Fresh Air host Terry Gross lost her husband, acclaimed writer Francis Davis, on April 14. They were together for 47 years. Today, she shares some of Francis with the audience, including the story of how they met and became a couple.Also, we listen back to our 2005 interview with George Clooney. He just received a Tony nomination for his role as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck on Broadway.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who was Francis Davis and what was his impact on jazz criticism?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. This is my first show back in about two and a half weeks. Today's show is all about why. My husband, my partner of 47 years, Francis Davis, died after a long illness on Monday, April 14th.
You may know about Francis from his writing about jazz and popular culture, or from the time he was a jazz critic on Fresh Air, when it was a local show, and in the early days when we went national. Often when I introduce a guest, I quote from reviews and profiles that sum up their contributions better than I think I could.
To sum up my husband's place as a writer, I'm going to quote from a couple of the obits. In the New York Times, Adam Nossiter wrote, "...his specialty was teasing meaning from the sounds he heard, situating them in America's history, culture, and society." That approach, and the fluency of his writing, made him one of the most influential writers on jazz in the 1980s and beyond.
The headline of the NPR obit by Nate Chenin described him as a giant of jazz criticism. In addition to jazz, Francis also wrote essays about other forms of music, as well as movies, TV, and books. For me, reading him is now my best way of feeling like I'm spending time with him. I've been reading him a lot lately.
Before I get back to doing interviews and immersing myself in the lives of my guests, I want to share some of Francis with you. On today's show, I'm going to read you excerpts of a few of his essays and play recordings he praised in those pieces. Along the way, I'll also tell a few stories about him, including the story of how we met and became a couple. Fresh air played a big part in that.
Francis wrote for The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various music magazines. He had seven books and received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He founded and ran the Village Voice Annual Jazz Critics Poll, which after several years moved to NPR Music and is now on artsfuse.org, where it's run by Tom Ho, who will be continuing the poll, which he renamed the Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll. Francis also won a Grammy for his liner notes to the Miles Davis 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Kind of Blue.
It's been surreal to have that famous trophy in our home. In his liner notes, Francis wrote, quote, But this hardly explains the album's hold on three successive generations of listeners. The pieces on Kind of Blue were meant to serve as springboards to improvisation, and did they ever, unquote.
Francis went on to describe John Coltrane's solo on the track Flamenco Sketches, quote, I'm going to play an excerpt of that Coltrane solo because it's beautiful. And because Francis had a contract to write a book about Coltrane, although he never finished the book, he was steeped in Coltrane music and research and wrote about him in shorter essays.
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Chapter 2: How did Terry Gross and Francis Davis meet and collaborate?
Fosca's love for Giorgio is supposed to be superior to Clara's by virtue of not being carnal. At least that was what Sondheim and Lapine said in interviews. Regardless of Sondheim and Lapine's original intentions, the dichotomy represented on stage wasn't between body love and soul love, but between health and infirmity, the pang of happiness, and the unaccountable lure of death. Unquote.
Here's the song Frances singled out. It's sung by the character Fosca on what may be her deathbed. She tells Giorgio she wants to dictate a letter for him to write, but to write it as if he were writing it to her, confessing his deep feelings for her. The song is I Wish I Could Forget You, sung by Donna Murphy.
My dearest Fosca.
I wish I could forget you Erase you from my mind But ever since I met you I find I cannot leave the thought of you behind That doesn't mean I love you That doesn't mean I love you I wish that I could love you I know that I've upset you I know I've been unkind I wanted you to vanish from sight But now I see you in a different light And though I cannot love you, I wish that I could love you.
For now I'm seeing love like none I've ever known. A love as pure as breath, as permanent as death, implacable as stone. A lover like a knife has cut into her life. I want it left alone. A love I may regret.
Thank you. Francis was great at coming up with titles. That book showed up in a confounding place, a Brooks Brothers ad, maybe a page from the catalog. The photo was of a 20-something guy with his hands folded around the back of his head and on his lap a copy of Francis's book, Bebop and Nothingness. The model was supposed to look dreamy, but I doubt he'd ever dream of reading that book.
My theory is the book was chosen as a prop because the book jacket's eye-catching color scheme of blue, red, and yellow matched the model's sweater and plaid pants. We framed the ad, and it still hangs on our wall, baffling anyone who sees it. One of Francis' coinages also showed up in a surprising place. In a 1992 essay about the show Seinfeld, Francis described Kramer as a hipster doofus.
Someone from the show must have read that, because the following year, hipster doofus showed up in a couple of Seinfeld episodes. Here's Kramer.
She dumped me. She dumped you? She dumped me. She rolled right over me. Said I was a hipster doofus. Am I a hipster doofus? No. Said I'm not good-looking enough for her. Not good-looking. Jerry, look at me.
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Chapter 3: What are some notable essays and writings by Francis Davis?
I know exactly what she was talking about, too, because her voice was basically shot in the last couple of recordings she made, but her phrasing was so beautiful, and the emotion was so beautifully conveyed.
You see her taking songs that are normally sort of up-tempo, like Don't Fence Me In, and bringing it down to like a quarter of the speed and singing Straighten Up and Fly Right. It's amazing.
You stayed with your aunt when you first got to Hollywood. Did you think you were talented when you started working? Did you think you actually had something?
I didn't really know whether I had any talent or not. I knew that I was, for the first time in my life, engaged, and I hadn't been. I was one of those guys who was pretty good at almost anything I tried right away, anything I wanted to do. I could pick it up pretty quickly, sports, almost any sport. But never great at anything.
And then I found acting and I thought, well, this is something that at the very least I'm not going to be bored by. And I know that there is no moment that you go, wow, I've finally done it. You're never going to be satisfied by it because it's a constant growing process. And I got into an acting class pretty quickly and I started working with working actors.
And what you realized was you'd be doing a scene and you'd be holding your own with someone who's making a very good living acting. You'd realize that there's a possibility that you can actually do this for a living.
Well, ER, when you got ER, that certainly must have changed your life a lot. I mean, suddenly you were a star and people become so close to you when you're on TV every week. There's this kind of bonding that I think people go through.
It's an unusual experience because it's not like being a movie star. You haven't paid 10 bucks and you're 30 feet high and you've made it a date. You've been in their homes every Thursday, so... The truth is I'm a product of a great amount of luck. I create some of that luck because I did 13 pilots and I did eight television series before that.
But the simple truth is had I done that exact same show and that exact same role and we were on Friday night instead of Thursday night at 10, I don't have a film career and I'm not sitting here with you. It requires that kind of luck. The show would never have been as popular on a Friday night as it was on a Thursday night.
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