WILD BILL DAVISON
Genres: Dixieland, Swing • United States

'Wild' Bill Davison (January 5, 1906, Defiance, Ohio – November 14, 1989, Santa Barbara, California) was a fiery jazz cornet player who emerged in the 1920s, but did not achieve recognition until the 1940s. He is best remembered for his association with the bandleader Eddie Condon, with whom he worked and recorded from the mid-1940s through to the 1960s. Born in Defiance, Ohio in 1906, Wild Bill had a powerful, if somewhat limited, style on the cornet. The poet Philip Larkin, a fan, described his playing thus: "...a player of notable energy, he uses a wide range of conscious tonal distortions, heavy vibrato, and an urgent, bustling attack. At slow tempos he is melting, almost articulate. Humphrey Lyttelton has compared him with the kind of reveller who throws his arm round your neck one moment and tries to knock you down the next."   "All the same, his stylistic mannerisms-the read more...