A BLUES FUNERAL
Last summer I had the opportunity to play some solo gigs down in the great state of Kentucky. I was asked by a funeral director to play at a grave side service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Kentucky back-country. As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost; and being a typical man I didn't stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends; I played like I've never played before for this homeless man. And as I played 'Amazing Grace,' the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished I packed up and started for my car. Though my head hung low my heart was full. As I was opening the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen nothin' like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."
FEATURED BLUES ARTIST - CEDELL DAVIS - DELTA BLUES MAN (Where There's A Will, There's A Way)
"Cedell Davis was born Ellis Davis on June 9, 1927, in Helena, then a booming river town on the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi. He grew up there and in the upper Mississippi Delta around eight miles south of Tunica, on the E.M. Hood plantation, where his brother lived. Together with one of his childhood friends, Isaiah Ross (future Sun recording artist Dr. Ross the Harmonica Boss), Cedell began playing blues, first harmonica, then some guitar. Then tragedy struck -- during his ninth and tenth years he grappled with severe polio. He returned to Helena, to his mother, who was locally renowned as a healer, though she worked as a cook, and there he began the painful process of relearning, in fact rethinking the guitar, which he could no longer play in the conventional manner. "It took me about three years," he recalls. "I was right- handed, but I couldn't use my right hand, so I had to turn the guitar around; I play left-handed now. But I still needed something to slide with, and my mother had these knives, a set of silverware, and I kinda swiped one of 'em." This was the beginning of a guitar style that is utterly unique, in or out of blues. The knife-handle on the strings produces uneven pressure, which results in a welter of metal-stress harmonic transients and a singular tonal plasticity. Some people who hear Cedell's playing for the first time think it's out of tune, but it would be more accurate to say he plays in an alternative tuning. Over the years Cedell has played in Southern juke joints with a number of other musicians. His most significant and longest-lasting association was with the great Robert Nighthawk, who was considered the Delta's finest slide guitarist by no less an authority than Muddy Waters. They worked together for ten years straight, roughly 1953-'63, trading off "bassing" and lead duties song by song. During the early part of his time with Nighthawk, Cedell was based in St. Louis, where he got to know Big Joe Williams, Charlie Jordan, J.D. "Jelly Jaw" Short, and other leading lights. But during the last part of 1957, he was badly injured in a St. Louis tavern, when an apparent police raid caused a massive stampede. Before that, Cedell could at least walk on crutches. But his legs were broken in so many places during the stampede that he has been largely confined to a wheelchair ever since. Cedell is a remarkable communicator, and quite possibly the greatest hard core vocalist around." - Robert Palmer
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