Hugh Davis

This Hollywood recording engineer's early reputation was made on the basis of some superior live recordings in the '60s. Cannonball Adderley had one of the biggest jazz chart hits all the time with the single of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", and it was the superbly captured live ambience that helped put this record over the top. The influence of this record can be followed through the Davies discography of engineering credits as well as through the more obvious paths of funky musical influence, and the engineer was called on again and again to tote recording equipment to live gigs, the hardest of which must have been capturing the blare of the full-out Stan Kenton, and the easiest picking up the comic patter of standup comic Stan Freberg. Later in Davies' career, jazz artists such as Pat Longo would look to him to come up with that funky sound they remembered from the Cannonball Adderley records.

In the meantime, the Davies of the '70s had perfected a kind of laid back, west coast country pop sound that was featured not only in the chart hits of Glen Campbell but in the adult radio sound of lazy-sounding J.J Cale. On a cult level, Davies can be most proud of turning on the recording machines when Gram Parsons came in the studio to make his Grevious Angels and G.P. albums, though his patience surely must have been tried by some of the decadent behavior in the studio that accompanied the creation of these masterpieces. The engineer is no relation to the British Hugh Davies, an avant garde electronics player who makes sounds that would most likely make the needles melt on all the recording meters in Hollywood. There is also a classical baritone vocalist named Hugh Davies. ~ Eugene Chadbourne