Francis Davis, jazz critic with sharp ears, died in ’78

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He wrote prolificly in facets of arts and popular culture. But he kept the accessory in jazz, celebrating his beyond while he was worried about his future.

By Adam Nossiter

Francis Davis, a prolific jazz critic with a willing eye and ear for music’s cultural background, died Monday at his home in Philadelphia. The 78 years.

His wife, Terry Gross, the host of the NPR “Fresh Air” program, said the cause of emphysema and headaches of Parkinson’s disease.

As editor, at The Atlantic’s top for more than a quarter of a century, and a columnist in the village voice for the longest time, Mr. Davis wrote many articles on music, film, television, and popular culture, focusing on jazz, an art form he celebrated and deplored, fearing that his long career would not live up to his past. (He also wrote for the New York Times and other publications. )

His specialty to cause the meaning of the sounds he heard, placing them in the history, culture and society of America. This approach, and the dominance of his writing, made him one of the maximum influential writers of jazz in the 1980s and beyond, attracting a giant reader and a compliment of other critics. The figures and cultural artifacts that faced: Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, “Seinfeld”, Billie Holiday, director William Wyler, is equivalent to an organization of America in the years after war, partly giant in the pages of the Atlantic.

“He is a sensitive, competent, insightful, and imaginative critic, and even when relaxed, it is a thrill to read,” wrote Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley about Mr. Davis in 1990, “Outcats: Jazz Composers, Instrumentalists and Singers. “

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