Dave Davani - Fused! The swinging soul sound of Dave Davani (Big Beat CDWIKD 212)
Rare and unreleased recordings from a British Hammond player you may not be familiar with yet.
If asked to provide a list of British organ players of the 1960’s there are some very prominent names that spring to mind. The likes of Brian Auger, Clive Powell, Zoot Money, Matthew Fisher, Graham Bond and Ian Maclagan are bound to make the list. Work a little further into this subject, however, and you’re likely to run across the name Dave Davani.
Davani’s “Top of the Pops” single may still be his most widely known, with “Tossin’ and Turnin’” a possible second with “The Jupe” on the flip. However, the good people at Ace/Big Beat, not to mention Mr. Nick Rossi, have finally made available some very elusive recordings from this vastly overlooked component of the British Jazz/R&B scene of the Sixties.
Anything that could be written in this review has already been published in Nick Rossi’s scholarly liner notes, so it would be easy enough to tell you to just buy the CD and read it all there. However, our opinion has got to count for something, right? Nick’s contributions to Uppers.org aside, it should be objectively noted that if you dig the Hammond – and we know you do – and you also gravitate to the sounds of swinging Sixties London – ditto – then we already know there’s little else to be objective about when reviewing this CD. Yet, we try anyway…
While the earliest material of Davani’s recordings as Dave Davani & the D Men are not represented on this CD, neither are some later recordings in an attempt to fuse jazz, R&B and country. Your curiosity of these recordings may be piqued, as is this writer’s. However, this CD does focus on the very creative period that still only yielded four singles and one album. But what an album and singles those are!
Coupling great jazz chops with an ear to the current pop scene, The Dave Davani Four produced a highly accessible form of R&B flavored jazz which landed them in the all-important Flamingo club, among others, which proved to influence the group as much as it did entertain and impress the audience.
Where Davani deviates from some of his closer contemporaries like Georgie Fame and Zoot Money is that by and large, Davani’s material, though sharing a common love of American R&B, more closely follows the foundation of American soul jazz than the pop music played by others. Yes, there are tracks like “Top of the Pops” and “Boot-Leg” (previously unreleased) alongside other popular R&B tunes like “Big Boss Man”, “Night Train” and a swinging version of the recognizable “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”. However, the jazz edge is still stronger than most of Davani’s contemporaries, and choosing other strong jazz material such as Miles Davis’s “Milestones”, John Patton’s “Funky Mama” and Nat Adderly’s “Jive Samba” could only have been a move to remain close to Davani’s jazz roots as they may have been to introduce these sounds to a British audience. At the very least Davani was playing these songs to American servicemen hungry to hear these sounds from home while abroad.
It is clear that the Dave Davani Four were trying to make the charts, but simply lacked certain thing that the multitudes yearned for. More positively, we could as easily say they were just too good for the charts. But no matter your stance on why, the fact remains that Dave Davani, as far as the numbers go, slipped into obscurity if still continuing to work on a regular basis.
More importantly, this very CD will introduce a lot of people to the recordings of Dave Davani who had never heard his name before, much less own original copies of his records. It hasn’t been that long since I received my introduction to Dave Davani either, and oh, how I have been missing out for many years! This CD is very likely to be the most important reissue of the year, mark my words.
[Published 1 July 2002]
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| Rowly | aug 7 2002 12:26PM |
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| Just had the pleasure of reviewing this for Dave Walkers' Modculture.com site. What a fine cd - I can't beleive I've not heard of him before the release of this cd. Buy it People! | |
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| Brian Poust | jul 2 2002 9:46AM |
| http://www.uppers.org | |
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| Jeez! try to have a little fun and it has to be another of the "staff" to call me out on it! :) | |
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| Richard Karström | jul 2 2002 8:13AM |
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| Trainspotter alert! The sleeve pictured seems to be from the original release, and not the cd reviewed. Not that it matters really, they are very alike. I'm just trying to show off :) | |
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