TULSA — The nearly 50 album covers spanning one of the walls of the Bob Dylan Center also span many of the top acts in the pantheon of popular music: Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Cher, Leonard Cohen, Rod Stewart, Leon Russell, Steve Miller Band, The Pointer Sisters, Arlo Guthrie, Neil Diamond, Joe Cocker and, of course, Dylan himself.
The common thread that connects all the albums in this eclectic collection happens to be the late Jesse Ed Davis, an often overlooked Oklahoman and Native American guitarist whose contributions to rock ‘n’ roll history are finally seizing the spotlight.
“This is maybe half of everything he played on, just some of the greatest hits or the deep cuts that are really interesting. Just that alone, the stature of it, is telling,” said writer and historian Douglas K. Miller during a tour of the new Bob Dylan Center exhibit “Jesse Ed Davis: Natural Anthem.”
“This is the 80th anniversary of his birth this year … so it was time for this.”
Along with writing the new biography “Washita Love Child: The Rise of Indigenous Rock Star Jesse Ed Davis,” which made Kirkus Reviews’ list of best nonfiction books of 2024, and co-producing a new double-LP collection of Davis’ previously unreleased recordings titled “Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day: The Unissued Atco Recordings 1970-1971,” which is due out Nov. 29 for Record Store Day Black Friday, Miller co-curated the new Bob Dylan Center exhibit with former U.S. Poet Laureate and recent National Humanities Medalist Joy Harjo.
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“For it to all come together like this, with an album, with a book on his life and a show that’s incredible with some of his guitars and stories and images, it’s just really exciting to honor him and his legacy — and it’s an important legacy for Oklahomans. … I’m just really honored to get to be part of this whole project to bring his legacy into focus,” said Harjo, who collaborated with Davis near the end of his tragically short life.
“He’s very underrated, but you know what, all these … younger guitar players adore him. He’s like the guitar god still: He probably has more of a following now than when he was here.”
Who was guitarist Jesse Ed Davis?
Known as the “guitar hero’s guitar hero,” Davis was born Sept. 21, 1944, in Norman. An enrolled citizen of the Kiowa Nation who was also Comanche, Cheyenne, Muscogee and Seminole, he was the only child of Jesse Edwin “Bus” Davis II, a noted Native American artist, and Vivian Mae “Bea” Saunkeah Davis, the first Kiowa woman to graduate from the University of Oklahoma.
Both his parents were musically inclined, and their son, known as a child as “Eddie,” embarked on his first tour, with the musical television show “American Bandstand,” when he was just 16. By the time he graduated from Oklahoma City’s Northeast High School in 1962, he’d already been in bands with other talented locals.
While attending OU, Davis got his first major gig, backing former OKC resident and future Country Music Hall of Famer Conway Twitty. In the mid-1960s, the guitarist moved to Los Angeles, where he reconnected with The Band’s Levon Helm, whom Davis met on his “American Bandstand” tour. Helm introduced Davis to fellow Oklahoman Russell, who helped the musician get work on recording sessions.
“He was coming of age as a musician in an important time. He was out in L.A. when Leon Russell was out there, and the Tulsa Sound was coming together in the studios of L.A. from all these Oklahoma people,” Harjo said.
From the late 1960s through the mid-’70s, Davis played alongside some of music’s biggest stars on some of the most iconic records and at some of the most legendary events in rock ‘n’ roll history. He joined influential bluesman Taj Mahal’s band, which led to him playing at the 1968 Rolling Stones’ “Rock and Roll Circus” in London, where he befriended another big-name collaborator in John Lennon, and even to him inspiring Duane Allman to take up the slide guitar.
The Oklahoma native performed at 1971’s “Concert for Bangladesh” alongside organizer Harrison, Clapton, Russell, Dylan and Billy Preston. He played on and produced Gene Clark’s second solo album, “White Light,” provided the scorching solo for Jackson Browne’s chart-topper “Doctor, My Eyes” and performed on a slew of famed records and albums, including Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” Lennon’s “Walls and Bridges” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Harrison’s “Extra Texture” and Starr’s “Goodnight Vienna” and “Ringo’s Rotogravure.”
Many of his famous friends contributed to Davis’ three solo albums: 1971’s “¡Jesse Davis!,” 1972’s “Ululu” and 1973’s “Keep Me Comin’.” In 1975, he played on Rod Stewart and The Faces’ final tour.
“He was a great session man. He was a great sideman. He was a solo man who made three records of his own. He was an innovator. He was one of the most beloved guitarists of his generation, among the great artists of his time,” Miller said.
Like many rockers, Davis also struggled with drug abuse, which caused him to drop out of the music scene. In 1985, Davis formed the Grafitti Band, which paired his music with the poetry of Native American activist John Trudell, with their album “AKA Grafitti Man” becoming a personal favorite of Dylan.
