Spanky Davis
Ronald J. "Spanky" Davis (born March 6, 1943 in Indianapolis , Indiana ; † October 23, 2014 in Manahawkin , New Jersey ) was an American jazz trumpeter and band leader .
Live and act
Davis grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana; his mother was a music teacher. He received piano lessons from the age of six and began playing the trumpet at the age of seven. He got his stage name Spanky when people told him he looked like George "Spanky" McFarland of the Little Tramps . At the age of fifteen he had his first professional appearances and played in regional bands in Indiana and later in Nebraska and from 1963 to 1966 in Chicago . Then he came to New York City for the first time with Howard McGhee's big band , but then went back to Chicago, where he worked as a musician until 1978. In 1979 he moved permanently to New York when he was appointed director of the Jimmy Ryan All Stars , which originally performed as the house band of the Jimmy Ryan’s jazz club in New York until it closed in 1983, from Roy Eldridge . The Jimmy Ryan's All-Stars existed until the late 1990s; Members were u. a. Ted Sturgis , Joe Muranyi and Eddie Locke .
He became known in particular through his membership in the bands of Charlie Palmieri (1979), Sam Jones (1979-82) and Machito (1980/81). In the early 1980s he worked with Dick Meldonian (Plays Gene Roland Music) , also with Benny Goodman (1982/83), Al Cohn (1983/84), Bob Haggart (1984/85), Buddy Tate (1986-90), Buck Clayton (1986-92), Vince Giordano ( The Goldkette Project 1988), Ruth Brown (1990), Joey DeFrancesco ( Where Were You?, 1990), Annie Ross (1991/92) and Frank Sinatra (1991-93).
Davis led his own quartet from 1986, which included Eddie Locke, Richard Wyands and Murray Wall ; from 1984 to 1991 he played with the reformed Savoy Sultans . In the mid-1980s he worked with Arvell Shaw as a member of his formation Armstrong Legacy . Since 1997 Davis has performed in Chuck Folds ' band at the New York jazz club Sweet Basil . In 1999 he worked on Dan Barrett's album Being a Bear .
Web links
- Literature by and about Spanky Davis in the catalog of the German National Library
- Portrait at Westerncaravan.com
- Jazz & Ragtime in Indiana ( Memento from December 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Lexical entry
- Richard Cook & Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , London: Penguin 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 . (8th edition)
- Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Death on maxwellfuneralhome.com ( Memento from 29 October 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ http://www.westerncaravan.com/Spanky.htm
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davis, Spanky |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Davis, Ronald J. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American jazz trumpeter and band leader |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 6, 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Indianapolis , Indiana |
| DATE OF DEATH | 23 October 2014 |
| Place of death | Manahawkin , New Jersey |