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Don Davis


 

Don Davis (outside the vault of his bank) | Marcin Szczepanski, Detroit Free Press | tc846

Record producer, guitarist, composer and banker Donald “Don” Davis was born in Detroit, Michigan on 25 October 1938. He started playing guitar while at school and on leaving school, formed a jazz group. 

He quickly found work as a session musician and can be heard playing guitar on Barrett Strong’s Motown recording of “Money” and Mary Wells’ recording “Bye bye baby”. He began wri,ting and producing records in Detroit, then at and for Stax Records in Memphis, with whom in 1968 he had great success with Johnnie Taylor’s recording of his song and production “Who’s making Love” (on which Davis and Steve Cropper can both be heard playing guitar). He set up Groovesville Productions and bought the Detroit recording studio “United Sound” at 5840 Second Avenue, Detroit, an historic studio founded in 1933 and at its current site since the 1940s, where John Lee Hooker and Aretha Franklin are among those who have recorded.  

On many of his productions, the basic rhythm tracks were actually recorded elsewhere, especially Muscle Shoals. In 1970 he had founded the First Independence Bank. Some of the later Chess recordings by The Dells were produced by Davis.

Don Davis died after a short illness in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on 5 June 2014.

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