Bill Davison; Traditional Era Jazz Cornetist

Celebrated cornetist William Edward (Wild Bill) Davison, an American jazz great whose music career spanned nearly 70 years, died Tuesday at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara.

Davison, 83, was hospitalized for a heart operation about two weeks ago, forcing him to cancel an engagement at the Pismo Beach Festival by the Sea. Still active, he had also planned to celebrate his birthday Jan. 5 by playing in Bern, Switzerland, before touring England.

“He was extremely well known and beloved, especially by fans in Europe,” said Leonard Feather, Times jazz critic. “He was one of the great survivors of the traditional jazz era of the 1920s and ‘30s.”

Born in Defiance, Ohio, Davison discovered as a boy that he could produce tones from lengths of garden hose left over from his grandfather’s boat-building efforts. Someone gave him an old cornet, which he set aside at first for the mandolin and banjo.

But it was the cornet to which he returned, and it was his rambunctious, energetic style of playing that took him to gangster-run Chicago night clubs in the 1920s, on to Milwaukee in the ‘30s and to Eddie Condon’s club in New York during much of the ‘40s and ‘50s. He made his first record in 1924 and recorded about 800 tunes in his career.

His horn and his talent took him around the world. He returned overseas over and over again to perform in Switzerland, Belgium, Scandinavia and Great Britain, where he was especially popular.

Times Arts Editor Charles Champlin once described Davison’s sound as “a sort of raspy growl that even more than most traditional jazz carries overtones of tasty wickedness, the musical equivalent of a romp through fields of carnality.”

Asked at age 76 whether he and his wife Anne intended to slow their seemingly non-stop pace, Davison replied:

“Well, let’s face it, I’m 76--come on! But I can still blow the horn, and until my teeth fall out or something, I may as well keep going while I can.”

Davison recalled that Louis Armstrong had once paid him a compliment when the graveled-voiced jazz great told him, “Bill, If anything ever happens to me, I know you can keep on doing what I’m doing.”

Remembering that, Davison said, “kind of gives you that extra strength to carry on.”

A family spokesman said Davison’s body will be cremated and a memorial is planned in Santa Barbara “if we can find a place big enough.”