RIP, John RT Davies (a/k/a Ristic)

[mmilovan]

RIP, John RT Davies (a/k/a Ristic)

(A posting made to the Bix Beiderbecke forum)

----------------------------------------------

Heavy tidings; John R.T. passed away this morning. He had been ill for

some time, but had carried on working almost literally to the end.

How accustomed we have grown to see: 'Transfers and audio restoration

by John R.T.Davies' on so many CDs!

Those words always guaranteed us a solid, 'forward' sound from the

records, and was our 'seal of quality' on any reissue for which he was

responsible.

Of course, he was a formidable musician on both brass and reeds too;

but was rather less active as a player in recent years. The bands he

recorded with were enormously influential; in the 1940s and 50s in the

New Orleans mode; then the 'new look' at the 1920s by Temperance Seven

in the late 1950s & early 60s. Then, in the later 60s, in partnership

with Richard Sudhalter and other distinguished players, the superb

band 'The Anglo-American Alliance' - inevitably dubbed the 'AAA'. This

outfit made a number of excellent albums that opened the ears of many

musicians: here was lithe, hot, living, swinging Jazz that rather

defied classification. It was. Jazz!! Just that; nothing more - or

less.

His knowledge of Jazz and its discography was only equalled by his

truly astonishing and all-encompassing expertise on every aspect of

the recording and manufacture of the 78 discs on which we all depend

for our understanding, appreciation - and enjoyment - of the past.

Two short examples come to mind.

A small number of pressings of a rare 1930 coupling by a Chicago band

had been pressed into vinyl, for distribution to 78 enthusiasts.

However, there was a feature on one master, which would cause a modern

pickup to jump. Using a binocular microscope and a tiny engraving

tool, John individually 're-drew' the groove at the affected point on

every copy. This writer has a copy of that disc, and indeed was

present during its correction. and it impossible to hear where the

fault lay.

Again, in the days before digital technology, John had to transfer a

test of the 1924 Goldkette 'I Didn't Know'. That's the record with the

Bix solo, but which has a patch of corrosion (or whatever) on the

original metalwork. John constructed a mechanical device. He arranged

it in such a way that the tape passed out of the normal path on the

tape recorder, and went round a precision machined pulley (made by him

on his own lathe, of course) which rotated the spindle of a

potentiometer. The end stops of this had been removed, so that the

wiper could follow the track continuously. Only a portion of the track

was allowed to conduct. and this was synchronised with the 'crunch' on

the disc. The resistance added at this point attenuated the 'crunch'

most effectively. All this, just to transfer ONE side!

His generosity in providing rare and unusual material was legendary;

one of his favourite comments was: 'Dissemination is the name of the

game!'

If you asked him a question, he would close his eyes for up to a

second; then open them, and deliver a perfectly reasoned, detailed and

crystal clear reply. Had that reply been recorded and transcribed, it

would have been suitable for publication with no editing.

Enough!

The deepest and most sincere condolences of all of us go to his wife

Sue, and all their family in this most grievous loss.

And indeed, for many of us, life will never really be quite the same

without JRTD out there, working on our behalf, will it?

Edited May 25, 2004 by mmilovan

[EKE BBB]

Sad new, very sad news.

Thanks John R.T. Davis for re-discovering some great music for us with the best available sound!

[jazzbo]

Sad news indeed.

[J.A.W.]

According to a post on a blues forum it hasn't been confirmed yet, but if it is true, it's very sad news indeed! I value JRTD's work very highly and will miss him.

[John L]

I heard the rumor earlier today, and didn't want to believe it.

RIP

[Harold_Z]

Very sad news. What a body of work he left behind!

[Shawn]

Being an audio engineer myself, it's people like Davies who were my real heroes of the ART of restoration. This guy was a Picasso of mastering engineers....

[paul secor]

John RT Davies spent his life proving his devotion to music. He'll truly be missed.

[White Lightning]

Very sad news. He will be missed.

[brownie]

Sad to hear of his passing away. He contributed mightily to the way we hear jazz.

[BERIGAN]

Damn! Sad news. From photos I have seen of him, I thought he was older than 77, must have been battling for awhile. Thank you Mr. Davies for all the great, great work, a true labor of love....

If you haven't checked out his web site in the past, it is worth it....

http://www.jazzrescue.com/

[LAL]

Sad sad news indeed.

RIP Mr. John RT Davies.

[J.A.W.]

From today's Daily Telegraph (UK):

John R T Davies

(Filed: 26/05/2004)

John R T Davies, who died yesterday aged 77, was a jazz musician with an international reputation for remastering old recordings; but his closest brush with fame was as a member of the Temperance Seven, which swept to the top of the Hit Parade with You're Driving Me Crazy in 1961.

When Davies was invited to arrange for the "Temps", it was largely made up of students at Chelsea College who could not read music yet played at least two instruments each. He happily agreed to provide some simple scores, writing himself in, as trombonist and alto-saxophonist, and entering into its light-hearted spirit by adopting the name Sheikh Wadi El Yadounia and wearing a fez.

Davies brought with him experience of playing alongside such post-war jazz musicians as Mick Mulligan and Ken Colyer, as well as a deep knowledge derived from his large record collection. This enabled him to move its musical model from 1923 to 1926, when Louis Armstrong was emerging as jazz's greatest performer.

