Melvin Lee Davis

 
TOMORROW'S YESTERDAYS
BIOGRAPHY

Guy cradling a violin case asks a cop: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Cop
stops, turns around and sez: "Practice, sir, practice." ... Old band joke

"Never open a wine before its' time." ... Orson Welles ('70s TV advert)

Forget what you heard: in the music world -- save for pop stars and the odd
genius -- there is no such thing as an "overnight sensation". Nobody gets to
be somebody without earning it (years spent mastering an instrument followed
by more hard knock years as a sideman) first. Making bones, payin' dues 24-7,
then comes the big payback solo move (before you start taking shortcuts, you
better first know the long way 'round) that gives you mad props, fans and box
office. Overnight sensation...naaw. Case in point: bassist/composer/producer
Melvin Lee Davis.

Though Davis' instrumental charisma rung electric jazz heads everywhere when
he was holding down the bass chair in fusion guitar master Lee "Captain
Fingers" Ritenour's band back in the day and more than a few soul boys/girls
have been floored by the mojos he's throwing over-under-around-behind Chaka
Khan when she gets all the way live wid' it in concert today, critics and
public-at-large alike have slept on him. Davis' solo debut Tomorrow's
Yesterdays is destined to wake everybody up.

An audaciously fresh collection of full-on electric instrumentals that slow
drag, bounce, swerve, smoove, bump mood-swinging jazzy-soul fusions with a
warmdaddy-mellow insouciance, Tomorrow's Yesterdays is a quantum leap beyond
all this master player has accomplished thus far.  Definitely not the work of
an "overnight sensation". "It's a collage of ideas and I've been able to put
them in sequence in a way that displays who I am as an individual and as a
musician", muses Davis. So we have it be jazz, avant garde, a bit of fusion,
some Latin -- a whole basket of ideas."

Tomorrow's Yesterdays is all that and a jumbo bag of chips. You got songs
that ebb-flow-bubble-wash over your ears like waves at the beach ("Circle"),
lift you up to fill you up ("In The Beginning, At The Beginning", "My Song Of
Praise"), dance funky-freaky sambas and wild gravity mambos in your head
("Tomorrow's Yesterdays", "A Train Of Thought"), get bass guitar lowdown 'n'
smoked sick wid' the 12-bar blues ("Not Before Noon") and breathtakingly
reinvents Stevie's immortal "Visions" ("Just Fender Rhodes and acoustic piano
and acoustic bass and vocal."). Every tune pops a different style yet feels
like one long uninterrupted cool vibration. "In my music I tend to take
another slant", says Davis. "I'm supportive but also I create an environment
that allows everyone to listen to one another and create just avenues for
each other. I still consider myself a groove person, I like to stick and
move."

Aptly-titled, Tomorrow's Yesterdays is both dream fulfilled and promise of a
future. "It's a gift or giving if you will to me to God in terms of my
thanks for what He's given me as a musician; just the foresight and the
creative skills", he adds humbly. "It's just a great big batch of ideas of
40 years on this earth and the things that have influenced me from a
spiritual standpoint. It's what I like, it's what I feel inside." Melvin Lee
Davis -- overnight sensation? Uh, uh -- just a master musician Whose Time Has
Come. Recognize.


By Tom Terrell, November, 2000