Francis Davis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (August 2006)

Francis Davis is an American author and journalist. He has also worked in radio and film, and taught courses on Jazz and Blues at the University of Pennsylvania. He is best known as the jazz critic for The Village Voice, and a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly.

Davis emerged in the early 1980’s as the jazz critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Along with his jazz writing he has tackled wide-ranging subjects from Seinfeld (referring to the character, Kramer as a “hipster doofus” ( a person who treats life and its dangers lightly - an eccentric and comic antihero) was so well-received that it eventually made its way onto the show), to Johnny Cash, for whom he published what many fans consider the definitive appreciation, in The Atlantic Monthly.

Davis is characterized by his keen insights into the development of American style and culture, with asides in the first person that balance his theoretical certainty and a witty, human element. His articles and essays on figures ranging from Frank Sinatra to Anthony Davis impart a sharp picture of a writer coming of age, and aging, with the artists of his generation. As often longing for a time before his own, much of Davis's work speaks to a lost moment, and as often filters new artists and trends through the standards of the classic.

Over the past few decades he has sat with Betty Carter, Sonny Rollins, Wynton Marsalis, Sun Ra, and the late New Yorker film critic, Pauline Kael, after whose lengthy discussions Davis penned, Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael.

Along with international publication Davis has been widely recognized with awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1992, and a Pew Fellowship the following year. He is a multiple recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1989 (with Martin Williams and Dick Katz) for his liner notes to Jazz Piano for the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings.

Davis lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is married to Terry Gross, producer and host of the NPR program Fresh Air.