The Temperance Seven took their name from Father Mathew's temperance movement in 19th-century Ireland, adding to the joke by declaring that they were one over the eight when its seven members rose to nine. Their polite, nostalgic and very English style - strongly suggestive of tea dances - differed from that of both the "trad jazz" bands and the other groups of the period.

Girls began screaming when the vocalist Paul McDowell opened his mouth. Then the band, dressed in frock coats and wing collars, appeared on the television programme Juke Box Jury to play the theme tune on three phonafiddles, a sousaphone and banjo. It led to a flurry of invitations, climaxing in an appearance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

The rock critic of the Village Voice in New York even declared that the group was proof of the existence of God.

Davies's careful nourishment contributed to the steady improvement in the band's music, which attracted the attention of Sir George Martin, the music producer later responsible for the Beatles' records. Martin agreed to record the Temps at the Abbey Road studio in London and gave them useful, if largely unwelcome, suggestions designed to increase their chance of success. He objected to You're Driving Me Crazy because it ran to more than four minutes, while most 45 rpm records lasted two minutes 10 seconds; but the number's sophisticated scoring, fey lyrics and Davies's elegant alto solo contributed to an astonishing success. This led on to a stream of later hits such as Pasadena and Hard-Hearted Hannah.

But when success came it was a deep shock to the band's members. While bemused at receiving the then large sum of £60 a week, some entertained doubts about professionalism and commercialism, while being conscious that they had their own futures to consider.

After the Temps appeared at the Royal Command Performance, the Beatles began to rocket into the charts, while the band wound down their activities, though they continued to perform with new members until the late 1960s. Most went off to pursue non-musical careers; but Davies had plenty to occupy him in jazz.

The son of a skin specialist, John Ross Twiston Davies was born on March 20 1927 and went to Dartington Hall. He developed an early interest in jazz, much to his father's disapproval. But he did not take up an instrument till he was given a guitar while serving with the Royal Signals in Austria after the war. On returning home he started playing banjo with Mick Mulligan. He switched to trombone and, with his brother Julian, who played tuba and later double-bass, became a founder member of the Crane River band. They began to play in the revivalist tradition of Bunk Johnson and George Lewis, and continued to do so with the same front line for almost 40 years.

Although Davies was already dedicated to jazz, he had to make ends meet with a wide variety of day jobs, including working at Heathrow airport. In the evenings he would play with the cornet player Steve Lane, the trombonist Cy Laurie and the clarinettists Sandy Brown and Acker Bilk as well as his own band.

After the Temperance Seven wound down, Davies still found plenty of congenial collaborators, whom he would bemuse by turning up for a gig with 17 instruments, including a 19th-century cornopean. He formed, with the American journalist Dick Sudhalter, the Anglo-American Alliance, and had the cornet player Bobby Hackett to stay so frequently that his children called him "Uncle Bobby". Another friend was the clarinettist Jimmy Noone Junior, with whom he made a particularly finely matched partnership on Apex Blues.

At the same time Davies's scholarly interest in jazz was encouraged when Sudhalter, who had been researching a life of Bix Beiderbecke, told him of the transcripts in the American Library of Congress of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra's numbers from the 1920s. This led him to put on a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, in which he played the parts of the saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer. The cost of putting on a performance by a 28-piece orchestra meant there were only a handful of performances, though it made some excellent recordings.

Davies had first started a record label called Ristick, his youthful nickname, in the late 1940s, and concentrated on painstakingly creating small collections of largely unknown players. The most startling of these contained the work of a cornet player whose distinctive style he had identified on a variety of recordings made around 1930, though nobody could tell him the player's name, except that it was perhaps "Charlie. . .", ". . .Charlie", "Big Charlie" or "Charlie Thomas". The collection was released under the name "Big Charlie Thomas." Davies restored such records in the old stables of his Buckinghamshire home. He first began sticking together pieces of old discs, then used early tape recorders, finally cutting his own CDs.

The major record companies were doing the same thing, but they could match neither his scholarship nor his willingness to devote unlimited time to removing clicks, crackles and pops from a single record. This he did by carefully remixing the balance of treble, bass and volume to produce a version that was sometimes better than the original.

His reputation was such that large music companies with flawed orchestral recordings started asking him to make repairs by copying notes from elsewhere on a tape, rather than recall all the players to re-record. Some friends felt that this should have enabled him to make handsome profits during the raging inflation of the mid-1970s, but Davies elected to stick to the Labour government's inflation guidelines. However, his expertise later paid dividends when record companies were glad to have the name John R T Davies in small type on their CDs of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and others which he had remastered, because it was an instant guarantee. Ever ready to help others with a serious interest in the subject, he was making a final CD of unissued and test pressings of such musicians as Wingy Manone and Joe Venuti.

John R T Davies leaves his wife Sue, who bought him his first alto as a wedding present, a daughter and a step-daughter; another daughter predeceased him.

[Guest Chaney]

Thanks for posting that, Hans.

Very sad to hear of the passing of Mr. Davies. Age 77? Like Berigan, I would have guessed him older.

What a trooper.

[LAL]

John R T Davies the musician

[DrJ]

Damn sad news. Rest in peace, Mr. Davies.