| Guy Davis Blues in the Schools Residency April 7-11 |
 Guy Davis Free open to the public performances will be held at the Davenport Fairmont Public Library, 3000 W. Fairmont St., Davenport on April 8, Mojo’s (in the River Music Experience) 129 Main St., Davenport, on April 9, and the Quad City Arts Center, 1715 2nd Ave. Rock Island, Friday, April 11. All shows begin at 7 p.m. Guy Davis was born May 12, 1952 in New York City, the son of the world renowned actor and activist Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. They insisted their son Guy get a good education but allowed him to seek and cultivate his own interests and ambitions, which eventually turned out to involve the blues. Davis’s parents led by example in their careers in theater and movies while befriending and working with the likes of Paul Robeson, Sidney Portier, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. Robeson and Portier often visited the Davis’ home in the northern suburbs of New York City to discuss their latest civil rights movement. Their passions and talent made a big impression on young Guy. Davis has said that Portier would walk around the neighborhood in his bare feet for he was just a country boy from the islands. Davis has also said that Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panthers, stayed at their home from time to time. “In my house, every day was Black History Month,” laughed Davis. Despite growing up in New York City, Guy Davis managed to hear and learn about the blues early in life starting with his parents and grandparents who told him of the hardships of African Americans in the rural South where they originated. Davis was especially moved by stories told by his grandmother, Lauria, who told of her grandfather being threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. From the time he was eight years old, he spent his summers at a Vermont camp run by Pete Seeger’s brother John, where he was exposed to the music of Lead Belly. Davis began teaching himself how to play the guitar. At the age of 13, he caught Buddy Guy and Junior Wells at a nightclub in Cambridge. Mass. However, he was more influenced by the acoustic guitar playing he heard on records of Robert Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Willie McTell, and Mance Lipscomb. Guy Davis has emphasized that today’s blues musicians don’t have to pick cotton, chop wood or spend time in prison camps to be able to play the blues. He claims that the blues is part of his family heritage and is African American folk music. Davis has been compared with other acoustic blues guitar players of similar age. Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris and Keb Mo have been called third generation blues musicians and were influenced by Taj Mahal, a second generation blues man. In 1978 Davis recorded his first album “Dream about Life” on the Folkway label and around the same time got his first job as an actor on One Life to Live. In 1985 Davis recorded the first album “Stomp Down Rider” for Red House Records. Davis performs the didgeridoo on his album “Give in Kind.” He was taught how to play the instrument by aboriginal folk during an Australian tour. Among Davis’ acting projects were his Broadway debut in 1991 in a Zora Neal Hurston / Langston Hughes collaboration “Mulebone. Davis played the part of Robert Johnson in the play “Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil” and in1993 won the Blues Foundation’s “Keeping the Blues Alive” award for his performance. Guy Davis performed as a single in the tent at the 1997 and 2004 Mississippi Valley Blues Society festivals and is scheduled to perform with Otis Taylor and the Black Banjo Project headlining in the tent on Thursday, July 3, at the 2008 IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival. Guy Davis’s residency was made possible by major support from the Riverboat Development Authority, the Illinois Arts Council, Kraft Foods, Alcoa, Sears Manufacturing, LinguiSystems, The Lodge, KALA-FM, WQPT, and the River Music Experience.
- Jimmie Jones
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