Davis died from a drug overdose on June 22, 1988, in L.A. at the age of 43.
“I was sitting having brunch on a Sunday afternoon, because I remember it was relatively warm for the Bay Area, and reading the San Francisco paper. And then I saw the little notice about Jesse Ed Davis OD’ing In a laundromat,” Harjo recalled.
“It was (a shock) because the man that I knew briefly … was just a beautiful soul.”
Rediscovery of Jesse Ed Davis’ music
Although Davis was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Native American Music Hall of Fame in 2018, his rock ‘n’ roll contributions have largely been overlooked.
“Around 2017 or so, I was listening to a Gene Clark album that Jesse Ed Davis produced and plays guitar on. It’s one of my favorite albums … and I sort of sat up and thought, ‘How come we don’t know more about Jesse Ed Davis? His name is on so many albums in my collection,'” Miller recalled.
“When he passed, his story had not been told in a long time. There were a couple of years when Jesse was essentially homeless. There just wasn’t a sort of infrastructure … for Jesse to have been easily remembered the way so many other artists have been. But it’s a credit to his fans, his family, his friends, his music partners, that just enough of a spark of his memory persisted all these years.”
In 2019, the PBS documentary “Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World” brought renewed interest in Davis’ legacy, and Tulsa-based Native American filmmaker and showrunner Sterlin Harjo, who has listed his own Davis documentary among his many upcoming projects, featured the guitar hero’s music on his acclaimed series “Reservation Dogs.”
“He had this extraordinary career that, I think, Native people rightly want to sort of rally around. … A lot of people played with John Lennon. A lot of people played with Leon Russell, but Jesse was at the center of some of that music, some of those albums, some of those live concerts, as a real insider, and not as a token Indigenous person,” Miller said.
“He was somebody who was really producing music and contributing some essential components of the sound that was going to define the late ’60s and ’70s music that still endures to this day.”
Over five years, Miller did hundreds of interviews with Davis’s bandmates, family members, friends, and peers — including Browne, Bonnie Raitt and the late Robbie Robertson — for his new book “Washita Love Child.” Along the way, he and co-producer Mike Johnson combed through about 30 hours of Davis’ unreleased music for the new collection “Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day.”
Miller is celebrating both new releases in Davis’ hometown from 3 to 6 p.m. Dec. 1 at The Standard in Norman with a concert featuring Oklahoma legends and Indigenous musicians, including Terry Tsotigh & The Redmen Blues Band, AJ Harvey, Terry “Buffalo” Ware & The Sunday Flyers, Mike Hosty, Felix Linden (aka Flea), Chebon Tiger, Scott & Kody Keeton with Nathan Roberts and special guests The Redstone Singers, a Kiowa/Anquoe family drum group. The Music Moves Mountains Foundation is hosting the concert to raise funds for a music scholarship for Native musicians in Davis’ honor.
Bob Dylan Center brings together Jesse Ed Davis’ famed collaborators
As artist in residence at the Bob Dylan Center, Harjo proposed a project to honor Davis that became the “Natural Anthem” exhibit.
“The director hadn’t heard of him — and I love these moments of synchronicity — so I Googled Jesse Ed Davis, and up popped an image of him with Bob Dylan, which was perfect. Once he knew who he was, it was a no brainer to focus on him for a show,” she said.
It was another moment of synchronicity that brought Harjo together with Miller to co-curate the exhibit.
“I was talking with our senior director of archives and exhibitions, Mark Davidson, and said, ‘Joy has a really interesting idea, something about Jesse Ed Davis.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, Doug Miller came through to do all this research for his book,’ so he told me more about Doug and what Doug was able to find in the Bob Dylan Archive,” said Bob Dylan Center Director Steven Jenkins.
“Then, we’re thinking, well, let’s see if we can get Doug and Joy together to talk.”
On view through April 27, the career-spanning exhibit features previously unheard recordings and unseen images; Davis’ instruments and personal mementos; an array of photographs of Davis and his fellow music luminaries; and original video installations about his life and career.
In conjunction with the exhibit, a tribute concert featuring Browne, Mahal, Harjo and the Grafitti Band is set for Feb. 6 in Tulsa. Details are to be announced soon.
“He was a great musician, but he also surrounded himself with other great talents — and that was something he was doing from when he was a teenager forming his first band. He loved big band music. He loved the idea of a lot of people on stage creating a really communal sound,” Miller said.
“To see all these people who were touched by him and played with him just reminds me of his spirited approach of ‘Music’s about bringing people together and lifting people up.” And that’s what I see here.”
‘Jesse Ed Davis: Natural Anthem’
When: Through April 27.
Where: Bob Dylan Center, Tulsa.
Information: https://bobdylancenter.com.
Jesse Ed Davis Tribute Concert
When: 3 to 6 p.m. Dec. 1.
Where: The Standard, Norman.
Information: https://musicmovesmountains.org.
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