Native American Heritage Month Essential Artist: Jesse Ed Davis

November 13, 2023
by Eugenie Jaffe
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November is National Native American Heritage Month and all month long we pay tribute to the rich ancestry and cultural heritage of the Indigenous people of this land.

Every Monday we celebrate Indigenous excellence with music from an Essential Artist of the Day and today we feature guitarist Jesse Ed Davis.

Celebrated guitarist and session musician during the rock era of the 1960s into the 1980s, Jesse Ed Davis was of Kiowa, Comanche, Seminole, and Muscogee (Creek) heritage. He was born in Norman, Oklahoma, on September 21, 1944 and passed away in June 1988.

Davis graduated from Oklahoma City's Northeast High School in 1962. He joined Conway Twitty's band, arriving in California in the mid-1960s. From then into the 1970s Davis's guitar prowess made him a much-sought-after session guitarist.

Davis is known as the "guitar hero's guitar hero." His discography, a who's who of rock and roll, includes recordings with more than fifty major artists and crosses into the country, rhythm and blues, pop, and folk genres. His collaborators were amazed not only by his style, versatility, and technique but also by his love for the guitar. He is known for his primary work with Taj Mahal. He also contributed to albums by Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Keith Moon, Steve Miller, Guthrie Thomas, Harry Nilsson, Ry Cooder, David Cassidy, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, Rick Danko, Van Dyke Parks and others. He played on Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man (1977).

Davis also released three solo albums including Ululu. As he explained his music theory, "I just play the notes that sound good."

In 2002 he was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, in 2011 into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, and in 2018 into the Native American Music Institute Hall of Fame. Davis summed up his career simply: "I ain't an Okie from Muskogee" but rather "a red-dirt boogie brother, all the time."

Listen for our Essental Artist of the Day every Monday at 8:10am, 11:10am & 3:10pm.