William Edward Davison was born in the northwest Ohio town of Defiance. He was raised by his maternal grandparents from the age of seven on. Davison displayed a love for music at an early age, as well as a natural ability to master many musical instruments. He first learned to play the mandolin, guitar, and banjo. He joined the Boy Scouts mostly because it provided an opportunity for him to learn the bugle. At age 12 he graduated from the bugle to the cornet. The sharper tones of the trumpet never really appealed to Davison, and he stayed with the cornet for the entirety of his musical career. His ear for music was so keen that after hearing a song only once he could reproduce its melody perfectly and elaborate on it with perfect chord progressions and harmonic improvisation. He committed to memory every song he heard, and his natural ear for pitch amazed even his fellow musicians. His ability to read music was limited, but it was a skill that he really did not need for the style of music that most interested him.

Davison did not come by his lifelong nickname accidentally. He was a heavy drinker beginning in his teens and was known as a womanizer. Davison went through four wives before he finally got the knack of married life, settling down to a relatively monogamous relationship with his fifth wife--and love of his life--Anne Stewart. Heavy drinking and womanizing were the two most obvious characteristics that made Davison truly wild. He enjoyed his reputation for playful antics. Davison retained his musical abilities until the very end of his life.

 He practiced daily into his 80s and spent the final two decades of his life playing concert dates in Europe, where his music was extraordinarily popular.

Wild Bill is the man to whom Louis Armstrong once declared, “Bill, if anything ever happens to me, I know you can keep on doing what I'm doing.” He built his career playing in Chicago nightspots during the roaring '20s, and in the '40s and '50s he joined Eddie Condon s famed house band in New York City, where he became known as a commanding front man and a brash, intense lead cornetist.

Like a select group of other jazz instrumentalists, cornetist Wild Bill Davison had a talent that lives on long after his death. More than a decade after Davison died at the age of 83, record companies continue to reissue some of the more than 800 songs he recorded during his 70-year career. Jazz aficionados never tire of talking about some of the more memorable engagements played by the colorful Davison around the world.