Book Review, January 4, 1987, Neil Tesser, review of In the Moment; October 6, 2002, A. G. Basoli, review of Afterglow, p. 33.

Philadelphia Inquirer, November 28, 1986, Ken Tucker, review of In the Moment.

Publishers Weekly, February 12, 1996, review of Bebop and Nothingness, p. 68; August 5, 2002, review of Afterglow, p. 65.

Times Literary Supplement, February 16, 1996, Tony Russell, review of The History of the Blues.

Variety, November 5, 2001, Richard Dubin, review of Like Young: Jazz and Pop, Youth and Middle Age, p. 30.

Washington Post Book World, December 21, 1986, David Nicholson, review of In the Moment.