Sound Grammar: Francis Davis and the Best Jazz of 2025, So Far

Image: Jeffrey St. Clair.

I bought my first ‘jazz’ LP in 1974 at a headshop called Karma on the southside of Indianapolis, thinking it was a rock record: Birds of Fire by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. This genre-melding recording did rock, but in ways I hadn’t heard before. John McLaughlin’s guitar screamed louder than Jimmy Page’s, Billy Cobham’s drums thundered furiously, Jerry Goodman’s runs on his electrified violin spiraled up into the aural exosphere and braided their way back to earth in tandem with Jan Hammer’s trippy chords on the mini-Moog and the basslines of the Irishman Rick Laird held it all together in funky, hypnotic grooves. This was heavy, often blistering, electronic music played in strange (to me, at least) new sonic registers and time signatures, as if the band members were engaged in some ecstatic, ever-branching conversation with each other. Other fusion records followed: Return to Forever’s Where Have I Known You Before, Tony Williams’ Lifetime!, Weather Report’s I Sing the Body Electric, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, and Red Clay by Indy’s own Freddie Hubbard. I liked my music loud then. Still do, partly because I’m nearly deaf, partly because the music made me so.

Technically, I was deep into jazz, though I didn’t really know anything about the art form and didn’t start to learn much until the late 70s when I was assigned a dorm room on the American University campus with a guy named Kevin, whom everybody called “Ratbone.” I never knew why. Ratbone didn’t give a damn about jazz. Never listened to it. He was a metalhead. He only bathed once a month on the theory that showers dulled the Sontag-like lightning bolt he’d dyed in his otherwise shoe-polish black mop of hair. He smoked dope out of a purple bong the size of the Chrysler Building all of the day (and, as the Kinks sang, all of the night) and often guzzled the bong water to boost his high.

Ratbone was from Philly and had the Philadelphia Inquirer delivered to our room each morning. The Inquirer was a real newspaper in those days, as proved by the fact that it had an actual jazz critic on staff by the name of Francis Davis. Davis’s vividly written columns taught me what to listen for in the music, where it came from and where it was going, who the players were and what they were up to. His writing didn’t come off as an academic lecture, but grace notes from an aficionado, a fan of the music. It was through Davis’s writing (and later his commentaries on NPR, sometimes with his wife Terry Gross) that I was introduced to musicians who’ve come to mean a lot to me over the years, including Sun Ra, Sonny Clark, Jackie McLean, Ray Brown, Wynton Kelly, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Clifford Brown, Hank Mobley, Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman and, of course, John Coltrane.

When, after the end of my first semester at AU, I left Ratbone behind in his Nietzschean lair (where, following the career arc of so many former headbangers, he ultimately matriculated into a job and eventual executive VP slot at Dow Chemical), I kept the subscription to the Inquirer and continued following Davis’s writing for the ensuing decades, including his migration to The Atlantic and then the Village Voice, where he started the Jazz Critic’s Poll in 2006 and continued publishing it every year since, even after the Voice folded, first in Rhapsody, then in NPR, later at ArtsFuse, where it still resides.

So, I was thrilled to find an email last year from Davis’s longtime colleague Tom Hull (another veteran of the Voice) inviting me to participate in the Jazz Critics Poll, which now includes both a mid-year and a year-end ranking. Tragically, Francis Davis died at home in April, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and emphysema, an affliction that has taken the lives of so many jazz players and fans, who spent years in smoky clubs, lofts and caveaus from Philly to New York, Paris to Copenhagen. In his notes on last year’s poll, Davis wrote about his deteriorating condition with his customary clarity. He was 78.

I owe Francis Davis a great debt for teaching me both the essentials and eccentricities of a music that has enriched my life and is likely America’s most significant artistic contribution to the world. The good news is that Francis’ pal, Tom Hull, is keeping the Jazz Critics Polls alive. The results can be found on Tom’s informative site and later on ArtsFuse. Here’s my ballot for the best new jazz and reissues at the mid-point of the otherwise dismal year of 2025.

Sláinte, Francis…

Best New Albums

1. The Music of Anthony Braxton
Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner
(Pi Recordings)

2. Fukushima
Sinsuke Fujieda Group
(So Fa Records)

3. Apple Cores
James Brandon Lewis Trio
(Anti-)

4. Defiant Life
Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith
(ECM)

5. Consentrik Quartet
Nels Cline
(Blue Note)

6. A Paradise in the Hold
Yazz Ahmed
(Night Time Stories)

7. New Dawn
Marshall Allen
(Mexican Summer)

8. Spirit Fall
John Patitucci
(Edition Records)

9. For the Love of It All
Brandon Woody
(Blue Note)

10. Entrance Music
Okonski
(Colemine)