The Seventies: Wild About Bill

Organ player Wild Bill Davis's is a sound much associated with Duke Ellington's music at the turn of the seventies. Duke had met Wild Bill originally in 1945 and the two had recorded a version of Things Ain't What They Used To Be for Mercer Records in the early fifties. In the late sixties, he returned to Duke Ellington's orbit via his association with Johnny Hodges and a series of smouldering albums they recorded for Verve (with just one side trip to RCA Victor, pictured).

In order to keep Hodges, Ellington hired Davis. Wild Bill's first recording session with the Orchestra was for Readers' Digest Records on 2 September, 1969 and his final recording session with the Orchestra was the last recording session for New Orleans Suite, two days before Duke's seventy-first birthday on 27 April, 1970. This was also Hodges's' final recording with the band which only seems to confirm Ellington kept Davis on in order to keep Hodges.

Here is a golden nugget about Davis's tenure with the band, gleaned from a posting to Facebook by the tenor saxophonist Douglas Lawrence. I post it here not to infringe any copyright but for the benefit of future Ellington researches. Douglas Lawrence said:

 I worked a lot with Wild Bill in the 1980's. This is what he told me - Wild Bill and Johnny Hodges were starting to tour together with a succesful 4-piece organ band (Hodges, Wild Bill, guitar and drums). The band was becoming quite successful and Hodges started taking time off from the Ellington Orchestra. They were working somewhere (I can't remember where) and Ellington showed up at the gig and sat directly in front of the bandstand. After the performance Ellington joined Hodges and Wild Bill backstage in the dressing room. Ellington looked at Wild Bill and said (I'll never forget these words) "I don't know what I'm going to do with you, but I have to have Johnny back, so I'm hiring you too!" Wild Bill said that was it for the quartet! He joined Ellington's band and for most of the first several months just learned orchestration from Ellington, and worked as a copyist, no playing at all. (That in itself is another great story for perhaps another time.) I distinctly remember Wild Bill telling me his time with the Ellington Orchestra was the highlight of his illustrious career, and it involved very little playing. It was the tutelage from Ellington on big band arranging and composing that Wild Bill appreciated so much. Wild Bill loved to write for big band after that. It became his passion, although only a few of us actually knew it.

Post Script:

Here is an interesting anecdote, also posted on to Facebook by Lee Cronbach, retired rock, cabaret, Mexican salsa, and gospel keyboardist now living in the Philippines. There is further reference to Wild Bill Davis and it will have added pertinence as these recollections reach 1971. Again, no infringement of copyright or privacy intended. These observations, it seems to me, are important for the record...

DUKE'S HOSPITALITY TO A POOR WHITE COUNTRY ROCK BAND - showing what a warm giving person he could be.

Back in 1971 I was in Frosty Furman's country-rock band in Boston. We were all Berklee jazz students, all broke, living off brown rice and Hamburger Helper. We were playing biker bars, gay bars, and street people bars. I am gay and at Berklee I met a former Duke roadie who was gay, and he got us the gay gigs. So one night we were playing at our best - we had practised hard all week and the audience was very receptive. RIght at midnight, we were doing a 20 minute version of Gloria, with each soloist outshining the previous one. When Brent Moyer played the best solo of the night (Brent is still gigging as 'The Global Cowboy') in walked my friend with a friend of his who was - a Duke band member!

So after the gig he invited us all to be Duke's guests at Paul's Mall, where Duke was playing that week. Now you probably know Duke despised rock and disliked country music (he never covered a Hank Williams song in his life, I believe). And we were young, unknown, white, and broke - having nothing to offer the aging Duke (he died two or three years later). Nonetheless, Duke greeted each of us with a warm double hand-shake, and said 'Tonight you are our guests. You sit at the band table." We were all Duke fans, none more than me, and were thrilled to get this close-up view. And our taste-buds were thrilled when a group of high-society Boston ladies walked in carrying silver platters all filled with elegant cuisine - asparagus hollandaise, filet mignon, brie and other cheeses, etc. - and the trays were all passed down the band table and us hungry rockers got to take our stomachs to heaven! 

To top it off, Duke allowed me to sit right next to Wild Bill Davis so could watch how he was playing (I am a keyboardist) (this was the New Orleans Suite Band minus the departed Johnny Hodges). Then in the middle of the set Duke said "I will now play a solo number dedicated to my fathers, who were all much greater men than me." And he proceeded to play a solo more intricate and deeper than any solo I have heard of his on record - for five minutes!

Later I read his autobiography and discovered his disdain for 'rock and roll musicians'. So why was he so nice to us? We didn't play a style he approved, we were broke and unknown, no connections, nothing to offer him .... and he treated us as if we were Count Basie's grandchildren! None of us have ever forgotten the night we were Duke's guests. And it certainly inspired us to practice harder!