In memory of Richard Davis, bassist (April 15, 1930 – September 6, 2023)

Beautiful New York Times obituary here which chronicles his rich genre-spanning musical career and his legacy through education and activism.

Here are a few times his work intersected and furthered Charles Mingus’ legacy:

He performed on Mingus’ Let My Children Hear Music, recorded at Columbia Studios in NYC in 1971.

Bassists at Let My Children Hear Music, Columbia Studios 1971. Photographer poss. Val Wilmer.

Early incarnation of Mingus Dynasty formed after Mingus’ death to continue his music. Recorded live in 1984 and released in 1990.

Liner notes:

The Mingus Dynasty group, was the first attempt at a new concept that of a floating pool of former Mingus sidemen (or in the case of his own instrument, the few acoustic bassists he was known to admire, such as Eddie Gomez and Charlie Haden). To be sure, there had been organisations from the big-band era whose lifespan was longer than that of their leader, and who continued playing the fixed arrangements and trading on the names of, for instance, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

But asking a small group of five, six or seven musicians, even those who had worked for him, to create Mingus music without him at the helm was something else. So much of the spirit of his work, as originally performed, derived not only from his volatile personality but from the way he forced his players to realise their own potential as much as that of his compositions. The musical succes of Mingus Dynasty's live appearances and its four albums is therefore a singular tribute to the participants concerned - and, incidentally, to the vision of Susan Graham Mingus who first organised the group shortly after the husband's death in 1979.

There was only one Charles Mingus, however, and the efforts of the performers are stimulated and focused both by their memoires of the man himself and by the inherent qualities of his material.

credits

released October 20, 1990

Randy Brecker - trumpet
George Adams - tenor saxophone
Roland Hanna - piano
Richard Davis - bass
Kenny Washington - drums

Recorded May 27th, 1984

Mingus Dynasty Concert Poster:

Note the address is the third floor at the same location of Fez under Time Cafe where Mingus Big Band would later perform weekly.

And here they both are doing an ad for AMPEG!