HEAD Just Wild About Bill Davison: A Video to Trumpet : WILD BILL DAVISON

“Wild Bill Davison: His Life, His Times, His Music”

T.T. & T. Network ($39.95)

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By any yardstick, this is one of the most engaging documentaries in jazz video annals.

Much of the footage, filmed at trumpeter Davison’s Santa Barbara home a year before his death in 1989, consists of interviews conducted by Tom Saunders, a sympathetic trumpet-playing fan. Davison, an amiable and gifted man, reminisces with delightful candor about his first record date, in 1924; his encounters with mobster Al Capone; the black Chicago club where he was embarrassed to find himself billed as “The White Louis Armstrong,” and the 12 years of dues paid at Eddie Condon’s Club in New York.

Davison comes across as the charmer he was, and as a man of odd hobbies--building model railroads, collecting hats--and bad habits: He drank voraciously until the doctors and his lawyer wife, Anne, stopped him in 1984. There are clips showing him playing at the Sacramento Dixieland Jubilee and at Condon’s; his rendition of “Old Folks” is a touching finale to a fascinating journey through this century. Information: (800) 531-7444.