CeDELL DAVIS

   Actualmente 88 años CeDELL DAVIS sigue en la brecha, "Old Bluesman never die " ....... os remitimos a la info de su Facebook ó su web -site para que podáis comprobar la actividad de este hombre que atesora un background impresionante , arrastrando una polio contraída en su infancia que no le ha impedido desarrollar su carrera , a su manera con el mango del cuchillo para el slide guitar , capaz de crear su propio estilo. Desde aquí nuestro reconocimiento a una labor de años y años y que por el momento mantiene. 

                                   

                                   

                                   

Cedell Big G Davis - slide blues guitar player born in Helena, Arkansas - an original player on the 'King Biscuit Flour Hour' the 1950's radio show - He had contracted Polio as a child, and then was trampled in a bar shootout, and had no ability to move his fingers - so he wedged a butterknife into his paralyzed hand to use as a slide, and turned the guitar around so he could pick the strings with his left thumb to create this unique style. Cedell was brought to New England for a few weeks by Henry Kouffman - to play a few gigs and a studio session where we could record this original blues performer. Cedell also came by my first studio on Chapel St. in Newton to do the interviews and play a little. Henry and I did an hour show that has never been released - sorry we don't have credits for the other players - enjoy this demo.

His FACEBOOK : 

"Born June 9th, 1926 in Helena, AR, CeDell was raised by a family of sharecroppers who worked at a local plantation. Sharecropping seemed to be the default occupation of many of the legendary bluesmen from that mystical part of the South, and they included Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker who both claimed the title of "Sharecropper-Bluesman." CeDell's mother had been a traditional healer, a woman of the Earth and of the Faith, but she wasn't able to save young CeDell from the back-to-back ravages of yellow fever, when he was nine years old, and the excruciating pains of polio at the age of 10. The polio would hamper his ability to walk without the aid of crutches, and it destroyed much of the flexibility in his hands. CeDell had just started playing guitar when the polio struck, but he learned, through his own ingenuity and sheer grit, how to use a butter knife to fret the strings in place of his gnarled hands. In doing so, he pioneered the butter knife technique that many slide players imitate today.

By the age of 26, CeDell was apprenticing with the great Robert Nighthawk, playing exquisite slide guitar beside Nighthawk for a decade between 1953 and 1963. They played throughout the South, following a circuit that took them to juke joints, house parties, speakeasies, and pretty much any place that would have them. CeDell told us about these gigs, where he'd make "five bucks, a little whiskey, and a steak", for a long night of playing the Blues.

Then tragedy struck again, this time in 1957, when CeDell was playing a gig in East St. Louis. A gunshot in the club resulted in a stampede of patrons and CeDell, already slow on his crutches, fell under the panicked crowd and was trampled underfoot, breaking both of his legs in multiple fractures. After several months in hospital traction, and several months more convalescing at home, CeDell was now bound to a wheelchair, where he sits to this day. But the most important thing to remember about all of CeDell's illnesses and injuries is that, while many other musicians committed slow suicide with excessive alcohol, drugs, and dangerous living, CeDell never fell victim to these vices. Instead, he was challenged by forces beyond his control, yet he refused to concede defeat, focusing on his deep Blues instead. In the process, he became a stronger and more authentic artist, or as he said to tell us during the recording sessions for his most recent album, "I plan on living, man - dying will take care of itself!"

For many years, throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, CeDell lived in relative obscurity. That is, until the early '90s when the famed New York Times music critic, Robert Palmer, rediscovered CeDell and his unique interpretation of the Blues. Palmer set out to produce some songs for CeDell, which became the fantastic album Feel Like Doing Something Wrong, released by the Blues label Fat Possum Records. Fat Possum had been cultivating a strong roster of Blues musicians who were creating a revival in Delta and Hill Country Blues, and this was largely due to the efforts of Bruce Watson and Matthew Johnson, executive producers for the label. Under Palmer's production and Fat Possum's promotion, CeDell began to experience a second act in his storied career. Mick Jagger and Yoko Ono attended his premier in New York City and suddenly CeDell Davis was hip again. But as any veteran musician will tell you, hipness is a fickle thing, and anyone who goes the distance in music is going to be both hip and uncool many times in their career. The only thing that really matters is quality and commitment. Or, as CeDell once told me: "My mother told me not to play the guitar and that devil music or I would surely be going to hell. I told her I'll certainly be going to hell if I don't!"

That's the mark of the authentic man - the one who plays because he is driven to play and for no other reason than that. And fortunately for us he did keep playing, giving us the great albums: Feel Like Doing Something Wrong, The Horror of It All, The Best of CeDell Davis, and When Lightnin' Struck The Pine. Go get those records immediately, they're the real thing, and they'll change how you think about music.

In the 13 years since we made the Lightning album, CeDell was befriended by Greg "Big Papa" Binns and his son Zakk, both Arkansas natives like CeDell, and both pursuing the same love of the Delta Blues. The revitalized CeDell Davis band has been performing at Blues festivals around the South, and has twice toured Europe to sold-out crowds of ecstatic fans, many of whom were seeing the Blues for the first time."