Wild Bill Davison

William Edward “Wild Bill” Davison was born January 5, 1906, in Defiance, Ohio. Davison early on displayed a love for music, as well as a natural ability to master musical instruments. He first learned to play the mandolin, guitar, and banjo. At age 12 he learned the cornet, his instrument of choice. Having limited sight-reading ability, he nonetheless could flawlessly play and improvise on a song after hearing it once.

Davison began his career playing with the Ohio Lucky Seven. From 1923 to 1925, he was the featured soloist with the Chubb-Steinberg Orchestra of Cincinnati, moving in 1926 to the Detroit-based Seattle Harmony Kings.

Davison earned a featured solo spot with Benny Meroff’s Orchestra in Chicago in 1928. The four-beat, swinging jazz he and his contemporaries played came to be known as “Chicago-style.” Despite his stellar musicianship, he stayed on in the Midwest when many of his colleagues migrated to New York. Leaving the Meroff Orchestra in 1931, Davison formed a 12-piece band of his own, building the ensemble around his cornet and the clarinet and alto sax of Frank Teschemacher. A Chicago-area promoter dubbed Davison “Wild Bill,” a sobriquet which accurately described the musician on and off the bandstand.

In 1932, Davison was driving the car in the auto accident in which Teschemacher was killed, which adversely affected his career for the remainder of the 1930s. By 1941, he was in New York and in 1943 made some notable recordings for Commodore that revived and solidified his reputation. After a stint in the Army, Davison was often heard at Eddie Condon’s club in New York City, where he performed from 1945 to 1957. He spent most of the postwar years leading Dixieland bands or playing with Condon.

Wild Bill Davison played with dozens of bands and made more than a score of albums between 1965 and 1975. During his later years, he fronted his own band and toured often in the United States and in Europe. He recorded frequently, had an eventful, storied life, and remained active up until his death in Santa Barbara, California, on November 14, 1989, at the age of 83. – compiled by TST staff