Living Country Blues Part 5
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Artist:
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Album:Keep it to Yourself- Arkansas Blues Volume 1: Solo Performances
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Track:Let Me Play With Your Poodle
CEDELL DAVIS
Let Me Play With Your Poodle,
You Got To Do The Boogie Woogie
CeDell Davis is a one·of·a-kind player. Crippled from polio since age ten, Davis has limited use of his hands. His style of playing has evolved in spite of his circumstances, and as a result, his sound is totally unique. A native of Helena, Arkansas, CeDell Davis was raised on the rough and tumble sounds of the local juke joints. He never left the area (except for two brief stays in St. Louis), and his music has remained locked in time. Davis did not play professionally until the early 1950s, when he joined up with slide guitar legend Robert Nighthawk. Nighthawk was a popular local artist whose stinging single-string slide work influenced artists like Earl Hooker, Elmore James and Muddy Waters. Nighthawk was a regular on KFFA's King Biscuit Time radio program and Davis was often heard as a sideman. Of the town that spawned so many blues musicians, Davis said, "Helena was wide open at that time. Wide open gamblin' and just everything. Most anything you wanted to throwaway some money on and it was there... The joints stayed open all night, all day" But while many of his contemporaries left the South for Chicago or the West Coast, Davis stayed put, working a day job as a carpenter and raising his family. By 198O, when these recordings were made, his music had changed little. It is rough, ragged, energizing juke joint music meant to excite a rowdy crowd. Because of his limited dexterity, Davis plays with the guitar turned upside-down and plays slide over the top of the neck rather than up from the bottom like most players do. He uses a simple butter knife for a slide and strums with his left hand. Kustner notes, "He had this old beat-up guitar, I don't know what it was, painted yellow. He played with the butter knife and blew me away. He was so powerful, with that strong voice and the guitar sounding like it was coming out of space." As critic Robert Palmer wrote, "Some people who hear Davis' playing for the first time think it's out of tune, but it would be more accurate to say he plays in an alternate tuning." Included here are Davis' rendition of Tampa Red's double-entendre hit Let Me Play With Your Poodle and his own boogie composition, You Got To Do The Boogie Woogie. CeDell Davis, who was still playing house parties and juke joints, became better known after recording again in 1993, releasing several albums and appearing at a number of local festivals. Davis currently lives in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Comments (7)
You Got To Do The Boogie Woogie
Man and here we are with all the technology you can imagine, virtually living the star trek model, these old bluesmen had something else going on that is rare in these modern times
fascinating stuff, isn't it?
it's like when he slides, it doesn't slide all the way..very cool.
It speaks boatloads for the indominable human will that a man with his physical issues would not only pick up a guitar, but actually play it! The word "can't" just doesn't register with some folks, and we are the richer for it!
Absolutely.....I wish I had even half of that kind of determination. And for cryin out loud, the guy was also a CARPENTER!! With polio and limited use of his hands!! Very impressive.
Plus! I just love the name (even if it wasn't his original) --Let Me Play with your Poodle, haha!
It's good to keep this stuff alive, don't you think?