John R.T. Davies

Audio engineer John R.T. Davies was among the world’s leading specialists in repairing and remastering traditional jazz recordings. John Ross Twiston Davies was created March 20, 1927 in Sussex, Britain — the child of a skin doctor, he started playing piano at age four, later on learning the drums aswell. Between 1945 and 1948 he offered using the Royal Indicators, even though stationed in Austria he started playing acoustic guitar; upon time for the U.K., Davies also found the banjo, playing in Gerry Mulligan and George Melly’s music group. He next found the trombone, teaming with tuba-playing sibling Julian and cornetist Ken Colyer in 1949 to create the revivalist combo the Crane River Jazz Music group; credited with nearly single-handedly starting Britain’s trad jazz growth, the group resurrected traditional New Orleans-style materials from famous brands Bunk Johnson and George Lewis, playing collectively in one capability or another for 40 years. Furthermore to operating a day work at Heathrow Airport terminal, Davies also moonlighted behind Acker Bilk, Monty Sunlight, Steve Street, and Cy Laurie, and as time passes, he added saxophone to his repertoire. But he continued to be, first and most important, an obsessive jazz record collector: In 1952, he bought a disc-cutting lathe and a primitive magnetic tape recorder, bootlegging copies from the Dave Brubeck record Jazz at Oberlin when import problems rendered the record unavailable in United kingdom retail outlets. Following that, Davies extended into even more above-board dealings, saving periods for Doug Dobell’s 77 Information and founding his very own Ristic reissue label. As time passes, Davies devised some remastering methods he known as “decerealistation,” painstakingly getting rid of the clicks, pops, and scuff marks on 78 RPM information; especially, he modified the optical film soundtrack technique getting rid of clicks by scraping small notches of oxide off magnetic tapes to within several thousandths of the inch to lessen the clear transient. Over time Davies remastered the entire catalogs of performers including Ruler Oliver, Jelly Move Morton and Louis Armstrong, among countless others — his gradual, perfectionist technique clashed using the cost-conscious business procedures of major brands, and he proved helpful mostly for little niche brands like Frog, Retrieval, Timeless, Hep, and Jazz Oracle. In 1959, Davies became a member of the cheeky trad jazz device the Temperance Seven, a nine-piece band of Chelsea University students unable to go through music yet with the capacity of playing multiple devices apiece; implementing the stage name Sheikh Wadi Un Yadounia and putting on a fez, Davies offered as their de facto musical movie director furthermore to playing saxophone and trombone. The Temperance Seven demonstrated an unlikely trend: clad in velvet frock jackets and wing collars, the look of them on television’s Juke Package Jury — where they performed the show’s theme on phonafiddles, a sousaphone, and a banjo — produced them overnight feelings, with vocalist Paul McDowell leading to a frenzy among feminine fans much like that of Elvis Presley. EMI Information maker George Martin helmed their 1961 chart-topper “You’re Traveling Me Crazy,” even though rock & move (especially another Martin-produced take action, the Beatles) would quickly drive the Temps’ quaint, nostalgic music back to the margins of general public curiosity. The group continuing performing live before end from the 1960s. Davies later on reunited with fellow Temperance Seven alum/cornetist Alan Swainston-Cooper and American journalist/clarinetist Dick Sudhalter in the Anglo-American Alliance; from 1972 to 1975, he also led the 28-piece New Paul Whiteman Orchestra, an organization predicated on transcripts of bandleader Whiteman’s initial arrangements dating back again to the 1920s. Through the 1990s, Davies led his personal Mild Jazz group and sometimes sat along with Crane River and Ken Colyer memorial rings. But especially, advances in documenting technology allowed him to product his analog remastering procedures with faster, less difficult digital parts — his knowledge was right now therefore advanced that he was occasionally able to generate reissues with fidelity greater than the first recordings. Davies also extended his purview beyond traditional jazz into from the traditional vocal pop of Bing Crosby towards the Greek rembetika music from the 1930s. He previously just finished an eight-CD established composed of the known documented cannon of blues tale Bessie Smith when he passed away of cancer on, may 25, 2004.