Francis Davis (born August 30, 1946) is an American author and journalist. He is best known as the jazz critic for ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...

'', and a contributing editor for ''

The Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

''. He has also worked in radio and film, and taught courses on

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

and

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. He was a 1994 recipient of the

Pew Fellowships in the Arts A pew () is a long bench seat or enclosed box, used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, synagogue or sometimes a courtroom. Overview The first backless stone benches began to appear in English churches in the th ...

Life and career

Davis was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. He attended

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

(1964–69); he emerged in the early 1980s as the jazz critic for ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...

''. Along with his jazz writing he has tackled a wide variety of subjects, such as ''

Seinfeld ''Seinfeld'' ( ) is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, over nine seasons and List of Seinfeld episodes, 180 episodes. It stars Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld ( ...

'' and

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

, for whom he published what many fans consider the definitive appreciation, in ''

''. Davis is characterized by his keen insights into the development of

American style This is a list of dance terms that are not names of dances or types of dances. See List of dances and List of dance style categories for those. This glossary lists terms used in various types of ballroom partner dances, leaving out terms of highly ...

and culture, with asides in the first person who balance his theoretical certainty and a witty, human element. His articles and essays on figures such as

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...

and

Anthony Davis Anthony Marshon Davis Jr. (born March 11, 1993) is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He plays the power forward and center positions. Davis is an eight-time NB ...

impart a sharp picture of a writer coming of age, and aging, with the artists of his generation. Over the past few decades he has sat with

Betty Carter Betty Carter (born Lillie Mae Jones; May 16, 1929 – September 26, 1998) was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique, scatting and other complex musical abilities that demonstrated her vocal talent and imaginative inter ...

Sonny Rollins Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a ...

, Wynton Marsalis, Sun Ra, and the late ''New Yorker'' film critic, Pauline Kael, after whose lengthy discussions Davis penned, ''Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael''. Along with international publication Davis has been widely recognized with awards, including a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1992, and a Pew Fellowship the following year. He is a multiple recipient of the

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

-Deems Taylor Award, and was nominated for a

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...

in 1989 (with Martin Williams and Dick Katz) for his liner notes to ''Jazz Piano'' for the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. Davis won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes, for the Miles Davis album, ''

Kind of Blue ''Kind of Blue'' is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. It was recorded on March 2 and April 22, 1959, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City, and released on August 17 of that year by Co ...

: 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition.''

Stanley Crouch Stanley Lawrence Crouch (December 14, 1945 – September 16, 2020) was an American poet, music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, novelist, and biographer. He was known for his jazz criticism and his 2000 novel ''Don't the Moon Look ...

, a famed jazz critic who frequently writes about race relations, took Davis to task in a 2003 ''

Jazz Times ''JazzTimes'' is an American magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by Ira Sabin as the newsletter ''Radio Free Jazz'' to complement his record store. Coverage After a decade of growth ...

'' column for allegedly speaking with condescension toward the predominantly black contingent of musicians who create "jazz that is based on swing and blues." Because of what Crouch alleges to be underlying racial resentment and fear, Davis "lifts up someone like, say, Dave Douglas as an antidote to too much authority from the dark side of the tracks," according to Crouch. Crouch was fired from ''Jazz Times'' after writing the column.Daniel King,
Hanging the Judge - Crouch, Jazz & the All-American Skin Game
, May 13, 2003, ''Village Voice''. Davis lives in

and is married to Terry Gross, producer and host of the NPR program '' Fresh Air''.

Bibliography

* ''In the Moment'' (Oxford University Press, 1986) * ''Outcats'' (Oxford University Press, 1990) * ''The History of the Blues'' (Hyperion, 1995) * ''Bebop and Nothingness'' (Schirmer, 1996) * ''Like Young'' (Da Capo, 2001) * ''Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael'' (Da Capo, 2002) * ''Jazz and Its Discontents: A Francis Davis Reader'' (Da Capo, 2004)

References

External links

Da Capo Press: Author Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Francis 1946 births Living people The Atlantic (magazine) people Jazz writers Pew Fellows in the Arts The Philadelphia Inquirer people Temple University alumni Writers from Philadelphia