Jesse Ed Davis (September 21, 1944 – June 22, 1988) was a Native American guitarist who was well regarded as a session artist and solo performer. He played for some of the biggest music stars of all time yet his incredible highs and tragic lows have often been overlooked.
Jesse Ed Davis III was born in Norman, Oklahoma. His father, Jesse Edwin "Bus" Davis II, was a citizen of the Comanche Nation and a Muskogee and Seminole descendant. He was a graphic designer for the military, as well as a fine artist. His mother, who was the first Kiowa woman to earn a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University, taught piano. A sad event in Davis’s family wound up cementing his commitment to the guitar. When he turned 15, his grandfather died. The family honoured the Kiowa tradition of observing a year of mourning, and Davis used that quiet time to hone his skills. Later, he broadened his sound by playing with scores of local bands in Oklahoma City and surrounding areas. In 1966 one of his bands The New Breed recorded a single "He's Just Another Bird Dog."
After graduating from college, Davis’s first professional gig was with Conway Twitty’s band playing rockabilly-country. That opportunity led him to California. For eight years, he lived in Marina del Rey with his companion, Patti Daley, and her son, Billy. Through his friendship with Levon Helm, he became friends with Leon Russell, who introduced him to recording session work. Davis joined Taj Mahal and played guitar and piano on Mahal's first four albums. He played slide, lead and rhythm, country and even jazz during his three-year stint with Mahal. In a 1967 gig, Mahal played with a young Duane Allman in attendance, and Davis' slide guitar playing on Statesboro Blues that night would ignite Allman's interest in the technique. Mahal and his band were later invited to England by the Rolling Stones, and they appeared as a musical guest in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.
He played in the "electric" disc of Mahal's double album Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home (1969) and appeared in two songs of his fourth album Happy Just to Be Like I Am (1971). In 1970, Davis played on and produced Roger Tillison's only album for Atco Records, a division of Atlantic. Roger Tillison's Album was recorded live. It was finally released on CD by Wounded Bird Records in 2008, with Davis playing electric guitar, bottleneck (slide) guitar and banjo. In 1971, Davis recorded his first solo album after Atco Records signed a contract with him to record two albums with the label. The first was the album ¡Jesse Davis! (1971), which featured backing vocals by Gram Parsons and performances by Leon Russell and Eric Clapton, among others.
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Davis was close friends with Gene Clark. In 1971, he played on and produced Clark's second solo album, White Light, and provided lead guitar on Clark's album No Other in 1974. On Jackson Browne's 1972 debut album, Davis played the electric guitar solo on Browne's hit song "Doctor, My Eyes". After guesting with Russell on Bob Dylan's 1971 singles "Watching the River Flow" and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, and collaborating in Albert King’s Lovejoy, Davis went on to work with George Harrison, performing at the ex-Beatle's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden, along with Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Russell, Keltner, Clapton and others.
Two more solo albums followed: in 1972 Ululu, which included the original release of Harrison's "Sue Me, Sue You Blues", and in 1973 Keep Me Comin, occasionally listed as Keep On Coming. Around this time, Davis began playing with John Lennon, for whom he played lead guitar on the albums Walls and Bridges (1974) and Rock 'n' Roll (1975). In addition, Davis was a guest performer on other albums by former Beatles: Harrison's Extra Texture (1975) and Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974) and Ringo's Rotogravure (1976). In the late summer and fall of 1975, he performed with the Faces as second guitarist throughout their final US tour. It was on this tour that Davis became addicted to drugs.
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| Jesse with The Faces |
That part of his life became much more serious. The session bassist Bob Glaub once said that “the Jesse who left for that tour was not the same Jesse that returned. He came back a junkie.” After the Faces tour, Davis continued to work as a session player. In addition to the artists already mentioned, Davis contributed to albums by Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Keith Moon, Steve Miller, Guthrie Thomas, Harry Nilsson, Ry Cooder, David Cassidy, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, Rick Danko, Van Dyke Parks and others. He played on Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man (1977), produced by Phil Spector.
In 1977, Davis moved to Hawaii. In 1981, he returned to Los Angeles broke and ravaged by drugs and alcohol. In and out of clinics, Davis disappeared from the music industry for a time, spending much of the 1980s dealing with his addiction. But by 1985 he formed and played in the Graffiti Band, which coupled his music with the poetry of the Native American activist John Trudell (American Indian Movement). The result of this collaboration was the album, released initially only on cassette, called AKA Grafitti Man, which Bob Dylan called the best album of the year.
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In his last years, he served as drug and alcohol counsellor at the American Indian Free Clinic in Long Beach. Davis collapsed in the laundry room of an apartment building and was pronounced dead in Venice, Los Angeles, California, on June 22, 1988. Police stated that his death appeared to be the result of a drug overdose. Davis had a fresh needle mark on one arm and burned matches and tin foil were scattered on the ground nearby. He was 43 years old.
In 2002, Davis was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. In 2018, Jesse Ed Davis was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame at the 18th Annual Native American Music Awards. A performance tribute was held by his former Graffiti band members. His cousins Richenda Davis Bates and Constance Davis Carter accepted the induction.
(Edited from Wikipedia & The Guardian)
