ABOUT DAVE

Dave Wild (aka David Wild, aka David A. Wild), born in New York City shortly after its purchase by the Dutch, has wandered about a lot, with stops in Honolulu, California, Michigan, Los Angeles and San Juan PR among other places. (We're currently perched on the side of a rare hill in otherwise-flat Central Texas). Against all odds a Dave Wild Trio has managed to assemble and perform at each stop.

During the wanderings there were also some publications of interest (discographies, transcriptions, jazz journalism of various sorts). I acquired some academic credentials during a few of the stops (BA in English from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and an MA in English from Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti MI). For many years there was a day job, toiling in a sunless over-air-conditioned office deep within the Federal bureaucracy, knee-deep in paperclips, pried-open staples and crumpled post-its (the invisible means of support for all of this). That association ended in early 2009, leaving behind a trickle of funding and the time to chase more paper (a masters in jazz studies at the University of North Texas, currently in progress).

But it's likely the casual visitor to this virtual garage is more interested in what's inside those boxes marked JAZZ, so let’s move along…

Dave Writes.....

During our 15 years in Ann Arbor, that remarkable town west of Detroit, some equally remarkable things happened. Casual research became not-so-casual, and eventually two standard discographies were born: The Recordings of John Coltrane: A Discography - 1979, and Ornette Coleman: A Discography - 1980, with Michael Cuscuna, both essentially out-of-print. In the early seventies I began writing for Coda (out of Toronto) and a little later for downbeat (I was Detroit correspondent for that long-lived publication from 1979-1987). The Coltrane research led to liner note assignments for something like 20 John Coltrane recordings on Impulse, in its various guises (ABC-Impulse, MCA Impulse, GRP Impulse and now Verve Impulse) . The 1997 assignment to do the notes for the definitive collection of Coltrane's 1961 Village Vanguard recordings (described on my Village Vanguard page, elsewhere in this site) was especially rewarding.

I can also claim two dozen or so articles in the Grove Dictionary of Jazz and an article on Coltrane's music (1961-1967) in Carl Woideck's anthology The John Coltrane Companion (published in 1998 by Schirmer), among other things. Early in the last decade a group of us came together to work on a successor to Yasuhiro Fujioka's John Coltrane discography (his discography replaced mine as the "standard" in 1995), expanded to include a complete chronology. The team--including Fuji himself, Lewis Porter, Wolf Schmaler, Chris DeVito and me—collaborated remotely for years, and Routledge published the results—the massive and award-winning John Coltrane Reference —in December 2007.

Incidentally, I don't know enough about popular TV shows like Friends to name the characters, let alone write about them. Those books were authored by what puertoriqueños call un tocayo, same name different face--another Wild David, formerly an editor at Rolling Stone and most recently host of the series Musicians on the Bravo cable network. If you feel like you've stumbled into some alternate reality (where Buddy Bolden talks to Ken Burns about Wynton Marsalis), perhaps it's the other Wild you want. In the interest of accepting my fair share of blame, I've listed most of what I've written over the years on a separate page: Dave Wild in Print, with a couple of samples.

I also play piano and occasionally soprano saxophone (best characterized by borrowing Ogden Nash's description of the oboe, as "an ill wind that nobody blows good"). The Dave Wild Trio/Quartet performs somewhat regularly around Waco (see the CenTex jazz page for a schedule, or look at an excerpt from my iPhone at Dave's Calendar). Several years ago we put together a CD called Wild Sides, featuring bassist/producer (and close relative) Ken Wild, plus Ralph Humphrey, drums and Larry Williams, saxophones, recorded by Gary Denton at Stagg Street Studio in Van Nuys, along with one track recorded with my Waco rhythm section of Jeff Horton, bass and Charles Burleson, drums. I've been contributing arrangements to the Temple Jazz Orchestra (based at Temple College in, where else, Temple), where I've been known to teach the odd student or two. TJO's first CD, Soft Lights, Sweet Music, which features liner notes, a chart and the occasional piano solo by yours truly, was released early in 2001. TJO has since released four more CDs, all including yours truly—two CDs from smoking concerts by TJO and Bill Watrous, another hot set with arranger/composer/saxophonist/pianist (whew) Gordon Goodwin,, and a fourth with all-original material (including two Wild charts). That's usually me behind the piano in the Waco Jazz Orchestra as well. And I’m occasionally visible in the Denton area in association with one of UNT’s many ensembles…