Ivory Towers

Introduction

This book started as a letter to my army buddy Ted Plummer. I wrote all-night-long:

Ivory Towers A True Story Authorized Autobiography And Life Of Byron BK Davis Steinway International Artist is the result.

Chapter 1

I remember the lights. There were insistent flashes. Popping in my eyes. Camera’s leaving me temporarily blind. There were the bright, hot lights of the television crew and, as always, there was the light of my father. Brightest of all. It was that light I craved—and feared—most.

At 14 years old all that brightness converged on me. I was conducting a 150-voice choir being filmed by a national gospel program. I would have rather been playing football with my friends, but everyone had pushed me to music. It was putty to me, I liked to twist it, wrap it around silence, pretty it up and show people what I could do. It felt natural. It wasn’t what I loved—that would be sports—but it was a nice diversion.

But my father, Bishop Ezekiel Davis, truck driver, pastor and a bishop for seven Church of God in Christ churches in the Iowa-Illinois area, had no time for diversions. My father was a man’s man who believed in God and getting down to business.

Byron, a man takes care of his family, was one of the first things he said to me once I was out of diapers. And when Bishop Davis said it, family or not, people listened. He was a black man living in Iowa with his wife and five children and that was just a portion of the responsibility heaped on his broad shoulders. As a church Bishop he had to watch over money, make sure -reports were paid, utilities stayed current and all the grievances of hundreds of church members were addressed.

Iowa in the 1950s and 1960s could be a racist place, but the Bishop couldn’t fit racism into his schedule. I don’t know that anyone ever called my father a nigger; if they had I imagine it had the same effect as if saying it to a ball baring. My father didn’t -tolerate fools, so if some uninformed white person didn’t know who he was or what he was capable of, that was their burden, not his. Make no mistake, my father fervently believed in God and the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, which meant a Christian ass-whopping for those who hadn’t the sense to avoid poking the bear.

Sometimes those ass-whippings, toned down to spankings, fell on his middle son—me. Much more than my brother Bobby, the eldest child, I let my dreams run wild and out in the open. One day I’d think of being a professional football player or the next, a chess Grandmaster. I had a hummingbird’s attention span. I questioned my father in ways Bobby did not and (to use one of my father’s phrases) that was unacceptable.

During that time, a few hundred miles south of my childhood home, other brown-skinned boys who thought like me were disappearing. Free spirits who became literal spirits. My father knew this. In his mind, if God decided to take me home, fine, but no white men in some beat up pickup truck were ever going to abscond with any of his children. He taught his boys how to fight and look out for danger. When the lessons weren’t learned to his satisfaction he applied reminders manually to the seats of our pants—usually mine. That was my father’s strategy and it was that strategy that pushed me into the light.

All eyes were on me as I was standing in a suit and tie in front of the 150 trained choir members. I was both directing the choir and had written the music they were singing. Proud parents snapped pictures and a film crew was taping the performance for a national broadcast that would fill the homes of the million members of the C.O.G.I.C. (Church of God in Christ) family and other lovers of gospel music, or as I liked to call it, sacred music.

Barely into my teens and that was my life. I learned to play all percussion instruments and strings in church. At 7 I’d been banging on the piano like it was a bongo, but by 12 I entered my first talent contest at Washington Elementary School in Davenport, Iowa and won. Parents, teachers, and my fellow students came to know me as the kid who wrote songs.

That popularity translated into other things. I won a seat on the student council and was elected 6th grade class president. My 12th year was a personal tipping point. My father recognized my talent and—being a drummer himself—decided it was practical and good; so with my mother, Rose M. Davis, they nurtured it.

Long before I ever conceived of composing songs for the piano my mother had recorded records. As a singer she was, and still is, able to set the most stoic foot to tapping. She’s been compared to Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Eartha Kitt, and other powerful female singers. Even after recording with one of the architects of rock and roll I’ve never heard a voice so infused with power, grace, and vocal finesse. This is less the observation of a proud son than it is that of an awed fan.

Mom took over my musical education. From age 10 until 15, my life was spent learning music. I took lessons at school and performed weekly at church; I was taught trumpet, drums, cello, guitar, and piano—my instrumental base. Singing in the choir and weekly ear training rounded out my musical exercises. I was focused on functional harmony and progression. Much like my compatriot 400 miles to the north, Prince Rogers Nelson, I was a black child in a white state ferociously listening to whatever color music I could find.

I kept my ear glued to the nearby Chicago radio stations, absorbing blues, jazz, pop, and classical. My father was serving as a pastor in Rock Island, Illinois and I would go with him every month to Chicago for congregations of church bishops. During these trips I was spellbound by my expose to the Chicago musicians—a silver brick to help me build my path to musical mastery.

At 14 I had no clue that in two years I would trade my father’s discipline for a harsher military one, nor that I would go on to work with soul, pop, and gospel legends, become homeless, own multiple homes, gain fame, women, new religion, and question the truth of my reality.

My greatest fight in the years to come would be against my own mind. I couldn’t think of a greater paradox. My mind had absorbed music in practice and theory; on the chess board my mind could design the organized demolition of people three and four times my age. On the football field my coach considered me a tactician as well as a physical beast. My mind failing me? Unthinkable.

But schizophrenia takes its toll on those affected whether we think about it or not. Even the most orderly life, much less the life of a peripatetic musician, could be overtaxed by such a mental disorder. Early in my struggle with mental illness I think I believed if I traveled far enough and fast enough I could outrun my demons; or maybe if I slept with enough women I could burn them away. Japan? Europe? Africa? It didn’t matter where I traveled, my demons spoke the language. It didn’t matter who I slept with, I’d always wake up with them next to me.

A blessed pillar in the chaos surrounding my life was erected by the tough love my father granted me. There were times I was so mad, hot tears still in my eyes, I wanted to fight him. However—not wanting to die—I learned to retreat strategically. That was my father’s gift. I called it going to my Ivory Towers. Whenever the lights got too bright or reality a little too malleable, it was my respite. Still, there were many times I lay dying at the gates of my Ivory Towers, too stubborn to open them.

Chapter 2

Ever been where you’re not wanted? A party you weren’t invited to? A family reunion when the family’s mad at you? Such was the case for the black youth growing up in the 1970s. As much as my father was immune to idiocy of racism, I was susceptible. I think it’s because it was so illogical. Like someone insisting that 1+1=3 ½, it was such a warped way of thinking it couldn’t be ignored.

On Sundays in Rock Island I would play, sing, and conduct for a sea of faces that would roar in approval. Large ladies with large hats who smelled of lavender would shout, Amen! or Hallelujah! And the applause? I was the applause of a black church—so passionate the noise could rival the trumpets of God’s own angels.

The spirit would inspire hands to clapping. I would be playing and I might hear one person clap, then stop. Then another two of three people might take up the clapping until it built into rolling thunder. Church applause was even more powerful because it came when it came—with no compulsion to clap with the herd.

People were applauding me, praising me, and—ultimately—stroking my young ego. As if in counterpoint I lived in a place where many white people considered me a second-class citizen because of the color of my skin. I don’t often say this, but, how stupid is that?

Illogical. For instance I was a starter on the Davenport Central High School football team. I loved football. Loved its hitting, its violence, its brutal beauty. There were plays which were basically physical notations of where to be, when to be there, and how to be once you were. I caught on to these immediately