In the spring of 1967, the blues singer Taj Mahal was about to cut his first solo album for Columbia Records and needed to find a new guitarist in a hurry. He headed to a bar in Los Angeles’s Topanga Canyon, tipped off about a young Native American musician with a mesmerizing touch on the Telecaster. Having already worked with the guitar prodigy Ry Cooder in the short-lived band the Rising Sons, Mahal’s standards were high. But it took barely a minute of hearing Jesse Ed Davis to realize he’d found what he was looking for.
“This guy was speaking through his instrument,” Mahal recalled. “In those days everyone wanted to play the blues, but they’d overplay their licks at high volume, trying to get up into the stratosphere. They didn’t have the natural feeling he did — Jesse legitimately had the blues and played it his own way.”
Revered by fellow musicians, Davis has remained a cult figure, despite an extraordinary résumé: He played on some of Bob Dylan’s most enduring records, worked closely with multiple Beatles, anchored the band at the Concert for Bangladesh and shaped classic albums by Rod Stewart, Harry Nilsson and Neil Diamond, among others. A complex character who didn’t fit Native American stereotypes or the typical notions of a rock ’n’ roller, in the decades since his 1988 death at 43, he’s remained something of an enigma.
That should change with the publication of the biography “Washita Love Child: The Rise of Indigenous Rock Star Jesse Ed Davis,” by Douglas K. Miller. In conjunction with the book, the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Okla., is hosting a multimedia exhibition, “Jesse Ed Davis: Natural Anthem.” In February, some of Davis’s friends — including Mahal and Jackson Browne — will play a tribute concert at Tulsa’s Performing Arts Center.
“Jesse was a phenomenon,” said Browne, whose 1972 track “Doctor My Eyes” was transformed by Davis’s spontaneous one-take solo into a timeless pop hit. “He responded to music in such an immediate way. You always wondered how he became that kind of artist.”
That question nagged Miller, an associate professor of Native American History at Oklahoma State University. “Growing up, I saw Jesse Davis’s name on all these records that I loved,” he said. “But he was just a name in the credits. Listening to this beautiful music he made, I wondered: ‘Why don’t we know more about this guy?’”
Born in Norman, Okla., in 1944, Jesse Edwin Davis III was the child of a Kiowa mother and Comanche father, with an impressive family history; his relatives included the first female chief of the Seminole Nation, the first Indian U.S. Marshal and a noted Hollywood set designer. The family led a comfortable middle-class life, but as the only Native American in his elementary school, Davis “was bullied quite a bit,” Miller said.
He found his refuge in music. Obsessed with Elvis Presley and Jimmy Reed, Davis picked up guitar in seventh grade, developing a singular style shaped by the powwows he danced in as a child, his mother’s piano lessons and his attempts to imitate the horn players on the Count Basie Orchestra records he loved. Jim Keltner, a fellow Oklahoman and session drummer who worked closely with Davis in the ’70s, noted that “his rhythmic sense was different than anyone I played with. He had his own groove, the Jesse Ed groove.”
After playing in a series of local bands, the 18-year-old Davis hit the road backing the rockabilly singer Conway Twitty. Following stints studying at the University of Oklahoma and serving in the National Guard, he sought his musical destiny, and headed to Los Angeles in 1966.
Fate intervened when Davis linked up with Mahal, a hip young singer who possessed the power of the old blues masters. They became favorites among the rock cognoscenti, influencing the fledgling Allman Brothers, and getting invited by the Rolling Stones to come perform in England. “We were the coolest thing going down the road,” Mahal said.
Davis, in particular, was embraced by the British rock aristocracy, forming immediate bonds with the Stones, the Beatles’ John Lennon and George Harrison, and Eric Clapton. In 1970, Clapton helped Davis land a solo deal with Atlantic Records’ Atco label, and over the next three years he released a series of organically funky rock albums — “¡Jesse Davis!,” “Ululu” and “Keep Me Coming” — that mostly shied away from the era’s Native American politics or social concerns.
“Why didn’t Jesse become the voice of the Native rights movement or the Red Power generation?” Miller asked. “He certainly could have. He didn’t want his career or his place in the world to be defined by being an Indigenous person. He was leery of being a token ‘Indian artist.’”
Davis’s solo career never really took off, in part because he remained one of the most in-demand session musicians through the ’70s, playing on records by John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Cher and David Cassidy. In addition to his work with Dylan in 1971 (on “Watching the River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”), he grew close to John Lennon during his “Lost Weekend” period — appearing on the “Walls and Bridges” and “Rock ’n’ Roll” LPs.
Davis thought he might get a call to join the Rolling Stones, following the departure of the guitarist Mick Taylor (he’d been considered to replace Brian Jones in 1969), but the gig went to Ron Wood of the Faces, whose singer, Rod Stewart, subsequently brought Davis on the road to play guitar on the band’s final riotous tour in 1975. It would mark the peak of Davis’s rock ’n’ roll journey, and the beginning of a precipitous downfall.
Over the years, Davis associates have pinpointed the Faces tour as the start of his growing reliance on hard drugs. But Miller’s book reveals that Davis had quietly nursed a heroin habit for years. “Jesse believed he had to feel things deeply to be a great bluesman,” Miller said. “Other times he wanted to feel nothing at all.”
The end of the ’70s saw a downturn in Davis’s studio work, and he left Los Angeles, moving to Hawaii for a time. In 1980, Davis received word from Lennon that he intended to reform his mid-70s band. The tantalizing prospect of a reunion ended with Lennon’s murder in New York City that December. It was a profound emotional blow to Davis, and his drug abuse escalated over the next few years as his career bottomed out.
In 1984, Davis entered a treatment center for Native Americans in Long Beach, Calif., and a few months later attended a performance by the Dakota activist and spoken word artist John Trudell. After the show, he approached Trudell with an offer to set his words to music, and the two began a collaboration that would result in “AKA Graffiti Man.”
Released in 1986, it was a postmodern record filled with synths, drum machines and strident messages, and represented a second act for Davis. Dylan hailed it as the album of the year in Rolling Stone “Pairing up with John Trudell was Jesse’s way to return home,” said the Muscogee poet Joy Harjo, artist-in-residence at the Dylan Center and co-curator of the Davis exhibit. “He decided to return to his native peoples and make music about issues and ideas that had everything to do with how he grew up.”
In early 1987, Davis, Trudell and their Graffiti Band performed at North Hollywood’s Palomino Club with Taj Mahal. “I’m Jesse Ed Davis,” he announced from the stage that night, “and I’m real proud to be an Indian.” Though physically diminished — using a cane, he played seated in a chair — Davis was joyful as his old friends Dylan and Harrison turned up to show support and jam.
Within months, though, Davis backslid into dangerous old habits. On June 22, 1988, he was found dead in the laundry room of a Venice apartment building, a fresh needle mark in his arm. The circumstances — Davis had a head wound and his shoes had been stolen — led some to speculate about foul play. “He was right on the step of being able to get back to where he needed,” Mahal said, “and he just made the wrong decision, or let people make the wrong decision around him.”
Miller said, “The day he died was a tragedy, But the rest of his life wasn’t.” With the biography, exhibition, and concert celebration — as well as an upcoming compilation, “Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day,” collecting his unheard solo work — there’s hope Davis will finally receive the recognition he deserves.
“I wish he was here to tell his own story,” Mahal said. “We’re left to tell it for him. Fortunately, you can listen to Jesse’s music, and hear his artistry amongst so many different people. Working with him was one of the highlights of my life — playing with Jesse was right up there with oxygen, man.”
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